Is there a screenwriting term for...

[Bayesian 1,359]

A quick question to the screenwriters on these boards: Is there an industry term to describe the kind of setup-and-delivery situation you see so often in movies?

 

I'll use Independence Day as an example, since the movie is rife with these situations and I watched it again recently. For example, we learn Will Smith's character wants to be an astronaut. Near the end of the ID, he's piloting a spacecraft into space. We also learn Randy Quaid's character was anally probed by aliens, only to see him at the end of the movie anally probe an alien ship to blow it up.

 

I don't mean the kinds of situations where things are hinted at or intimated at the start and by the end we see how the character evolved in ways that make sense as an evolution at the end of the movie, but rather character-specific objects, dialog lines, etc. that get directly called back at the end of the movie as a kind of character development closure--a nod and wink to the audience, I guess. Is there a term for that? Just curious.

 

[Fabulin 3,510]

setup and a payoff

https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Setup_and_payoff

https://www.la-screenwriter.com/2018/09/05/3-principles-of-story-setups-and-payoffs/

[gkgyver 1,645]

I'm not sure there's a screenwriting term for extensive anal probing. 

[Lord Zimmer 211]

9 minutes ago, gkgyver said:

I'm not sure there's a screenwriting term for extensive anal probing. 

 

There should be.

 

Zimmering.

[bruce marshall 1,315]

Foreshadowing and resolution.

[Chen G. 3,943]

Its called "setup and payoff" or "planting and payoff". Generally, if you were trying to break-down a script structurally in film school, you'd actually mark the set-ups with numbers (set-up 1, 2, etc) and the payoff to correspond, and it can be a useful exercise in general.

 

Depending on how far apart the setup and the payoff are, you'll often have a reminder of the setup sometime in the middle. Ideally, the bulk of the setups will be in Act I; Act II will be littered with reminders, and Act III will contain the various payoffs. To be crude, in film criticism, a setup without a payoff is bloat, and a payoff without a setup (or too closely to the setup) is a Deus-ex-Machina.

 

Obviously now with serialized films, we often have setup and payoff between separate entries in a series, too.