Character based story telling

A guest speaker took us through character based story telling
The class gathered in the auditorium

Then we watched the movie The Searchers.
When it finished we were all taken through a dissection of the movies structure.

Don’t think I did very well with the dissection.
Honestly, I was pretty much drifting off watching this flick.
It was too slow and the acting was pretty melodramatic.
It was pretty hard just keeping interest up to the point where I could remember turning points during it’s playing and I pretty much flushed it out of my brain as soon as it was finished.
Should have taken notes while it was playing. Would have at least passed the time.
I get that it has clearly defined acts and goals, but after decades of evolution of film, I think there must be a point where hoary old chestnuts are laid to rest. There must have been a film from the last ten/twenty years that could serve as just as good an example?

Weirdly, I came out of the viewing bitching about how much I dislike Westerns and yet I’ve just spent two weeks riveted by Deadwood, and Star Wars is just a re-tooled Western.
Maybe it’s the dust I don’t like?


Notes from Character based story telling

Must create empathy with lead character
How do we create empathy?
• Victim of something
• Likeable
• Character in jeopardy
• Funny
• Powerful

Clearly defined endpoint and a high stakes goal are required.
The four great goals…
• To win
• To escape
• To stop something happening
• To retrieve something

Structure
Clearly defined end and timescale
• Set up
• Opportunity – set initial goal
• New situation
• The plane- visible end goal set
• Progress- obstacles accumulating
• Midpoint- hero is utterly committed with a point of no return
• Complication
• Major set back- all is lost
• The final push
• The climax, goal is achieved, successful or not, we must see protagonists new life
• Dénouement- new life being led (often very short)

Inciting incident must mirror climax but climax must be greater.