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Film Structure
Notes

The Script / Screenplay
is probably the
single most important element
of every movie

What makes a film fit on that continuum?
 
  • Subject matter
  • Film language
  • Film structure
  • Our notion of where a film fits on that continuum may change over time

 

A. Aristotle's Poetics (4th century BC)
& Essay by Francis Fergusson

  • overarching plot, the central "action" (praxis)
     
    • Overarching Praxis of Oedipus: to find the killer of King Laius (motive: to free Thebes from its plague)
    • Overarching Praxis of the Iliad: "to deal with the anger of Achilles."
    • Overarching Praxis of the Odyssey: "to get home again."
  • Elements:
 
  • Unity of action -- everything that happens is a variant of the central action; (Archplot movies (see below) will always have a unity of action.
     
  • reversal of the situation - action veers around to its opposite -- [If there is a reversal of the situation, it always occurs deeply into the story; an abrupt event near the beginning that seems to change everything is a device to get the story rolling (see plot points / turning points below)
     
  • moment of recognition: passing from ignorance to knowledge
 
  • Aristotle: "The best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the Situation, as in Oedipus Rex" when Oedipus learns the answer he has been seeking throughout the play: who killed King Laius? 
  • Both reversal and recognition "turn upon surprises."
  • Pathos. Aristotle: "Fear and Pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece... He who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place....
  "Actions capable of this effect must happen between persons who are either friends or enemies or indifferent to one another. If an enemy kills an enemy, there is nothing to excite pity either in the act or the intention -- except so far as the suffering in itself is pitiful. So again with indifferent persons. But when the tragic incident occurs between those who are near or dear to one another -- if, for example, a brother kills, or intends to kill a brother, a son his father... these are the situations to be looked for by a poet."  (p.79)
  • The ending: "Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect heightened when at the same time, they follow as cause and effect." (p70)

  • "A perfect tragedy should ... be arranged not on the simple but on the complex plan. It should, moreover, imitate actions which excite pity and fear... It follows plainly, in the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity: for this moves neither pity nor fear; it merely shocks us. Nor, again, that of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity, for nothing can be more alien to the spirit of Tragedy: it possesses no single tragic quality; it neither satisfies the moral sense nor calls forth pity or fear. Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes -- that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty." (pp. 75-76)

 

 
B. Point of View:

  • just as the writer of a novel must adopt a point of view from which s/he -- and we -- observe the story, so too must a film. The major points of view in filmmaking are below. Each point of view provides a strong platform from which to tell the movie's story. In the hand of masters, each is powerful. What never works is to suddenly change the point of view part way through the movie. What does work is to make clear from the start which option the filmmaker has chosen, and stick with it.

  • In viewing a movie, we must decide which  point of view dominates this movie. For our purposes, a movie is told from one of the choices below, never two or more. If the authors fail to stick to one point of view, the movie suffers and we need to take note. (Example: Road to Perdition starts out as a first-person-narration but soon slips into an omnipotent point of view: viewers see incidents that the supposed narrator could never know about nor hear about. This lapse is just one of the reasons this film suffers on reviewing.)
 

  • omnipotent: can go anywhere, see anything, at any time; allows us to see multiple events and characters who are not at the moment interacting with each other.

  • over-the-shoulder of one character; can only see what the character sees.

  • first person narration; sometimes this point of view is used to justify cutting to someone or some event the character can't see right now. Our main character is then either speculating about that event or character(s) or else he learned later about some event that happened and is reporting what he heard. Frequently used in comedies.

C. Syd Field: Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting


(source visual: http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/3act/index.html)
 
3 Acts
Act 1: the setup. Approximately 30 minutes / 30 pages long

Time to set up the story, the characters, the situation, the dramatic premise, and also to establish the relationships between the main character  and the others in his or her world.

Usually we decide within 10 minutes if we like or dislike a movie

So, what is “the dramatic premise of the film”? –

Act 2, The Confrontation

Approximately 60 pages / 60 minutes long

Main character encounters obstacle after obstacle; what does the main character want to win, gain, get or achieve? What drives him/her forward through the action?

Without conflict, no character; without character, no action; without action, no story; without story, no screenplay

Act 3: The resolution

Resolution means solution

What is the solution of the screenplay? – does your main character live or die? Succeed or fail? Mary the man/woman? Win the race? Win the election? Leave her husband?

Act 3 resolves the story; it is NOT the ending

The ending is that specific scene, shot or sequence that ends the script; it is not the solution of the story

Plot points

An incident or event the hooks into the action and spins it around into another direction. – it moves the story forward

A script / movie can have many plot points

The pivotal ones are the ones that move us from act 1 to act 2, and then from act 2 to act 3

Does NOT have to be a dramatic moment, major scene or sequence. It can be a quiet moment OR and exciting action sequence

Other notes:

The first 10 minutes contain:

 the main character,

   the dramatic premise (what the story is about),

   and the dramatic situation (the circumstances surround the action).

