Though it was supposed to pop on the blog a couple of days ago, this coming Friday my Hitchcock movie will be SPELLBOUND - dream sequence designed by Dali.

- Bill

I hate dream sequences. All of them. They never look remotely like my dreams.

Peter Dinklage summed it up in the speech that made him a star:

"Why does it have to be a dwarf?"

In heaven, everything is fine.

I liked Mia Farrow's dreams in Rosemary's Baby. Especially when she yells "This is not a dream! This is really happening!" Something so creepy about those sequences.

Dreams are perhaps the most cinematic thing you can do. As I said in the first post, it lets you look inside the protagonist without exposition or dialog.
It's not that hard to setup. I'm sure that even a protag being hunted by "X" has to sleep.

I like to do it after a chase or a stressful event. I have one movie (script) where we show that a person's grandmother died while also showing the stresses of their regular day.

We also did one where the protag's roommate was watching Days Of Thunder and it caused her to dream about her mother's death in a car accident (it's said that you will more than likely dream about what's on TV if you fall asleep with it on).

And the beauty of it is that you don't have to have flying anything or weird colors. I've actually thought about using it for "off-screen" occurrences - but of course only a "montage-like" 'series of shots.'

But then I like anything where I can use images to relate information.

I love writing dialog but a single tear is more powerful than a speech.

Iit actually took me awhile to find one in my memory.

But Hackers actually used it as a connection between the two protags.

A person waking up in a cold (or hot) sweat is a great image.

That's as powerful as an explosion.

@Grant - I finally thought of a movie that had a "fantasy" (read: not dream) sequence - with a dwarf. Happy Madison. Forgettable at best, but it was in Happy Madison. No offense.

I wrote an essay on film and dreams as part of my MA Screenwriting course at Bournemouth (UK) last year (the climax of my main feature-length project took place in a 'dreamscape').

Here's a copy of the essay, if anyone wants a shufty: