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The Book That Is Making All Movies the Same
Bruce66423 writes "This Slate story explains how a 2005 book has led to all Hollywood movies following the same structure — to a depressing extent. From the article: '...Summer movies are often described as formulaic. But what few people know is that there is actually a formula—one that lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay. It’s as if a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster. The formula didn’t come from a mad scientist. Instead it came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.' I've always known we could be manipulated — but this provides a segment by segment, almost minute by minute, guide how to do it."
No wonder most movies seem like derivative things you can predict what will happen ... because they apparently are.
Still, keep making the superhero movies, and I'll keep going. =)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Good luck getting funding for a unique motion picture when the studios not only know what makes a profitable film, they can prove it. And because the average moviegoer could not care less, this is not going to change until the sun burns out. What makes matters worse is that each successive generation grows up watching these movies and will never know that there used to be something better -- which makes this approach even more profitable.
It was all part of my evil plot to destroy Hollywood!
And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you pesky meddling kids!
-- Blake Snyder
I am sorry but we people are not stupid even if someone in hollywood thinks that :) We know that these movies are bad but if you are teenager what do you do on friday evening ? You can't go to pub, you have problems with the ladies so going to movies with few friends is a nice way to to on a weekend. It actually doesn't matter much what is out there, when you are young, going to movies with friends is something you do. That there is actually people who thinks that they are manipulating us is actually very funny! :D Can you imagine that there is someone who doesn't know that young people likes explosions and good looking women ?
And those ripd trailers look like a steaming pile of bridges.
You really got to fuck up hard to ruin the dude.
But, but... I'm an artist! My work is creative and innovative, it can't be explained by some book!
Read a recent best-seller thriller or crime novel. It follows the same formula.
Sad, isn't it?
This was the book that inspired Micheal Bay's mother to conceive.
'Cause movies weren't formulaic before 2005.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure Essentially, the book described here strikes me as nothing more than a derivative of the accepted formula of ancient Greek drama. From Wikipedia: In his Poetics the Greek philosopher Aristotle put forth the idea that "A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end" (1450b27).[1] This three-part view of a plot structure (with a beginning, middle, and end – technically, the protasis, epitasis, and catastrophe) prevailed until the Roman drama critic Horace advocated a 5-act structure in his Ars Poetica: "Neue minor neu sit quinto productior actu fabula" (lines 189-190) ("A play should not be shorter or longer than five acts").[2] Renaissance dramatists revived the use of the 5-act structure. In 1863, around the time that playwrights like Henrik Ibsen were abandoning the 5-act structure and experimenting with 3 and 4-act plays, the German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag wrote Die Technik des Dramas, a definitive study of the 5-act dramatic structure, in which he laid out what has come to be known as Freytag's pyramid.[3] Under Freytag's pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and revelation/catastrophe.[4]
I'm part of an award-winning writer's group, and several of the members swear by this book. They follow it meticulously--and it isn't even the first to do this. The Warrior's Journey describes how Disney and Pixar created all their big masterpieces, and then takes that technique and applies it to novel writing. And then there's the Nora Roberts/James Patterson formulaic ghost-writers, plus the Harlequin series, any of Dan Brown's books; heck 90% of the entire fiction market follows a formula similar to Save The Cat. Formulaic writing is nothing new. Authors and screenwriters follow this like it's a religion--they cling to to the formula because they fervently believe it's the best chance they have of getting their work published. Fortunately, there are two mitigating factors that I've found: 1) a good idea is a good idea and even a plot-writing formula won't ruin it; and 2) good writing is good writing.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Formulaic isn't always bad. For example, TFA would have been better if it had followed a formula for conveying information in a shorter space, instead of droning on and on.
Overall the article reads like an author's lament that she doesn't have as much freedom as she used to (or wouldn't, if she were a screenplay writer). It's not like movies have gotten noticeably worse in the last 7 years......
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Me, I tired of "hollywood formula" a long, long time ago. Have been to a few art house films, but nothing mainstream. This is more or less proof I haven't missed anything interesting.
And superheroes? Please. I like comics well enough, but European ones (guess where I'm from) where each one isn't a verbatim copy of the previous or the next one, where the action isn't entirely formulaic, where the story is at least halfway believable, and so on.
But if you want to spend on re-doings of re-imaginings of re-boots of regurgitated old tripe... you keep on going, kid.
