When a painter wants to capture an image on canvas from a photograph, he typically will divide the picture into quadrants in order to focus on the detail and maintain proper proportions. Filmmakers do something similar by dividing their story into 8 sections.
The question most often asked is “why 8?” when the story is based on a three-act structure. The answer comes from history. In the early days of the cinema, 20-minute reels were delivered to theaters with about 15 minutes worth of film on each reel. When the reel was played, a little dot in the top right corner of the film would appear toward the end of the reel to notify the projectionist it was time to switch to the next reel on a second projector, giving the audience a seamless uninterrupted experience.
The camera manufacturers built their equipment with 20-minute reels knowing the cinematographer would get about 15 minutes of story out of each reel. When television came along, the 15-minute standard was adopted and videotape was designed for about 15 minutes of programming on a 20-minute reel or cassette.
Directors and editors found themselves constantly working in 15-minute increments in order to tell their story, so they quickly adapted to the standard and learned how to tell stories incrementally through a series of sequences. Even television directors got on the bandwagon and tried to heighten the last scene on every reel to keep the audience riveted in hopes that they would continue watching after the commercials.
The typical 2-hour movie is therefore made up of 8 sections of 15 minutes each. Since dramatic screenplays are written in a way that one page equates to one minute of screen time, the average 2-hour movie is 110 pages in length. There is also an average of one scene per minute of screen time, which gives the screenwriter 12-15 scenes per sequence in order to tell the action plotline. A mixture of shorter scenes and sequences gives enough room to salt in an additional subplot or two.
Act 1 is comprised of two sequences. Act 2 is divided at the midpoint creating two sequences in Act 2A and two sequences in Act 2B. And, Act 3 is also made up of two sequences. In between each Act is a turning point that sends the main character in a different direction than expected, which catapults the viewer into the next segment of the story.
I recently wrote a coming of age story titled, “The Tree Jumper.” It’s about Jeremy, who is a geeky X-game enthusiast who falls in love with the head football cheerleader, Brianna. He struggles to understand the unconditional love that his blind grandmother teaches him that Brianna deserves, compared to the conditional love she receives from her quarterback and football MVP boyfriend.
Here is how the story unfolds in 8 major sequences:
S1: Jeremy uses his X-gaming skills to “soar” anonymously through the trees to save the MVP’s life during the football team’s team building rafting disaster.
S2: Jeremy becomes infatuated with Brianna and encourages her to enjoy “flying” in her cheerleading maneuvers, rather than being confined to the bottom of the pyramid by her fears.
S3: Jeremy learns that Brianna is dating the MVP and awkwardly tries to learn what it takes to court a girl so he can say and do the right things to win Brianna’s love away from her uncaring boyfriend.
S4: Chloe adores Jeremy so much that she agrees to help him win Brianna based on who he is, not old customs from days gone by.
S5: Jeremy becomes confident enough that he shares his love for Brianna publicly and brings the wrath of the MVP down on himself.
S6: The MVP and key players from his football team go out of their way to stop Jeremy from winning Brianna.
S7: Jeremy realizes that true unconditional love would free Brianna to choose whomever she desires to love and would honor her choice. He walks away so the MVP can continue his relationship with her.
S8: The MVP takes Brianna on a joy ride to help her break her fear of heights in his family Cessna and crashes in the trees hanging precariously over the gorge just out of the fire department’s reach. Only Jeremy, the tree jumper, can get to the plane and saves both Brianna and the MVP. Brianna has a blast “soaring” through the trees to safety and realizes that Jeremy’s love for her isn’t conditional like the MVP’s.
Each sequence breaks the story into manageable bites and is structured to fit the new 8-segment format for a movie of the week. It also establishes the proper parameters and durations for the three-act structure that feature films use. All because someone delivered 15 minutes worth of film on a 20-minute reel just shy of a hundred years ago.
The Motion Picture Association of America reduced the 63 qualifying movies for Best Foreign Film down to a short list of 9 pictures. This weekend they will further reduce it to the official 5 nominations. Special committees in New York and Los Angeles this weekend will cover the daunting task. The results will be announced on Tuesday.
The short list includes: (Clicking on the film title below will bring up an article by The Hollywood Reporter on the film)
Belgium: Bullhead
Canada: Monsieur Lazhar
Denmark: Superclasico
Germany: Pina
Iran: A Separation
Israel: Footnote
Morocco: Omar Killed Me
Poland: In Darkness
Taiwan: Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale
The 84th Academy Awards will be held Feb. 26 at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.
