Greetings, Class,
This week, we continue reading and blogging.
Read Story, Chapter 10 and Adventures in Screen Trade, the Strengths of the Screenplay.
Homework:
Read a one hour drama from the website link below (in week V) and write your own character descriptions and plot points. Print it out and bring it to class (stapled please).
You should have a short story identified by now. Next week you will outline an adaptation for it and turn it in Week 8.
About Me
- Lightedstar
- Mariah Lichtenstern-Walebowa is an entrepreneur, media consultant and producer. She founded Lightedstar Entertainment and Mobile App Development Pro. Mariah's multimedia portfolio includes narrative film, documentaries, music videos, commercials, websites, blogs, and social networks.
7 comments:
McKee's theory's on choice reflect the struggle that's so hard to interpret on paper. I think setting up the choice to come is easy enough, but it's more difficult to present the consequences in a meaningful way without getting convoluted. As a screenwriter, one of the most difficult things to learn is subtly. McKee said there was a fine line with subtly, and he's absolutely right. If the audience feels like their hand is being held, they feel insulted. If plot point isn't spelled out clearly enough, the payoff goes nowhere.
I agree with Goldman this week on the strengths of Butch and Sundance. Particulary with the role of Etta, the only lead female. Females in westerns have always been a drag, as Goldman says, because they were thrown in to satisfy sex appeal demands and meant to serve as either the conscience of the film or play the devil's advocate. Etta made her own path, and ended her relationship with the outlaws on her own terms.
I do have a problem with the superposse, though. He called them a plot point, but to me they were a plot device. They had no faces, no personality, and no function other than to serve as a means to justify sending Butch and Sundance to Bolivia.
I'm not sure if Newman should've been arguing about structure of the scene as much as he should have been discussing the futility.
Setting up and leading into a payoff without insulting the intelligence of the audience is certainly one apsect of writing that will make for a good story or screenplay, but is also not the only thing. I appreciated the information regarding the importance of insight in storytelling. It seems to me that when you stick to truth, and by that I mean the ability to let your characters portray the importance of the scene without giving them words to describe the obvious, (let your audience discover the insight), you are more likely to have created a scene more believable because the audience has been able to understand the turn of events on their own. Much less insulting. When things are spelled out too clearly, the result is "inadequate and forces the characters to a phony, self-concious knowledge rarely found in actuality."
I also liked understanding the "law of diminishing returns" and the analogy of it compared to and ice cream cone. Best at first, sick on the 3rd.
And so this relates to the reading on Sundance, and how Goldman talks about the spine and structure of the story and his analogy of the bookcase...it's beautiful, but if built incorrectly, just not functional as a bookcase. I'm really not sure how the superposse was a plot point or what the point of that was, but I guess in some sort of way it played an important role.
I can not get over how gerat of a book "Story" is. The subject of setup and payoffs was most interesting, the fact that you can't be to subtle with your setups or the payoff will go over audances heads and you can't be to heavy handed or the audance will see the payoff coming from a mile away and lose interest. I enjoyed the example of the orphaned brothers and how if your turing points, setup's and payoffs dont fit your characters, change your characters attributes. In the section on choice I did not understand the triangle of conflict.
William Paulo
I was honestly compelled by the mention of logic being second in line: you can always go back and have it make sense by changing just a few things to have your new circumstance make more sense.
And having the story reveal things as it goes along is a part of most of my favorite movies really. I guess I just never really thought of it in the context that the author of story had done for me.
Since reading just that chapter I’ve considered more than a few revisions to a story that I’ve been working on now for almost four years. I thought I knew what I wanted, and how to deliver it, but my means of delivery has already been changed more than a few times by this book. It holds true to the old saying, “less is more”, we as writers are supposed to hold things from are readers lest our writing seem flat and unmotivated.
As far as Adventures goes, I was morbidly unhappy with the ending punch in that chapter. I know what he’s saying is true, “luck, and timing” is the one most single important factor when it comes to screen plays. But it was still disheartening to hear that an obviously successful movie such as Butch would have had almost no chance due to common fads going on at the time. I guess that this is just one of the risks related to the fickle nature of Hollywood.
In reading Scene design I understood Scene objective and and act climax, it is something that is seen in almost every film quite obviously, but not so obvious is the law of diminishing returns. I didn't realize how quickly we become numb to certain emotions, like a heart wrenching scene is not heart wrenching by the third time. Wow. I found it funny that he said this isn't the case with sex scenes, this never gets old. I will remember not to beat a dead horse in my scripts. Mckee emphasizes new direction which would seem obvious but must be applied creatively so that it seems clever, this can be achieved with the set ups and pay offs. I liked Mckees examples with the two orphaned brothers that escape the orphanage, they back each other up through their whole ordeal, until one stabs the other in the back, the set up to this is the layering done in script, having one brother always feel inadequate to the other which results in his jealousy. I liked the way Mckee references movies to explain these concepts. What I am realizing is that these emotional transitions, set ups, climaxes and turning points is that they must be handled with great care and timed just perfectly to balance the dynamics of the story and characters in it.
As usual Story was an awesome and helpful read. I will definately be applying what I learned about setup and payoff in my work. I also thought it was interesting to read the strengths of Butch Cassidy as well as reading the weaknesses. It puts it in prospective that nothing you write will be perfect. Everything has its flaws and strenths.
In McKee’s chapter 10, I like how he views how a character makes choices while under pressure. It shows his true character, but makes a good enough situation to demonstrate true character? We find out that true choice is through dilemma and a choice between the lesser of the two evils, not necessary between evil and good.
I was looking forward to reading what Goldman thought what the strengths of the screenplay were. I agreed the beginning was excellent; when I was reading it I was captured in the story. I thought it was funny that he said he couldn’t see another western making it big any time soon. I guess it took a while, but Young Guns made in 1988 was popular; Tombstone in 1993 and 310 to Yuma in 2007 were also great western movies. Butch allowed comedy to seep in to westerns, all the westerns named above had a little bit of comedy in it.
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