Formula for chic flicks:
1. Eye contact. They play coy for a while. He makes a buffoon of himself. She likes him, because he's a little shy.
2. Connection. She hides her innermost feelings from him, while he opens up.
3. Conflict. He either screws up somehow to make her unhappy, or she just can't get over some painful memory from her past.
4. Separation. The relationship falls apart, for whatever idiotic reason.
5. Resolution. Days, weeks or months later, they make contact. They either get together and everything's peachy, or they realize it was never meant to be and end up happy with someone else.
And, #3 always ALWAYS ends up being something so idiotic and petty that nobody with any kind of rational thought process can relate. This is called the estrogen phase.
Damn, I hate chic flicks.
sig: sauer
And how I know why. Thanks, Slashdot!
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I think the idiotic lack of originality that emanates from American 'creative' industries is no news.
For instance, there was Independence Day, so there were several cheap knockoffs in quick succession immediately afterwards. Movies with brutal rape scenes were in vogue for a while, again, the copycats. This summer -- superhero movies and a stack of copycats.
When you have the autistic American obsession with profit at the expense of fulfilling your primary mission well, you have a recipe for lack of innovation and general crappiness. Might explain why Americans can't make cars -- and worse yet, can't even manage to copy the Japanese effectively.
Several of these themes and structures are found in Shakespeare, and a few echo Greek tragedies. It's not just this one book, though it's convenient, I guess, that he broke it down for screenwriters rather than leaving it in the realm of Theater and Literature Liberal Arts classrooms.
The author of the article would probably get lost if he ever stumbled into TVtropes.org.
Thematic elements recur. Surprising absolutely no one. The originality is in where things buck trends or subvert expectations, or in how they execute classic themes in fresh and exciting ways.
Harry Potter and Star Wars weren't thrilling because the themes were original, they were fun because they brought a fresh and intriguing context to classic themes.
This is the method, but it's the sheer horror of marketing the stuff that makes it the bible.
“The closer you get to (or the farther you get from) your thirtieth birthday, the more likely you are to develop things like taste and discernment, which render you such an exhausting proposition in terms of selling a movie that, well, you might as well have a vagina.”
http://rocknerd.co.uk
One point for each beat present, with a bonus point for being in the right place
Then we can easily tell how generic the structure is...
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
Yes, there's also a formula for the perfect +5 Slashdot post too.
Always start by "I know this will get modded down into oblivion, but..."
Then bash Google, Apple, Facebook, or Microsoft, no matter what the subject is.
Make a car analogy.
Br a grmmer Nazi.
Insinuate all /. are virgins who live in their parents' basement.
Use Simpsons, TBBT, Star Wars/Trek references whenever possible.
Link to XKCD.
Label someone's facts as opinions simply because the guy didn't post a Wikipedia link, and say "oh, don't let facts get in the way of your biased argument."
I can hardly wait for the Hollywood blockbuster movie version of this book.
I'm curious if the Christian Bale Batman movies follow that formula. They felt pretty original to me.
Of course after their success, I'm sure other people decided to copy them.
the syfy channel B-movies all seem to be alot a like each other.
Who noticed the essay following the formula before the end when it pointed it out? I didn't notice until the "all is lost" section, but perhaps more astute readers saw the pattern earlier.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Looking at the article, and the actual structure as it seems to have been laid out, it basically seems like its just an application of the hero's journey to screenplays, with some additional timing help. This isn't really something new, although the hard-line 'here's-exactly-when-each-thing-should-happen' might be. You never really know though -- the hero's journey is incredibly precise as well. The main reason that this structure is used is because it tends to work -- it gives you a nice plot that will typically make a modicum of logical sense, with opportunities for various emotional states. Honestly, it just seems like this is a standard story structure, and for movies that don't want to tell an experimental story, this structure works fine for them.
Unless you have a collection of older films
I thought one of the selling points of Netflix and foreign counterparts was older films.
http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936
I'm sure someone else did it earlier that him too.
Most depressing is the way game designers use the same language, concepts and guides when created AAA games. They don't even think there's a problem being so obvious about it, willing to discuss how well they've following their chosen established story structure.
If you've ever wondered why all blockbuster games seem so damn familiar I bet they have a copy of the same guide. Except they spend less on competent screen writers and more on slapping lipstick on the same old pig.
...someone I know in the industry told me that the quintessential Hollywood story line was "Boy meets girl, girl gets boy into pickle, boy gets pickle into girl."
