The 5 Act Screenplay

This is crazy because technically it's 6 Acts - there's a teaser on the front people! Anyway, as I mentioned before I wasn't able to stretch to 6 proper acts. I'd have managed it certainly if I'd have stretched for a 60 minute Screenplay.

But, I'm actually really quite happy with what I've produced so far - a 43 minute Screenplay that does what I wanted it to do. Now, the story arc that I meant to cover in the first episode will have to be split over the first and second - ah, yes, a two-parter. Isn't that the best way to open a series? The best way to end it, with a nice big hook for the audience to sink their teeth into, and get that hook right through their cheek?

So, Dark Machine's pilot episode Everyman - part 1, is ready for production Mr. TV Exec! Anyone listening? Well, perhaps it's not great television... my problem has been that the story revolves around one main character - he's in a very unique position meaning that the entire story must be from his point of view. Couple that with the timelock situation I've put him in, that the pilot covers one day (okay Parts 1 and 2 now cover one day) and I've set out a very restrictive regimen for him to follow. This has meant that in order to keep the plot marginally tight, the themes consistent and the characters appropriately motivated, some of my scenes stretch that 3 minute barrier a bit. One goes for 5 minutes (a big no no), and even though I've split it up with a minute long premonition, I'm not sure I can get away with it.

But then, that raises the question about scene length. Surely the purpose of moderating your scene length is to make sure the audience don't get bored and feel continually pushed forward by the plot? In that case, maybe my premonition scenes, splitting up a longer scene, benefit the audience's interest.

I'll have to beg, borrow or steal from my tutor to get him to read the whole thing before the hand in date, but it's probably worth it to get his input on these pertinent questions - I e-mailed him to ask if I'd get penalised for going way over the page limit of the assignment (40 pages) and then barely scraped 43, s'funny how things quickly change.

In the meantime, here's the breakdown of the Acts:

• Teaser = 2 Minutes
• Act 1 = 5 Minutes [Cum = 7 Minutes]
• Act 2 = 7 Minutes [Cum = 14 Minutes]
• Act 3 = 7 Minutes [Cum = 21 Minutes]
• Act 4 = 10 Minutes [Cum = 31 Minutes]
• Act 5 = 12 Minutes [Cum = 43 Minutes]

On a plus note, each Act ends with (I believe) a sufficiently intriguing cliffhanger/hook for the next Act opening. Also, I've been able to stick my nadir, my protagonist's darkest moment right in the middle at 21 Minutes, right at the end of Act 3. Obviously, from there everything goes further wrong, but at least I've set everything up for that.

The question is do I fulfill the criteria of dramatic screenwriting? Do I:

1. Enter late, leave early
2. Provide bathos as well as pathos (these aren't Musketeers)
3. Ensure multi-actions
4. Play the characters appropriately off one another
5. Keep the plot progressing
6. Not overload the audience with boring exposition
7. Keep the characters resolute in their character types
8. Change scenes (as per McKee) from positive to negative, or negative to positive
9. Avoid "on the nose" dialogue
   

Only a break, a word with my tutor, and a return in a few weeks will answer those...

What Price... words?

But a few words it is! I have been struggling with my screenplay for the Screenplay module from quite some weeks now and haven't, until this weekend, felt at all happy with it. This is a two-tier upset:

1. The assessment asks for a 40 minute pilot episode for a proposed TV series, but I've wanted to push to 60 - go for the BBC length.
2. Dreaded writers block has been throttling me.

I think I have overcome both.

1. Length
Linda Thompson took us through one of her Casualty episodes, and the script was only 49 Minutes in length. So, I didn't bust a gut going for 60 minutes. I mean, the Doctor Who episode that was on Saturday night was barely over 50. I'm currently at 35 minutes, I've distinguished it into a Teaser and 4 Acts so far... so have between 5 and 10 more minutes for the final 5th Act. That would be fine except for the fact that I was originally looking to take up my tutor's suggestion of trying for a Teaser and then 6 Acts, which would have been fine for a 60 minute episode.

But, I have one month left to write, perfect, re-jig the pitch, write the blurbs for the other 7 episodes and write the 2,000 word essay on the creation and how I've used the taught skills - oiye! So, I've got to get the script finished earlier than later, which means sticking with a roughly 40 minute episode, pairing it back to a Teaser and 5 Acts, splitting the previous sections differently to accommodate that and then filling in all the acts with the left over minutes (between 5 and 10).

Whilst I agonize over how to do that - given I've trapped my audience in with the protagonist, have a timelock situation and follow him throughout his fairly short day - you should digest Linda Thompson's Act breakdown of her Casualty episode:

Act 1 - Prologue - 12 Minutes
Establishes the themes, the mirroring of the parent/child fighting between Tess and Sam, the DJ and Simon, and the wedding couple and their kids.

