We're all fascinated by the experiences and the exploits of other people, particularly if we can identify with them, and we want to know what happens to them even moreso if the challenges they face are dangerous or exciting, we want to know how they react to events, and how they overcome challenges. This phenomenon is at the heart of storytelling, and is one of the essential ingredients of a great film. script writers job is to take this idea and transfer it into a movie script format. The process is very similar to that use when writing a novel. The main character experiences a series of challenging events, each more serious than the last. This series of events is known as the plot How the character reacts to and overcomes these events.
We call the story. The protagonist, or the hero changes profoundly inside as a result of facing and overcoming opposing challenges. This is known as the character arc. And the idea is central to 95% of all successful modern movies. The heroes most severe challenges should come from the villain or the antagonist. He she or it could be misguided, mindless, ignorant, or just plain evil.
The antagonists goal is directly opposite to the heroes. The antagonists can be human, a man or a woman. An animal, or an idea, or even just an effect of nature. Support characters can be either a foil, or almost an equal partner with the hero. equal partners should be physically different and have different personality traits and skills. So a successful movie reveals the internal changes that the main character goes through.
As a result of overcoming severe challenges. The end of the movie should bring a deeper understanding to the audience is the hidden message that the writer wants to convey. This essential element is part of the craft of storytelling. Storytelling is how we get the message across to the audience. It follows a certain theme within a genre. The genre is the classification of the movie.
Placing a movie in a category helps define a set of expectations in the minds of the audience about what they're about to see. For example, in the genre of science fiction, people generally expect to see futuristic seems, perhaps with robots, space battles, and aliens. Because genre is very broad, each can be split into sub genre, and in some cases, sub sub genres. The theme is the underlying meaning and lesson of the story. Without the theme running through and uniting the story parts, the movie would become little more than a series of events. The theme provides unity and links all the parts together is the message not the right wants to convey to the audience examples of common themes of friendship, fate, Destiny, brotherhood, freedom, innocence, justice, and resurrection.
The main characters previous life and history is revealed by use of dialogue in the first few minutes of the movie. dialogue in action is used, because telling the audience would be boring. It would also slow the movie down at a very critical point, the beginning. The beginning should grab the audience's attention. And it's best if the start is based in some kind of action. The back history can be partially revealed by dialogue during that action, and more fully as the first quarter of the movie develops.
In the next lecture, you'll learn how the classic story arc is adapted to script writing and how to structure a successful movie storyline.