All literature (and for the purposes of this post, movies are a form of literature) can be broken down into formulas. The book in this article breaks down plot structure, but there is also a formula for the actual plot. As to the plot structure there are only two choices, the three act plot, or the five act plot. The three act plot structure is the beginning, the middle, and the end. In this structure, the beginning introduces the characters and sets the stage for what happens. The middle is where the main conflict of the plot plays out. The end is where the conflict reaches its resolution. The five act plot is a more granular approach to the same way of viewing story-telling (and screen writers would probably do well to adopt the five act approach, at least for a few years).
As to plots, there have been several studies which show that there are only seven plots. Every story falls into one of these seven plots.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No, I'm pretty sure that Joseph Campbell published The Hero With A Thousand Faces in 1959, and Christopher Vogler wrote the seven page summary that was the closest thing to a book that anyone in Hollywood had ever read in 1985.
So what explans JJ Abrams latest products that seem to be random action scenes edited together, is this the next evolution? Who needs a complex plot or any kind of plot at all?
Despite Pacific Rim having nearly the same plot arc as Independence Day, it was bloody amazing because it delivered on the giant robots fighting giant monsters. Sometimes formula isn't bad if the subject matter is uncommon and handled well. The big problem with Hollywood is they often manage to do neither and rarely manage to do both.
Snyder's book implies there's ONE way to plot a film. The danger is that this sort of story arc does not fit well with the way females do their heroing. (In short, boys go away to have an exciting time and the story is about them, girls stay at home and deal with whatever has to be dealt with and the story is about how people deal with issues.) A good example of the boy's story is the Wizard of Oz. A good example of the girl's way is the TV series Dad's Army. (There's a reason why the first is a film and the second TV. Notice of course the main protagonists are 'wrong-sex')
So if you follow 'Save the cat!' you'll miss out on lots of interesting plots with powerful characters. I've got an essay on the subject at http://vulpeculox.net/writing/HeroismForGirls.pdf for anyone who wants to compare and contrast.
Wow, I love the way that piece drops a bomb at the end. I am definitely going to work this formula into my toxicology thesis which is due in the next few months. I cannot fail!
If you are teenager what do you do on friday evening ? ... That there is actually people who thinks that they are manipulating us is actually very funny! :D Can you imagine that there is someone who doesn't know that young people likes explosions and good looking women ?
I think this says it all....
Personally, I thought people had given up doing the "movie thing" as a social escape for the most part... but I guess the current set of teens is getting reeled back into it again, at least in some places. Maybe there's hope for the video arcade after all, if these are the criteria for entertainment.
.. and it's called "William Shakespeare."
Protagonist? Antagonist? Complication in the third act? All the "Save the Cat!.." author did was write a Dummies version.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
When you need to put forty million butts into paying seats just to make back your investment, it's going to be a hard sell to stray from what everyone knows works. Great films, in this world, can't really be blockbusters -they are almost mutually exclusive because of the high bar that modern blockbusters have set for effects and top shelf talent. The rigid form of the blockbuster precludes exploration of more interesting styles.
In a way, it actually helps set those who do stray apart that much more, and makes the experience that much more refreshing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Call this sort of thing "best practices"?
Mindless repetition of a formula?
Reply with "who cares" to any story featuring any bit of technology that doesn't personally concern you, and enjoy being modded up by everyone else who isn't personally concerned with the issue. Finally, bask in the warm afterglow of having offered absolutely nothing of value to anyone -- yet being rewarded for it.
That's slashdot in a nutshell.
"We can appeal to screenwriters to buck the trend. But why would they? The formula is incredibly useful"
..
And soul destroying as any decent writer who sold his soul to Hollywood would testify to. The screenwriters haven't stopped writing movies for grown-ups, they've moved to television. The best stuff being written currently is on television, "The Americans", "Breaking Bad", "True Blood", "Boardwalk Empire", "Mad Men", "The Big Bang Theory", "The Sopranos"
AccountKiller
Every fight scene ever: Protagonist beaten within an inch of his life only to suddenly find enough energy to rise up and defeat arch-enemy. Only after defeating villain does he discover fractured skull/pelvis, punctured lungs, ruptured spleen, missing testicle and multiple bruises on brain. Somehow still has enough energy to drag self to leading lady and collapse at her feet.
Hollywood needs a reboot. Only a few movies come out every decade which are worth $15 bucks to see.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
perhaps Shakespeare is the pioneer of this... with his comedy, history & tragedy plays.. e.g. Romeo Juliet
If you watch any Bollywood film today (or last 20-30 years for that matter), it follows similar plot like Romeo Juliet
I think we get the joke . . .
