First things first: this is a $28,000 camera. For almost everybody, this falls into the "occasional rental" category, not the "save up and buy" category that the 5D Mark II and the C100 and C300 occupied. For those of you disappointed in the specs of the 5D Mark IV, this camera provides everything everyone asked for, albeit in a package that costs 10 times as much.
It's going to shoot some really beautiful footage, and the ergonomics of the design seem particularly well thought out.
The good news is that it's extremely exciting from a technical point of view. It's a new, more modular design than the previous C-line, including a more flexible eyepiece mount that echoes the Alexa and the URSA. It has a removable touchscreen remote control—the OU-700—and a removable raw module from Codex for up to 120fps 4k raw recording, and manages a capable 60fps internal.
The top and bottom are covered with screw holes, like a cheese plate, for extremely flexible mounting options. Global shutter is available for the PL mount version, as well as Cooke /i support for capturing lens data information into metadata. It features internal proxy recording to SD cards for fast movement to the edit room, though the XAVC codec will be more comfortable in a broadcast environment than a narrative . Raw and ProRes records to CF cards internally, though you get more options (especially a higher frame rate raw) to the external recorder, which makes sense, since CF cards have a limit to how fast they can write. It also features internal anamorphic de-squeeze (though it's still not a 4x3 sensor, so you won't get the benefits of the full Anamorphic image circle like you do on some Alexa models).
Some are saying this is meant to smooth over the hurt feelings over the Mark IV specs, but that doesn't really add up; no one who was hoping these features would start showing up in their $3,000 cameras will be mollified with the idea of spending more on a camera than a car. This camera, or course, isn't meant to compete with the forthcoming GH5, the A7SII, or the Blackmagic URSA Mini; Canon has the C100 for that, and the C100 Mark II has proven somewhat popular, though its 1080 limit is looking very dated.
Canon is going to have a hard time moving in.
What this new camera actually replaces is the previous C500 (albeit with the same sensor as the C300 Mark II), which never really took off, since Sony's F5 and F55 took up a lot of the market that Canon was hoping to capture. This camera feels like it's aiming even a little higher than the 4-year-old F55—aiming up at the Red Epic platform, or even going against the Amira as being a C-camera on Alexa shoots. That market is a very tough nut to crack: while the C line has been around a while and produces beautiful imagery, the only movie that comes to mind when I hear "Canon C" is Blue Is The Warmest Color. If asked to name 50 movies shot on the Alexa or the Epic, I bet most of us could do so without thinking. The aforementioned have a big presence and history in that space, and Sony has a history in high-end broadcast, which is the other potential market. For better or for worse, those are markets that chance slowly and stay loyal to "what works"; Canon is going to have a hard time moving in.
Credit: Canon
I hope Canon is able to find some market share with this camera, because if the imagery of the C700 (and the promotional test footage) is anything to go by, it's going to shoot some really beautiful footage, and the ergonomics of the design seem particularly well thought out. But with the film and video market it doesn't have the low-end dominance it used to, and moving up in the world can be hard. If Canon really wants its users to take them back, then need to bring a lot of what we see here in some form into a C100 Mark III, and fast.
I read somewhere that there are only two best-case scenarios for a great screenplay—either it meets the expectations of the audience or it doesn’t. Either they sigh in relief or gasp out loud in shock.
Giving your audience what they want shouldn’t be difficult for a practiced writer. A character has a desire, and they achieve it at the end of the story. Boom! Expectations met!
But there’s something oddly satisfying about not meeting those expectations in a screenplay, leaving the audience shaken in disbelief.
Many compelling screenplays use something called misdirection—it's sneaky, it's intelligent, and it takes viewers somewhere unexpected. It's all about planting subtle clues that seem insignificant until a revelation forces us to reconsider everything.
Let’s examine how this narrative tool, when used thoughtfully, can transform straightforward storytelling into something more complex and satisfying.
What is Misdirection?
Misdirection is distracting the audience to mislead them, preventing them from getting on to your scheme of actions, until you finally reveal the truth. In essence, it is a style of storytelling, where the “audience proposes, filmmaker disposes.”
In misdirection, a filmmaker manipulates information, character(s), and their timing in the narrative while building the conflict, until everything falls into place to reveal an unexpected resolution that does not match the audience’s expectations.
Many times, the audience is also purposefully misdirected by exploiting their biases, prejudices, and gullibility.
Why Would Any Filmmaker Misdirect Their Audience?
A story is as interesting as its narration. Be it a bedtime story or Nolan’s Inception, if the narrative is linear and flat, it may be less engaging to your audience.
Misdirection is one of the finest tools that acts like a hook to your story. Misdirecting elements are thought-provoking, working with the audience’s psychology to throw them off guard.
Fiction gives you the freedom to alter realities, but even while misdirecting, it is important that the dots connect effectively by the end of the story. Information shouldn’t be irrelevant and without context.
How Do You Misdirect Your Audience?
You can use any story element to misdirect the audience, but the most commonly used are characters, sound, props, plot points, strategic information reveal, and the time of the incident of any event.