In films, action is character in a good screenplay: what a person does is what he is -- ????? ambiguity of Casablanca

 

D. For a different and sometimes more inclusive view, see: Robert McKee: Archplot, Miniplot, Antiplot (pp 44-58),from Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting, 1997
 

Archplot examples

The Great Train Robbery(1904)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Greed (1924)
The Battleship Potemkin (1925)
M (1931)
La Grande Illusion (1937)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Brief Encounter (1945)
The Seven Samauri (1954)
Marty (1955)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
The Hustler (1961
A Space Odyssey (1968)
The Godfather Part ll (1974)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Thelma and Louise (1991)
Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Shine (1996)

 

 Miniplot examples

Nanook of the North (1922)
Zero de Conduite (1933)
Paisan (1946)
Wild Strawberries (1957)

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)
The Red Desert (1964)
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Tender Mercies (1983)
Paris, Texas (1984)
A River Runs Through It (1993)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Shall We Dance (1997)

 

 

 Antiplot examples

Un Chien Andalou (1928)
Blood of the Poet (1932)
The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film (1959)
Last Year at Marienbad (1960)
Persona (1966)
Weekend (1967)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
Koyaanisquatsi (1983)
Stranger than Paradise (1984)
After Hours (1985)
Wayne's World (1993)
Lost Highway (1997)
 
  Archplot: In an archplot movie, the filmmaker tells a single, central story, with one major protagonist (exception: Thelma and Louise, who together can be considered one central protagonist.)

Miniplot: In a miniplot movie, the filmmaker weaves a number of smaller stories, each with its own protagonist, to create a dynamic portrait of a specific society –

  • note that in a Miniplot film, the same questions about moment of recognition / moment of reversal / turning points from act 1 to 2 and from 2 to 3 apply: use these ideas for each miniplot

Antiplot: In an antiplot movie, the filmmaker weaves experiences with little or no plot lines.

Adaptation, by Spike Jonze, the hero (Nicolas Cage) struggles to write a script following Robert McKee’s ideas

Film Genres (list adapted from McKee's book)

 
  1. love Story
  2. horror
  3. modern epic (the individual vs. the state)
  4. western
  5. war
  6. maturation (coming of age)
  7. redemption (moral change of protagonist from bad to good)
  8. punitive (good guy turns bad and is punished)
  9. testing (willpower vs temptation)
  10. education (deep change of protagonist's view of life, people, or self)
  11. disillusionment (like above, but to the negative)
  12. comedy
  13. crime
  14. social drama (problems in society)
  15. action / adventure
  16. historical drama
  17. biography
  18. documentary (not listed by McKee)
  19. docu-drama
  20. mockumentary
  21. musical
  22. science fiction
  23. sports
  24. fantasy
  25. animation
  26. art film
E. Film Mood
  a approach to film structure and language from the point of view of Cognitive Psychology

from Film Structure and the Emotion System (Greg M. Smith):

"I argue that the primary emotive effect of film is to create mood. Generating brief, intense emotions often require an orienting state that asks us to interpret our surroundings in an emotional fashion. …

"To sustain a mood, we must experience occasional moments of emotion. Film must therefore provide the viewer with a periodic diet of brief emotional moments if it is to sustain a mood. Therefore, mood and emotion sustain each other. Mood encourages us to experience emotion, and experiencing emotion encourages us to continue in the present mood.

"Filmic cues that can provide emotional information include facial expression, figure movement, dialogue, vocal expression and tone, costume, sound, music, lighting, mise-en-scène, set design, editing, camera (angle, distance, movement), depth of field, character qualities and histories, and narrative situation. Each of these cues can play a part in creating a mood orientation or a stronger emotion.

"Films, however, cannot dependably rely on using single emotion cues. There is considerable variation among individual viewers’ emotion systems, and single cues might be received by some viewers and missed by others…..

Psycho Example

"As a brief and simple example of how film cluing works, let us examine how Alfred Hitchcock coordinated emotion cues in a familiar scene from Psycho. When Marion and Norman share a meal in Norman’s parlor, redundant cues begin to alert us that something is wrong with this young man and that we should begin to fear for Marion’s safety. [He’s leaving out why should we care about her safety? What did Hitchcock do to make us be so concerned?] Dialogue connects Marion (who eats “like a bird”) and the birds that Norman stuffed and placed on the wall, suggesting that perhaps Marion might receive the same fate as the birds. The narrative situation places Marion alone in the hotel with Norman, a man whom she only barely knows. Low angles make Norman more menacing, particularly when he is framed with the birds (lit from below to create elongated shadows). His stuttering, given the norm of perfect Hollywood diction, can be seen as a hint of deeper troubles. The close-up of Norman when he bitterly describes a madhouse, along with the orchestral music in a minor key, further alerts us that Norman is a man to be feared. The cues are not so foreground that we are certain Norman will do something evil, but they are coordinated enough to signal to the viewer that they should be fearful.

"Redundant clues collaborate to indicate to the viewer which emotional mood is called for. The viewer need not focus conscious attention on each of these elements. Some of these cues activate the associate network of the emotions, and this creates a low level of emotion. If a film provides a viewer with several redundant emotive cues, this increases the likelihood of moving the viewer toward a predispositionary state."

Note: the reference to “redundant clues” – these are elements of Film Language.