Reminds me of the pornography generating computers in 1984 that took the same few plots and edited them together over and over.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Chick: a baby chicken, or a young woman
Chic: Pronounced like "sheek". French for "fashionable."
This follows the same music formula for the I V vi IV chord progression in most popular music.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
"In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s"
Sounds like a one trick pony to me.
Privacy is terrorism.
I've always considered Agile (and other buzzword laden management theologies) to be a way to herd cats into "manageable" boxes. Because the PHBs don't actually "get" creative production (you can't just sit down and demand "innovation", but if you can, you'll be a very wealthy man), they have to try and fit everything into some sort of 'metric driven analysis'. They have to try and "prove" they're being productive to their bosses and their bosses' bosses, etc. Can't really blame them, but honestly, how many programmers/developers do you know actually *like* this shit?
People who create things terrify management. One, because their entire livelihood depends upon the output of the creatives, the idea that the creatives hold this much power over them (as mere employees) is anathema to social order. They have to come up with all sorts of weird ways to convince themselves that they're getting everything they can from their workers. They don't understand how to craft/create a story (or program). So they have to have a checklist that they can run through and assure themselves that, why yes, if all of these checkboxes are complete, if everything falls on the correct page, then they've successfully "managed" a project through to be presented to management for their "attaboys" (and fat bonus check). And typically, the writers get shit on (talk about manager taking your best ideas.. Read Goldman's "Adventures in the Screen Trade".. Writers are the least respected people in Hollywood, for the most part, even though without them we'd have no Hollywood). Now think about your burn-down charts and your user stories and your daily stand-ups...
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Cop Show: follow the wrong lead - commercial - follow the wrong lead - commercial - follow the wrong lead - commercial - arrest the bad guy.
Doctor Show: wrong diagnosis - commercial - wrong diagnosis - commercial - wrong diagnosis - commercial - save the patient.
Home Improvement Show: find problem that changes the project - commercial - find problem that changes the project - commercial - find problem that changes the project - commercial - finish the project.
Home Buying Show: show perfect home that's over budget - commercial - show crappy home that's in budget - commercial - show good-enough home that's in budget - commercial - completely random decision by homebuyer.
.
.
.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
"Mon dernier souffle" - 'My last breath' in English. ;-)
He explains what he 'learned' while being on a sponsorship in Hollywood. He wrote this story around 1980. He had but acquired one item on top of what he had already known and done before he arrived: Setting up a geneology of all American movies. One night someone dropped in and told him of a new movie with a totally unexpected, novel and revolutionary line. He wanted to hear of the first minutes, and then he said, he'd be able to construct the rest. And that actually worked!
Actually, Bunuel was a trainee of Charly Chaplin in the thirties. I always consider it the wrong way round in who should have been the person to be the supervisor.
I mean, you can complain all you want about formulaic content but the reality is society has regressed into an idiotic stupor that allows this type of movie making to succeed.
Look at CSI and all its derivatives. Its the SAME EXACT SHOW week after week. Then look at ALL the crime investigation shows and realize, its the SAME PLOT over and over again. Yet these shows consistently rank in the top 10 because viewers do not want to be challenged with new plot devices. Its why any even remotely unique show is usually cancelled because the idiot masses don't like watching it because its not like CSI or some other derivative tripe.
All movies are coming out the same? Realize that the major demographic for movies are teenagers and early 20 somethings and you understand that this demographic has not yet developed the maturity or patience for investing any thinking power into changing their derivative lifestyles. Eat, sleep, party, fuck, get a tattoo, is about all they can handle so taking 90 minutes out of their "busy" schedule can't be over-complicated by something that challenges or inspires an actual original thought.
So you can blame Hollywood all you want but the reality is that Hollywood makes a product, and the product only sells if consumers want the product, and consumers want this derivative bullshit, period.
We are firmly in the era of the Stupocalypse. Mankind has entered a zombie state where originality, rational thought and common sense are thrown out the window and replaced with a need for immediate entitled gratification with a minimum investment of effort.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
An editorial in the New York Times (March 1, 1998) was entitled, How To Manufacture a Best-Seller. It told the story of John Baldwin, a 53-year-old carpenter and a would-be writer, who had struggled for years to make a living from writing. He determined to become famous and rich overnight by writing a best-selling medical thriller. He studied five or six best thrillers. After 7 years' research he found 10 steps to producing a best-selling medical novel. He honed it with some Hollywood writers and agents, and here is the 10-step formula he used:
The hero is an expert.
The villain is an expert.
You must watch all the villain's activities over his shoulder.
The hero has a team of experts behind him, working in various fields.
Two or more on the team must fall in love.
Two or more on the team must die.
The villain must turn his attention from his initial goal to the team.
The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel.
All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group.
If the story bogs down, just kill somebody.
George R.R. Martin must have read this article!
"I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
No discussion of this seminal work yet ??!
It's happened to Music, it's happened to film and it's happening to books.
Discover the formula for the perfect release and kill your industry. Eventually, the independents will take over, the Dinosaurs will die!
Simple
Derived from Superman (1978 Richard Donner version)
1) Main character is established.
2) He gets super powers.
3) He has fun showing them off for the first time.
4) He runs into his first super-villian and has trouble.
5) He exercises his awesomeness and overcomes whatever was the problem in 4).
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
As to plots, there have been several studies which show that there are only seven plots. Every story falls into one of these seven plots.
Those studies are wrong. Recent developments in Hipsterology have shown that there are only two plots: the ever-populer "Shit happens" and the little-used art-house plot, "Shit doesn't happen."
I understand why I never go to summer blockbusters.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
"If comedy and drama aren't your bag, and you still want to be a lazy writer, you can do what most action-movie writers do, i.e., practically nothing. Apparently there is only one action script in the world and it was written years ago. You know the one. It goes like this:
- A crime fighter doesn't "follow the rules."
- His boss gets mad at him for not following the rules.
- An evil bad guy makes the crime fighter mad, generally by killing or kidnapping a family member.
- The crime fighter's boss assigns a seemingly incompetent partner.
- Lots of things blow up, people get shot, cars crash.
- The crime fighter and the evil bad guy have a showdown in a large industrial complex that features steam coming out of various pipes and chains that hang from the ceiling.
- The crime fighter kills every member of the evil bad guy's gang, starting with the ones who had the least screen time.
- The crime fighter kills the evil bad guy's invincible assassin but gets beaten up and wounded in the process.
- The crime fighter kills the evil bad guy in a clever way using materials found in the large industrial complex (acid, wrecking ball, hot steam, power cables, etc.)
- The crime fighter falls in love with whoever insulted him the most during the so-called "plot".
- Everyone seems inexplicably happy despite hundreds of close friends, coworkers, and family members getting slain in the past hour.
All you need to do is change some of the names and details. For example, the large industrial complex could be extra-steamy. There is no limit to how creative the story can become."
- Scott Adams, The Way of the Weasel
Sounds to me like somebody's upset they can't get their screenplay made into a movie.
Wah!
There is this book that is way older than 2005, called the writer's journey. Basically every screenwriter has read this. It describes a 12 part story structure, which sadly has been followed exactly in the order and events by every movie in the last 15 years. However this book in the first chapters warn against using this exact structure, and that you should mix it up and surprise the audience by breaking its structure.
Interestingly enough, TV has been moving away from this fixed structure and are instead following dramatica's method. dramatica is not so much a book, but a method, there is actually a computer program that helps you set up the structure. The basic idea is to pick a 'theme' and then attack the theme from 4 different angles in different ways. The 4 ways are: the main plot, the personal situation of the hero, how the people around deal with it, and how the world deal with it.
Look at an episode of House for example: You have the patient or their family that deals with something (most times not the disease), then you have house that is dealing with the same thing in his personal live. Then you have the other doctors who are dealing with it. And often Cuddy overs the world view about.
I find dramatica's approach a bit more healthy. As long as you don't hold to strict to its structure either, at least it offers like 4000 different structures.
Have they actually read the book? have they also actually read the companion.. man blake would turn in his grave if he heard the crap that is being told..
If you have actually read the book (which is really an excellent book), it helps people on structure and how to solve particular problems, and it does so by refering to already made movies..
His method has nothing to do with crappy movies or standards, his book is just as formulatic as Syd Fields screenwriting books, which is also THE standard in screenwriting classes..