Predictions for the Best Actor Oscar seem to have overlooked Gary Oldman. His abilities to create incredible characters is surpassed by few, yet when he crafts the perfect secret agent who needs to be non-memorable, or disappear from a room like wallpaper, few recognize his ability because he does disappear.
In “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” Oldman plays just such a person with grace, dignity and accuracy. When he’s present in the room, few remember his presence. When he has to move with stealth, he does so without incident.
What amazed me by his performance was his perfect monologue. He didn’t drop a beat or reveal that he was an actor verbalizing his lines. He was so much caught up in his character that I only saw his character. There wasn’t even a momentary glitch in accent or movement. He was George Smiley.
I met Oldman on the set of The Dark Knight. My time with him only lasted about 30 seconds, but it was long enough to meet the real man and not the character of Lt. Jim Gordon that he constructed. The difference between him and his character was amazing. He knew exactly how to become the character that Christopher Nolan required and he performed it with excellence.
There are few master craftsmen left in Hollywood, as most actors seem to have come from the latest reality television program like Katherine McPhee’s “Shark Night in 3D.” It’s as if the likes of Dustin Hoffman and the Gary Oldman are becoming few and far between.
Let me just say outright, that Oldman deserves the Oscar for Best Acting this year, but first he has to be nominated – Not a small task. Regardless of his future notoriety, if you’re interested in seeing an incredible performance, check out Oldman’s George Smiley.
No matter what camp of writers you follow or attempt to emulate, all know that the opening scene in a feature film must be attention getting and set the tone for the audience. If it can also introduce the main character, you’re one step ahead, but the second scene is sufficient for an introduction.
Big box office screenwriters prefer to leave the main character’s introduction for a subsequent scene and focus on what some call the First Strike. Some great examples include J. J. Abram’s Star Trek reboot, which opens with an attack from a future century Nero who changes the course of history for Kirk and Spock. Typically in the James Bond franchise, the films open with a special 007 mission with cool effects and explosions that aren’t necessarily related to the story.
In the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the opening is of a man who receives a dried flower that causes him such great turmoil, he must do something different to bring an end to his pain. This scene doesn’t qualify as a First Strike, but rather an emotionally charged atmosphere, although some might argue that his misunderstanding of who is sending the dried flowers could be construed as a First Strike. The challenge for the screenwriter was in making the first scene a clear setup for an investigative thriller.
The screenwriter’s goal is to make sure he raises a question in the first scene that gives the audience a desire to find the answer as they watch the movie. This technique would be dressed in accordance with the story’s theme or genre. The audience expects to be taken to a place they’ve never been before, or experience something they haven’t seen.
If the main character is introduced in the scene, the audience expects to learn something special about the hero or what his typical day looks like. They desire to experience something with him that is either humorous, touching or formulated as a crisis – A shared emotion.
These techniques are designed to hook the audience into watching the entire movie and without it, the audience won’t suspend disbelief and enter the screenwriter’s world. It’s therefore important that the screenwriter touches on all the senses by addressing the following elements:
1. Location
2. Time
3. Mood
4. Tone
5. Style
6. Intent
7. Atmosphere
These important elements, coupled with raising the key universal question that drives the audience to seek the answer, will entertain and hook the audience long enough for the screenwriter to get through the needed backstory. It will also give the audience the confidence that they are watching a film worth their time.
I recently saw that a film festival was offering directing classes to its attending filmmakers. Directing is one of the positions on a production team that few people really understand. Many books have been written on the subject, but few address what really happens between the director and his actors.
The best way to understand directing is for me to put it in relationship terms. The actor, who is exposing great vulnerability during each shot, needs comfort and confidence from the director. She needs to understand and trust that he will protect her performance and make sure it is not bad.
To accomplish this one element of directing, he can call on a couple dozen techniques. The three most common are:
1. Say something to the actor before and after every take.
The actor is unable to see herself or know how to feel about her performance until she takes her cue from the director. He must give her some form of honest feedback. If she did a poor job, then he needs to carefully explain that what “he” attempted in that shot didn’t work and mention that he’d like to try something a bit different. Actors are used to performing variations, so this response would be acceptable.
2. Don’t ask the actor to repeat what she just did.
If the director tells the actor to redo what she just did, she won’t know what he is referring to. Actors do movement, exude emotions, speak dialog, and about a couple dozen other things that spring from the moment, their history, and listening carefully to the other actors. Instead, the director must affirm the previous performance and suggest some action verbs that might help draw out additional emotions or visuals.
3. Give the actor permission to do business.
If the timing is a bit off with the actor’s interaction with a prop or form of touch involving other actors, telling the actor to do something earlier pushes the actor out of the character and into a robotic nightmare. Instead of saying, “pick up the mirror earlier,” the director should affirm the moment and state, “It’s okay, if you feel led to pick up the hand mirror a bit earlier.” This direction keeps the focus on the character and not the prop.