Turning Point = Ernie (bridegroom) is knocked unconscious during the fight at the wedding, leading to snowball of other injuries.

Act 2 - First Remedies - 5 Minutes (Cum: 17 Minutes)
The mirroring continues, but this time between Nina (paramedic) and Lydia's (bride) adventures. This sets up the major misunderstanding between Nina and Abs.

Turning Point = Simon (the DJ's son) is hit on the head whilst in the back of the DJ's van and has an epileptic fit.

Act 3 - Crucible of Truth - 11 Minutes (Cum: 28 Minutes)
Conflicts worsen as we head towards the midpoint.

Turning Points = Guppy feels boring and Eileen tells him life is too short; Ernie's head CT; Ruth gives Ernie's backstory about Ernie being sad at his wife's death and then going out on the town with lots of women (foreshadowing the development of an older folk syphilis story); Ernie has an itch he wants Abs to check out; Ernie tells Ruth (Ernie's daughter) she has to go (Lydia must do this with her son if her and Ernie are to ever work out their relationship).

Act 4 - The Battle - 5 Minutes (Cum: 33 Minutes)
Conflicts are out in the open, decisions have been made, and people are resolute, no matter how unhappy it makes them.

Turning Points = Abs diagnoses Ernie's syphilis, leading to Lydia walking out on him; Abs takes on Tess's shift and Tess goes off for a night on the town with the girls; Guppy is told to go enjoy himself.

Act 5 - Resolution - 16 Minutes (Cum: 49 Minutes)
Everything comes to a close... except of course for the hook!

Turning Points = Lydia gives up her son and reconciles with Ernie; Guppy lets his hair down; Abs and Nina split after the "Truth Game" (which is also the name of the episode); the DJ and his son reconcile also.

Hook = The end of each wrapped up episode should provide a hook that will give the audience something to consider and want to find out in the next week's episode = Guppy and Kelsie, being very drunk, kiss, giving the audience the expectation that a relationship will develop...

Apparently it doesn't, but the hook's there anyway.

For Writer's Block, I'll start a new post...

Five Stages of Loss, Death and Dying

I'm nipping in and out of Rachel Ballon's Breathing Life into your Characters at the moment, and came across a brief section on the five stages of death quoted from one Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (a psychiatrist no less). The idea of the book is to get the writer to engage with their emotions when they are writing so as to create characters with greater depth, provide the reader with more emotion and build better arcs of conflict and motivation for the characters. The five stages are:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

And, as Baron says, as with all rules there are exceptions - some people don't hit all the notes, some get stuck in a cycle. Just as with Syd Field's discussion on 3 Act Structures, as developed by Hauge, et al, we can look at the five stages as simply being another play on Beginning, Middle and End.

Screenwriting 103 - Vogler's Hero's Journey

Literary Professor Joseph Campbell came up with the Monomyth of the Hero's Journey in 1949 with his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. He said that essentially all stories are the same story. Just as Vladimir Propp analysed thousands of Fairy Tales, Campbell analysed stories from across the globe, looking at cross-culture tales and looking for what made them the same (amongst all the guff).

In 1992, Christopher Vogler took Campbell's idea and ran away with it. He was a Story Exectutive at the time for Disney, but he placed Campbell's paradigm against films, and the 3 Act Structure. By writing the Writer's Journey Vogler made Campbell's paradigm more accessible to a wider audience. In actual fact, like Hauge, Vogler considers that we really have a 4 Act Structure to the stories we tell (again by splitting up Act 2... in two).
But Vogler also took Campbell's Archetypes as well (a more comprehensive version of Hauge's 4 primary characters). However, whereas Hauge states that the characters remain as their chosen type, Vogler argues that character roles may shift, as if the characters are wearing masks, and change their face throughout the story, to assume different roles. In this way, characters serve different functions at different times. Take Han Solo, for example, at first he could be either friend or foe. He is the trickster, out for himself, and the protagonist, Luke Skywalker, doesn't know whether he's trust worthy.

Undertaking the Hero's Journey

It is often the case these days that although Vogler states we begin in the Ordinary World, it is the Extraordinary World in which the tale opens. Like a prologue, it is a quick way into the story, making a promise to the audience about what is to come. In Star Wars, we open in the extraordinary world of Space, a Space battle, Darth Vader, stolen plans, a Princess, Droids on the run... and only twenty minutes in do we meet Luke Skywalker in his ordinary world. Indiana Jones always opens in the extraordinary world. In the Matrix, we open on the Police and the Agents tracking down Trinity. She pulls some funky, world-defying moves and bends reality with her skills, all before we settle back into Neo's ordinary world.