These big companies that put out these movies aren't willing to risk putting money into a film that doesn't follow this formula. Maybe a little bit of money, but not enough to make it into a big blockbuster. These movies take investments, and do you really blame them for not accepting a huge risk?
in a 110-minute movie. The rest of the Snyder playbook is there, too: a story-starting catalyst midway through the first act, a shootout at the midpoint that ups the ante, an all-is-lost moment—including a death—between the 75- and 80-minute mark,
and later
It’s enough to make you wonder: Is overreliance on Snyder’s story formula killing movies? If so, then all is lost. The major studios increasingly rely on ...
So if the all-is-lost moment is supposed to happen 68-73% of the way through the flick, and the movie industry is at that point now, then a little math tells us that the movie industry should be wrapping up sometime from 2054 to 2066.
I can't wait for the "dark night of the soul" the industry will have at the end of this decade. That's always my favorite part.
You don't KNOW what's going to happen in them. Seriously- there is no "chekov's" gun in Bollywood films. You may see 3 guns on the wall and only 1 of them will be used. You may have an entire subplot which is just interesting but doesn't mean go anywhere.
It's fantastic. When I go to a hollywood film- I can often guess the ending within the first 30 minutes. And it LOWERS the value I place on hollywood films by a couple bucks. I might pay 9-10 bucks to see a genuinely interesting surprising film. But only about 6 to 7 bucks for a mildly entertaining predictable film with a manipulative soundtrack (they tell you how to feel about the actions taken basically-- making the same action "good" or "bad" based on the accompanying soundtrack.)
I noticed several years ago that R rated films which are not "sex" films (like betty blue) have their first nude scene at 40 minutes into the movie (sometimes 39, sometimes 41 but you get the idea). Probably sets unrealistic expectations for dating people.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
And impetus to support your local filmmaker (i.e. Michael Fredianelli, Ray Medved, and Gwyneth Price) assuming they don't read the same book.
"I Die Alone"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2750746/
"Waiting"
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/waiting--11
"Return to Nowhere"
http://www.returntonowheremovie.com/
mfwright@batnet.com
On can go back to Edward Bernays and his book Propaganda (Later called Public Relations) and see that the manipulation has gone on for some time. And the free mind films people now have State of Mind where pubic sources are woven together to attempt to tell a tale of the 'state of the art' in such control attempts.
Why the heck is this tagged "C?" I mean, sure the author was offering pointers in a step-by-step formula, but I hardly think that counts...
I haven't read the book, but TFA had a sidebar that showed the bones of the book. Link:
http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html
Now, I just went and saw Pacific Rim last night. (I enjoyed it and I recommend it; if you read Slashdot there is a good chance you will like it. It's not perfect of course, but it's fun.)
So, let's consider how Pacific Rim plays out against that sidebar. This is not possible without SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. I'm keeping them light and hand-wavy so they aren't too horrible as SPOILERS but you have been warned.
Do not read past this point unless you want SPOILERS for Pacific Rim.
Opening Image, Theme is Stated, Set Up (first ten pages): montage showing back story, including protagonist and his brother.
Catalyst: Tragic event ends protagonist's career as a giant robot pilot.
Debate: Commanding officer and protagonist argue about protagonist returning as a pilot.
Break Into Act II: protagonist goes to Hong Kong and sees the new base and meets everyone.
B-story: We meet the two eccentric science guys.
Fun and Games: Protagonist and Japanese chick first fail and then succeed. Just as predicted in the "beats" chart, lots of trailer-friendly moments from this section and ends with a big victory.
Midpoint: "A and B stories cross" The two eccentric science guys undergo a risky procedure and successfully gain critical information, as the remaining giant robots embark on a desperate plan. "New information is revealed that raises the stakes"... um, yeah, we find out that the situation is as high-stakes as it could possibly be. Arguably the dialog "the plan won't work" might count as a "false defeat" in this beats structure.
Bad Guys Close In: the remaining giant robots are losing the fight against the kaiju creatures.
All Is Lost: This one is a bit of a weaker match, because the movie doesn't really milk the "how are we ever going to solve this". But there is a major sacrifice involving death of important characters.
Dark Night of the Soul: Another weak match, as the movie doesn't milk the sacrifice. But, the section of the movie just after "Fun and Games" really had a Dark Night of the Soul quality to it: somber dialog, father/son emotion-choked moments, "you'll die if you get into that" and the father/daughter emotion-choked moments. So, I think there was a Dark Night of the Soul, but they didn't stick it in the canonical spot from the outline.
Break into Act III: the quirky scientists tell how to successfully get past the major obstacle.
