How much can happen offscreen?
A. Nothing important. This is not strictly one hundred percent true. If you give us a character’s strong emotional reaction to some cataclymic event that was simply unproduceable, you can have something important happen offscreen. TV is like theater in that it is more about people’s reactions to big events than the big events themselves. A movie may show us a battle; TV might show us the characters hiding from the battle, or coming into a bar after the battle’s over, or coming home to open up a bar after the war’s over. That’s one reason why show people like to say that “Movies are pictures with sound; TV is radio with pictures.” TV is more about the dialog; movies are more about the action. But the question is really about what can happen dramatically offscreen, and the answer holds. Characters should not discover things offscreen. They should not learn things offscreen. They should not work things out offscreen. They should not have arguments offscreen. They can eat, sleep, go to the
