Lesson 3

• Narrative
• Higher Education (degree)

Can you tell me what the core of this short film is? What it is about?

Hook the audience 

Hook your audience immediately. The beginnings become the most artful, the most challenging, the most critical moments of the film. It's the first note. How do you strike that strong note that invites your viewer into what you're going to do?

But how? Any ideas how this film/ script hooks the audience's attention?

Keep them watching

Keep them watching by holding back information. 

Storytelling telling is the art of making sure the audience wants to know what happens next. 

In other words, when you are writing/editing, provoke their interest and then cut away. 

Is there an arc in the story? How did the filmmakers' achieve this?

Three act structure - can anybody tell me what it is?

Three act structure is beginning, middle & end. 

Act 1. Setup

Act 2. Confrontation 

Act 3. Resolution

Inciting Incident

The inciting incident is an event that sets the hero on the journey that will occupy them throughout the narrative.

Confrontation

 is a clash between two opposing forces that creates the narrative thread for a story.

Conflict occurs when the main character struggles with either an external conflict or an internal conflict

Plot vs character 

External

He and his friends are racing against time trying to find the body of a dead boy who was killed by a train track. A gang of older boys are looking for the body too.

Internal

The story begins with Gordie grieving over the loss of his beloved elder brother. Gordie believes he is worthless and wishes he would have died instead of his elder brother.

The resolution

...is the end of the story. 

Important!!!

Aristotle in his Poetics, the best endings are both "surprising, yet inevitable".

Now it's your turn...

You will create a one/ten minute short film script with a beginning, middle and end. 

It will have an inciting incident, confrontation (exterior & interior) and resolution. 

Class exercise

Divide into pairs. 

Create a story with a beginning, middle, and end. 

Inciting incident, confrontation & resolution.