Frye Day, May 22. 2015

Writing

• all movies start with a writer, writing
• writers write screenplays (scripts) in basically TWO ways

1. assignment - sell your services to a company, a studio or a producer and you work on their idea, their IP (intellectual property) or their previously written script

1. “on spec” - this comes from the writer’s own ideas, the writer writes it first, without getting paid and tries to get people interested

The writer usually writes a treatment - story version in short. 

The writer gets a ton of notes from whomever

The writer goes to script and starts writing the movie the way it will look. 

How does he/she do that? 

He/she uses the Hero’s Quest

A Basic Screenplay Structure

First ten minutes

Pages 1 - 10

(one page of screenplay times out to one minute)

Setup - protagonist, the “pre-world”, the protag’s problem, the place and the core group around the protagonist

the idea of EVERY single protagonist from every movie is the same - each one has a terrible problem that prevents him/her from progressing and being a whole, happy person - most of the protagonists are outsiders who don’t fit in and don’t feel like they’re part of the society in which they are trapped

the pre-world and the problem are the same thing 

as we watch the lead character in his/her world, we start to accelerate to a BIG PROBLEM - this problem will occur in the first 20 minutes or so

Page 17 *or so* - after setting up the world, the char, the problem and the basica outlay of the story (one of the key things to establish is GENRE), there will be a shift that takes us into the “real movie” 

Genre is the code that you know that tells you what to expect and how the world works ie comedy, horror, romantic comedy, etc

The Problem is something that will force the hero to leave the pre-world and go out into the larger, more dangerous, darker, etc world - the hero’s quest - threshold

Best examples - Hogwarts, Mordor, Shield’s “world”

The problem drives the character - that OUTER QUEST has to be solved - 

Tied to this Outer quest is an INER QUEST that is the REAL point of the movie - the inner quest will be solved when the outer quest is solved because the outer quest will require a new version of the hero - a FIXED version

Pages 23 - 75 (or so) - ACT 2

This is the meat of the movie, the learning, the growing, the hunting, the figuring out, the most hilarious moments, the getting-used-to-it, etc

First half of this Act - an interesting, revealing, growing, changing, building as the hero works the new system in the new world - if it’s a murder mystery, there is good progress here

It leads to a MIDPOINT where things change

At the half way point, the hero is faced with a confrontation that stops the forward progress and lets the hero know that there is no going back - a terrible realization - uh oh, this is getting harder and darker and I may not be able to do this…

Second half of Act 2 (page 50 - 75) is a much darker, much more difficult, much more intense and sad series of events

It builds in intensity of darkness and trouble and negativity for the hero until about page 75, where we have THE LOW and that end of Act 2

THE LOW

this is that point in any movie where the hero has a terrible setback - the guy dumps the girl because he has another girlfriend, the hero’s best friend dies, the dad thinks his daughter is dead, the sidekick is captured, the buddy cop is killed, etc. 

The hero has to think that it’s all over - he/she can’t go on

The whole point of any movie is this sequence - this is where the hero has to get rid of the old self and accept the new self - the fixed self - the problem that the hero had in the very start has to be beaten internally by making the choice to change

The whole point is to question life and to decide to be the person you really are. 

This dark moment forces the hero to rise up and decide to move into the final confrontation - to go into ACT 3 

Page 78 - 100 - ACT 3

This is the rollercoaster of emotion and action and tension and release

There are chases and fight scenes and oneupmanship and huge stakes and things that cannot be undone and all that - modern movies have catastrophes in here - i.e. end of Man of Steel

Leads to the hero facing his/her worst fear and worst moment (usually epitomized by an evil character - aging Voldemort) and then they usually win. 

Once the hero wins, he/she has learned how to be him/herself and is triumphant and can now rejoin the world as a complete, fixed person

The outside comes in, often as the boss of the society - or as a fully functioning member of it