Note: In the case of the Matrix, the beginning opens with a voiceover between Cypher and Trinity, in which Cypher questions Trinity on watching 'him'. So we are given a nugget, possibly about our coming protagonist.

So, using the Matrix:

The Ordinary World ... limited awareness of the problem
We find Neo asleep (a metaphor for his real world situation). Neo is at home, surrounded by his hacker stuff, and we know this is his OW. However, thanks to the prologue we know he's going to up against that EW.

Call To Adventure ... Increased awareness
The Matrix has several calls to adventure. Neo is told to follow the White Rabbit; Trinity tells him he is close to answering "What is the Matrix" and the phone call by Morpheus to save him from the agents, resulting in Neo clambering onto the scaffold and...

Refusing The Call ... Reluctance to Change
Despite Neo's motivation to free himself and learn, he can't commit himself to the danger of escape. He refuses to climb out of the building and onto the scaffold, and is caught by the agents.

Meeting with the Mentor ... Overcoming Reluctance
The Mentor, Morpheus. Mentor comes from the Greek word Menos, encompassing the meanings: Intention, Force, Purpose, Mind and Courage. Here Neo, receives his final call to adventure, and takes it.

Crossing the First Threshold ... Committing to Change
This can be either physical or mental, direct or subtle. In the case of the Matrix, Neo steps free of the construct and emerges from his battery-womb, and comes face-to-face with reality.

Tests, Allies, Enemies ... Experimenting with the First Change
Neo undergoes a number of tests, meeting new friends, and potential enemies (who is the traitor? Is there one?) and a number of trials, again in the Matrix seen physically as the fight with Morpheus, the Lady in Red and the Jump program. The relevance of these tests and meetings often represent foreshadowing of later events, providing the audience with enough information to accept later developments or character abilities.

Approaching the Innermost Cave ... Preparing for Big Change
Here we close on the midpoint of the film. Often this is a symbolic cave. In the Matrix, Morpheus leads Neo back into the construct and Neo confronts the life he had. They then progress to the Oracle, going into a block of flats, then an elevator, until, in a dark corridor, it is up to Neo to go through the door.

The Supreme Ordeal ... Attempting Big Change
This is the midpoint of the film. The moment of death and ressurection. Our protagonist, or group, must come up against their greatest ordeal so far, and seemingly fail against insurmountable odds. Morpheus is captured by the agents, Apoc and Switch die, Cypher has betrayed them... all seems lost.

Reward (Seizing the Sword) ... Consequences of the attempt
This is the moment of improvement and setback for the protagonist, the point at which our hero chooses to make their stand and commit to their needs and wants. Having been told by the Oracle that he must choose between his life and Morpheus's, Neo stops Tank from pulling the plug. Neo finally sees his own potential and the possibilities of what he could do. This bit ends - clearly - with "Lots of guns".

The Road Back ... Re-dedication to Change
Our intrepid hero, taking the symbolic sword with him, chooses to go forward, not back. In the case of the Matrix, Neo and Trinity enter the heavily-guarded building and kick ass, committing themselves to pursuing their ultimate goal.

Resurrection ... Final Attempt at Big Change
In the Matrix, this occurs in two parts. Firstly, Neo accepts what must be done, and fights Agent Smith. Secondly, after he makes a dash for the phone, Smith guns him down, and kills him (I hope I'm not ruining this for anyone - rhetorical, don't answer that). Through Trinity's kiss he is resurrected, and literally stops the bullets.

Return with the Elixir ... Final Mastery of the Problem
Neo returns to the construct at the very end of the film. He looks around him, his eyes are open (in much the same way Mayo looks back on himself at the beginning of An Officer and a Gentleman) and we see how far Neo has come. He is now Master of Both Worlds. He then uncovers his most potent ability yet - to fly.

Screenwriting 102 - Michael Hauge

Michael Hauge, like Syd Field, is one of these Screenplay Uber-gurus, making a mint from providing sturdy advice to writers with no concept of plotting (enter... me). What does he have to say that differs from Syd's?

Michael looks at turning points based upon the 3 Act Structure:

- http://www.screenplaymastery.com/structure.htm

Note 4 important things.

1. Each Act is now split in two with a Turning Point separating them (there are 5 Turning Points, according to Hauge)
2. We now have 6 subActs according to those Turning Points
3. The Turning Points have an alloted appearance based on a percentage of the whole size of the screenplay. This is important, since 25% of a 2 hour film (30 Minutes) is different from 25% of a 3 hour film (45 Minutes).
4. 2 Turning Points are set, as per beginning/ending of Acts 1, 2 and 3. 3 Turning Points have an estimated appearance schedule.
   