Finale: The protagonist successfully saves the day. Again an approximate match to the beats of the book, as this section is much shorter in Pacific Rim than the page counts would suggest.
Final image: We see the protagonist and the Japanese chick hugging. We see the "attack" clocks being stopped and set to zero. As the credits roll we see some sort of statue of giant robots fighting kaiju creatures.
So, review that and decide for yourself whether the Save the Cat book was involved in the scriptwriting for Pacific Rim. I suspect it was... the most compelling part for me was, when I was watching, I said "oh wow, right on schedule here's the B story" and then "oh wow, right on schedule, the A and B stories just intersected". The three-act structure is clear and matched up quite well.
I suspect that this Save the Cat book provides a common language in Hollywood the way the Gang of Four "Software Patterns" provide a common language among software developers. Maybe not all scriptwriters adhere strictly to the suggested page numbers from the beats breakdown (I sure hope they don't) but I think they probably discuss things in terms like "Okay, here we have the Dark Night of the Soul."
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I have 2 of his book and it's really true. It is a very formulaic approach.
I thought you were saying "drinking game".
Works fine for me. My kids love "The Princess Bride", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure", "Back to the Future", "Star Wars", etc.
Heh. You know, I'm fond of all of the movies on that list, but I think you need to compare each one to the beat sheet and see how far they deviate from it. Almost every single one hits all the elements, and most of them follow them in order. (I can't remember the plot of "Bill & Ted" clearly enough to verify it.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
But this is an opportunity. It means even nerds like us can make movies now!
Scripts are just crazy mad libs, and we can fill in the blanks with whatever we want to.
"_____________!
(exclamation)
he said ________ as he jumped into his convertible
(adjective)
______ and drove off with his
(noun)
__________ wife."
(adjective)
"UBUNTU! He said FREELY as he jumped into his convertible HYBRID and drove off with his IMAGINARY wife."
The article suggests that the formula is used for books to. Do the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books follow this formula? If not, is that one of the reasons the movie adaptions (outside of the sets and costumes) have been so awful? (well, the Hobbit wasn't that bad, but that weird orc dedicated to killing off Thorin's family feels like it was added for no reason other than some formula).
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Murphy: I can't believe that just fucking happened!
Rocco: Is it dead?
later...
Rocco: I killed your cat, you druggie bitch.
Donna: God.
Rayvie: What?
Donna: Why?
Rocco: I thought it would bring closure to our relationship.
But they may have something, Boondock Saints was not a hit in theaters, falls in "cult classic" bin. Did make millions on rentals/dvd sales so the studio green lighted the crappy sequel.
This guy didn't invent anything. As other have so aptly stated, act and plot structure has been discussed as far back as Aristotle.
This guy just packaged it in a way that other found intelligible.
The real demons here are that all the majors are owned by gigantic corporations, where they were once owned and run by people whom actually liked movies.
Now the studios have 'Producers' with MBAs and no related movie knowledge making the big decisions.
They are all about controlling and reducing Risk, to maximize profit, period.
May they all burn in hell.
Let's everybody calm down. Nearly all drama follows a very small set of dramatic structures. Just like there are one act plays, movies tend to follow a three act structure. That's all this book is.
Just because there is a structure does not mean it's all derivative. The idea is that the story lives on top of the structure. It isn't the structure itself. I see people citing movies like "Back to the Future" as examples that do not follow this structure. It does. Almost everything does. I took classes at one of these types of places for about two years. One thing we used to do was analyze films and try to find their structure. Amazingly, even the most seemingly unstructured movies followed the three act structure. There are exceptions, but they are rare. One notable exception might be the movie "I am curious yellow." But it's also highly experimental.
Or to put it another way: structure is the bones, story is the skin.
> I've always known we could be manipulated
Pretty much true, but perhaps the recent string of formulaic high ticket blockbuster duds are a sign that the formula isn't working anymore. One can only hope.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The reason it's a great film is that it has a vulnerable/confused girl becoming feisty and then at the end still lonely. That's the Monomyth writ large.
The Hobbit should have stuck with the same forumla as LOTR.
It threw me way off, not only because the forumla changed, but the style of writing/humor as well. I nearly walked out of the theater when Boffer did that "whirlwind" move that Hagar did in final fight knocking orcs off the bridge like pinballs, right before Gandalf cut the Great Goblin's belly open and reminisce of JarJar's Gungan Mayer said "that'll do it".