When the actor is allowed to create their character and are continually managed with the above techniques, they are free to be more creative and find a performance that is unique and screen worthy. In fact, the once vulnerable actor might receive a film festival award for best acting, with few people knowing that it was the director who made sure her award winning performance made it to the screen with confidence.
The best part of directing well is the relationship built between the actor and director during the shoot. Both will be keeping a look out for another story worth their collaboration.
Yesterday I reviewed who my blog readers were and which of my blog entries were most read and responded to in 2011. I learned that my blog is followed in 138 countries with the greatest reader populations being in the United States, Philippines, and Canada.
1. Talented Collaboration
The most read post was “Talented Collaboration” about the need for Christian filmmakers to emulate secular filmmakers in the area of project collaboration.
2. Truth Be Told – A Fox TV Movie Review
The second most read post was “Truth Be Told – A Fox TV Movie Review”. The film was one of the movies funded by P&G Productions in an attempt to bring wholesome programing back to families.
3. Game Time: Tackling the Past – Review
“Game Time: Tackling the Past – Review” was the third most read post and included my interview with Catherine Hicks (“7th Heaven” and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”).
4. Top 100 Grossing Movies Objectify Women
“Top 100 Grossing Movies Objectify Women” came in fourth and quoted the latest statistics from Parents Television Council and a study done at the University of California.
5. Desperation and Frustration
And, the fifth most read post was “Desperation and Frustration” and covered how to develop a movie character using moments of desperation and frustration.
Since my readers have leaned more toward these types of posts, I’ll be adjusting what I write to meet the reader’s desires. In 2012, I will be shifting back from three posts a week to two. I will also, in keeping with what my readers are interested in, change the categories of posts to Filmmaking, Screenwriting and Reviews.
I am also changing my blog to better meet the needs of my readers, which will include a new look and the opportunity to obtain training materials, wholesome programs, and more interviews from the industry. So, please be patient with our dust as we construct the new site and make sure you tell your friends about us once the site launches. The URL will remain http://cjpowersonline.com
Happy New Year!
CJ
I’ve read numerous articles that point out how our society, with a plethora of social media, has become more isolated than ever before. The more we engage in social media, thinking that we are actually connecting with people, the more isolated we become.
If these comments are true, we are faced with a new requirement of our future leaders. The number one skill they may need to employ is inspiring people to become engaged in making a difference one step at a time. Persuading the common worker away from instant success and building toward longevity will not only become a requirement, but the only safeguard to protect the business.
Fighting this very skill will be a group of stockholders who are convinced that you can squeeze just a little more revenue out of the corporate fabric for this quarter, without a single care for the next. And, with some of the fat corporations out there, they are probably right. However, when the squeeze is put on, the upper levels of fat are seldom touched, as the cutbacks typically fall down the chain.
Unfortunately, what is good for workers and unity is many times the opposite of short-term quarterly results. But, the good news is that happy employees innovate, which can bring about the next growth trend for the business. Engaged employees will always create greater opportunities than anyone pushing for a quick quarterly result.
When I look back over history, I find that one person was behind every great innovation. I also see incredible corporations that pop up around innovators who can stabilize and streamline the ideas for consumption and profitable growth. So, if that is typically the case, why aren’t corporations spending time encouraging every employee to innovate?
The 2012 leader will be the one who trains his teams to make small innovations to streamline their departmental processes. Once that pattern develops, several of the employees will start to make creative suggestions that, if heeded, will lead to the next generation of products. This process will continue to grow until there is a think tank of individuals who brainstorm a decades worth of innovative products.
The 2012 leader will see this innate value in his people and will do everything in his power to encourage this type of growth. Not only will he be a thought leader, but also he will find ways to make his employees more important to the company than he is. Each person under his leadership will become more valuable than the corporation can afford to keep.
But he won’t be discouraged by it, as he will have built such a community that no one would want to leave. Only the corporations that don’t build value into their employees will see high turnover. After all, we all want to be a part of something incredible, something bigger than us – All while being a very important part of it.
Take a look at where you work. Does the top person in charge hold you in higher esteem than himself? Do they see more talent in you worth developing than you see in yourself? Or, do they drain you at every quarterly opportunity and never refill your emptiness?
The answer to these questions will tell you whether or not your leader is suited for 2012 and beyond, or just for this quarter. And, if its just for this quarter, you probably are viewed as a disposable product that the corporation consumes to move forward, rather than its future innovator.
At least you’ll know where you and your boss stands concerning the future and his perceived value of you.