Examples of Misdirection in Great Films
Gone Girl by David Fincher
Misdirection by unreliable narrator
This is one of those stories that is completely narrated in misdirection.
The film opens through husband Nick’s (Ben Affleck) perspective, who becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), on their fifth marriage anniversary. As the investigation and media frenzy take over, we are let into the lives of our two main characters and led to believe that Amy might actually be dead.
We learn about their failing marriage and Nick’s extramarital affair. Thus, when Nick lies through his teeth about his loving relationship with Amy to the police, he instantly becomes an unreliable narrator in the story.
Thus, even though his alibis are believable, you cannot trust him and can’t take his word. Rather, you, with the police, start suspecting him.
This automatically shifts all your trust to Amy instead, even though you know even less about her than Nick. Wonderfully, you have begun rooting for her now.
What you might not realize is that you have been misdirected to dislike Nick as a character, so that you automatically take Amy’s side right from the beginning, until it is revealed that Amy is alive and purposefully in hiding.
This is one of the many misdirections in the film.
By regulating how the audience judges the characters, their morality, and their intentions, a filmmaker often shatters the expectations of the audience with misdirection to give them a more surprising resolution than expected.
The Sixth Sense by M. Night Shyamalan
Misdirection by character
Just by establishing a character in a certain way and revealing information about them strategically, a filmmaker can determine the character’s impression on the audience.
This is what M. Night Shyamalan does in The Sixth Sense. The magician of misdirection keeps both the characters and the audience engaged, looking for the ghost, all the while narrating the events through the ghost’s perspective!
The beauty of a nuanced misdirection lies in the clues left throughout a film’s events, leaving you both frustrated and delighted at the same time that you didn’t pick up on them!
Money Heist by Álex Pina
Misdirection by sound
In the Spanish drama series, Money Heist, the makers use a powerful misdirection but with a genius twist. This misdirection is not only for the audience per se, but for the main character—the Professor (Álvaro Morte), too.
In the Season 2 finale of the drama series, the Professor and Raquel (Itziar Ituño), the love of his life and newly minted partner-in-crime known as “Lisbon,” are sprinting through a dense, shadowy forest. The air crackles with urgency as police hounds close in, their shouts breaking the eerie silence of the forest.
Eventually, they are forced to separate, with a radio as their only mode of communication. Raquel ends up taking refuge in a barn, but not for too long. The police arrive, and she is completely surrounded. A gun to her head, she is ordered to compromise the Professor, but she’s steel-willed and denies the police any information.
All the while, the Professor is on the radio with her, frightened and worried, begging her to tell them everything in exchange for her life. The Professor frantically runs through the forest to reach Raquel, when… bang! A gunshot rips through the radio.
The Professor stops dead, the forest swallowing his anguished cry. But as the episode races to its close, the fog clears. The shot? A cruel ruse. She’s alive and in police custody. The Professor’s despair was their bait, and he bit—hard.
What I love about this particular sequence is that the filmmakers don’t use misdirection as a generalized cliff-hanger of “what happens next.”
Instead of revealing that Raquel is alive in an upcoming episode of the next season, they make a choice to reveal it at the tail end of the same episode.
Raquel is a crucial character in the series at this point, so to lose her in the narrative would have been a huge plot twist. At times, thrillers do go for the cheap surprise, whether it makes sense or not. But in Money Heist, the reveal elevates the value of the misdirection because now the audience knows things are going to change forever—for better or worse.
Final Destination 5 by Steven Quale
Misdirection by props
The sequence leading up to Candice’s fall in Final Destination 5 is a series of brilliantly crafted misdirections that keep us on the edge of our seats until the mishap finally happens.
The misdirections also seem to be symbolic, as the death of poor Candice (Ellen Wroe) is a sharp irony. Throughout the scene, we keep worrying about the loose screw in her gymnastic apparatus but how she is killed by it in the end is absolutely unexpected—just how a nuanced misdirection should be.
Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock
Misdirection by casting
Killing the heroine halfway through the film was a risky but brilliantly used misdirection by Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho, especially considering the film dates back to the ‘60s.
An actor’s face value is as important as their acting skills. Big actors usually have strong plot armor and are expected to survive the story.
In Psycho, when a star like Janet Leigh is killed off midway through the movie, the audience is thrown off guard and does not know what to assume, whose story to follow, or what to expect next. This amplifies the shock factor of the plot twist.
Misdirection can turn your story into a fun experience with plenty of unexpected twists and turns. When done well, a reveal should prompt viewers to think, "Of course! How did I miss that?" rather than, "That came out of nowhere!"
The audience hates being deceived. So, not meeting audience expectations doesn’t mean you lie and fill the screenplay with deceiving information, revealed in an untimely way, aiming for a plot twist in the climax that feels isolated and seemingly unmotivated.
Also, be careful not to clutter your narrative with forced misdirections.
For a better understanding, check out the examples in the article—how each misdirection is a strategic literary device, not just a stylized form of storytelling.
C700 OpenCredit: Canon
Credit: Canon