The only way I was able to accept it was by considering it as an emblleshed tall-tale being retold by an older Bilbo. It pisses me off to no end that characters like JarJar and his Gungan counterparts are becoming more and more common.
It's my belief that almost every time you put out a film that people really enjoy, you're going to be able to milk at least 1 sequel out of it that gets good theater attendance. (That's why Dispicable Me 2 did so well. An awful lot of people left the first one happy and hoping to see more of the "minions" and other characters.)
All too often, that sequel is rather weak, but it seems to me that most people will STILL give those situations one final chance, if a "part 3" comes out, hoping for some sort of redemption. (Take Iron Man for example.... People loved the first one. Second one was relatively weak. But almost everyone gave the 3rd. one a chance, confident there was enough substance to the whole thing to pull off a winner -- and by and large, it seems they did.)
Once Hollywood stretches it beyond 3 movies, I think they're just aiming for a die-hard audience they know will keep going back. Concerns over making truly "good" movies are out the window at that point, because it ceases to matter. They just think they have a niche audience that's going to keep watching as long as they keep up the formula, and they're betting that niche is big enough to make the whole thing profitable. (EG. All the "Chucky" horror movies, or the Fast and the Furious series.)
So maybe that is why this summer there are so many mega-flops.... They all follow this books formula - straight into the red and oblivion... Now wait, that was also a sucky movie wasn't it? I didn't see that one either... I have better things to do with the $12 bucks than sit and watch rehashed plots over and over again. The only thing that differs is what blows up an who does it. Zero plot...
You say "movies haven't really changed that much over time" -- but I don't know that I can agree with that.
One of the big changes I've noticed is all of the CGI, which I think often hurts a movie more than it helps.
It reminds me of the classic problem in video production of amateurs over-using the zoom/telephoto feature. Great feature to have, but easy to over-use it and ruin the quality of the production.
In modern movies, it feels like the pros just call for CGI whenever they have a complicated idea that would be difficult to film in a traditional way -- and the results are a mixed bag. Just a few examples that come to mind would be the "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe" series of movies -- where I thought some of the scenes with the tiger and other animals just looked distracting. There was something "not quite right" about all of it, that just looked like one object was super-imposed over the rest of the footage. Some of the scenes in the most recent 3 Star Wars movies had the same problem. (I still remember a scene that particularly bothered me where the robots were dodging things and running along a factory conveyor belt, and it just reeked of "fake"!)
The other thing I dislike are all of the remakes.... often making a full-length movie out of what was just a rather campy, relatively low-budget TV series to start with. This stuff can be mildly amusing, but it never ranks above "I'll watch it some time after I can rent it inexpensively." Talk about predictable. You practically *know* they're going to try to surprise you with a cameo appearance of at least one of the actors/actresses from the original. And how far astray can they go from what you expected the characters to do in all the old shows you remember? I know this isn't a brand new thing for Hollywood -- but they've basically failed at it for decades now and show no sign of changing course. (Remember how awful the movie versions were of cartoons they decided to remake like Popeye, or The Flintstones?) But lately we've had to suffer through remakes of everything from Starsky and Hutch to The A-Team. This doesn't seem like it was much of an issue back in the 1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's or even 60's.
Honestly, I don't really think the "golden age of movies" centers around what I watched when I was 8-18. There were a FEW classics I saw when I was that age, certainly. But some of the best movies I've ever seen are ones I watched more recently, often recommended to me online by someone who shared my general interest in movies, or on some sort of list of "favorite movies" someone posted.
Some days it seems like they don't ever try any more -- and with a lot of movies about a week or so after you hear about it, you also start hearing about something which is based on almost exactly the same premise which will also be out soon.
Honestly, if they hadn't put the title in the trailers, I couldn't have told them apart.
The KLF described a formula for pop music in a book called The Manual in which the majority of pop music follows the pattern: intro, verse 1, chorus, verse 2, breakdown (guitar solo, drum solo, rapping or anything else), double chorus, exit.
It seems logical that a formula may exist for films. It is only contradicted by the assertion that there are seven basic plots.
Actually, *this* book by Joseph Campbell is probably shaped modern screenwriting the most (given how often it's quoted and rehashed in all the other screenwriting books).
Check William Goldman (successful Hollywood screenwriter: e.g. "Butch Cassidy", "All the President's Men", "The Princess Bride", "Marathon Man", "Misery", "Stepford Wives"). His premise is just the opposite: no one in Hollywood knows what they are doing because there is no consistent formula.