Read http://www.screenplaymastery.com/structure.htm for a greater overview from Hauge himself.

Screenwriting 101 - Syd Field

Syd Field is one of those pioneer guys, there at the beginning of something nice and structured. Having read through a gazillion scripts for Hollywood he happened upon the idea of the 3 Act Structure, by which all movies (ahem) are defined.

- http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/3act/

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Field

Field's most important contribution has been his articulation of the ideal "three act structure". In this structure, a film must begin with about half an hour of 'setup' information before the protagonist experiences a 'turning point' that gives him or her a goal that must be achieved. Approximately half the movie's running time must then be taken up with the protagonist's struggle to achieve his or her goal: this is the 'Confrontation' period. Field also refers, sometimes, to the 'Midpoint', a more subtle turning point that should happen in the middle (approximately at page 60 of a written screenplay) of the Confrontation, which is often an apparently devastating reversal of the protagonist's fortune. The final quarter of the film depicts a climactic struggle by the protagonist to finally achieve (or not achieve) his or her goal and the aftermath of this struggle.

Plot point 1 occurs at 30 minutes, Plot point 2, at 90 minutes. Simple!

That paradigm has undergone rigourous changes throughout its first inception, providing us with a slightly more flexible situation in which we have a set of demarcations that help better define the Acts and moreoever, the plotting of the story itself.

Now we have a Midpoint that separates Act 2 in two - actually giving us a 4 Act piece (but let's not worry too much about throwing that idea around). We have an Inciting Incident that occurs in Act 1 (could be the first 10 minutes, or at Plot Point 1). And at the end we have the Epilogue (in which loose threads may be tied up - how will our protagonist exist in their new world?) - it's important to keep in mind that this isn't rigid, and these points may be slid up and down the scale to fit the story being told. Famously, Callie Khouri decided against writing to Syd Field's formula because she found it too rigid, and yet when he released an analysis of four films that adhere to his structure, Callie's Thelma and Louise came first.

Then, we have two other unique events - the Pinches. These provide Act 2 with more punch. Things that help the plot further progress.

Finally, right at the front, is the 1st 10 Minutes. And why is this important? Because the writer needs to jam a whole loads of information in there so that the reader/audience can get an understanding of what's in store for them: characters, genre, plot, tone, etc.

This, thus, gives us, if you count the demarced zones, perhaps 9 Acts (crazy notion), but this helps with advert breaks!

Applying this to our first week's film: Thelma and Louise:

1. Act One - We meet the characters, setting up who they are and that this is a road/buddy movie.
2. Inciting Incident - Hal attempts to rape Thelma. Louise rescues Thelma through the threat of violence. They have a chance to walk away, but Hal antagonises Louise and she shoots him dead.
3. Plot Point 1 - Louise explains to Thelma that she's going to Mexico, that the cops won't believe that Hal was trying to rape Thelma and that Louise intervened, because they could have got away without shooting him. Louise feels she has no choice but to flee to Mexico and evade capture
4. Act Two - The situation gets darker, but our characters develop from the seeds sown in Act One. Their greatest challenges and the point of no return are coming.
5. Pinch 1 - Thelma and Louise meet JD, a young drifter, who catches Thelma's eye, and though Louise knows the last person they need to tag along is JD, she finally agrees to Thelma's wishes.
6. Midpoint - Having slept with JD, Thelma goes to brag to Louise (she's growing up), only for Louise to ask after the $6,500 (Louise's life savings) that her boyfriend had wired over. They go to the room. JD is gone and the money with him (Thelma is still a kid). Louise breaks down. All is lost and finally Thelma takes charge of the situation (perhaps she is growing up).
7. Pinch 2 - Captured by the cops, JD explains that Thelma and Louise are going to Mexico.
8. Plot Point 2 - Louise points out to Thelma that they have two things going for them. 1) The cops don't know where they are, and 2) The cops don't know where they're headed. The cops let slip to Louise on the phone that they know where she's going, and then, because she's on the phone too long, they manage to trace her call. Thelma and Louise make the decision to go for Mexico, rather than hand themselves in. This is their last chance to turn back.
9. Act Three - The journey is about to end. The girls are awake to the world, but Louise's act of shooting Hal in the inciting incident can't go unpunished...
10. Epilogue - Thelma and Louise doesn't lend itself to an epilogue. The frame fades out before their car begins to plummet (a happy ending? They have gone out on their own terms, after all), and there can be no further resolution. There is a brief montage of them together, setting out on the journey, however.