so, tell me your story.

Week 2

Conflict is the central feature of the screenplay:
•    man against man
•    man against environment (nature, mind-torturing, eg Panic Room)
•    man against self

It’s variation of sex, age, religion and culture which provide variety to conflict.

Conflict = change

•    Change is common to everyone.
•    Change is universal!!!
•    Seasons change
•    Lives change
•    EVERYTHING CHANGE!!!!!

As universal as change may be, people often resist it of fear of the unknown.
People must learn to cope with change if they want to survive.
Conflict means the interaction of opposing ideas, or wills, and creates the plot.

Plot CANNOT be constructed without confict
As your characters attempt to reach their goals, they come into confict with each other.
The end of the story nears when the protagonist and antagonist approach their goals and the conflict rises to generate maximum suspense and excitement.

Writing for an audience
- screenwriter= storyteller
•    The cinematic experience is not just made up of words you might put on paper, but the audiences’ emotional reaction to that information.
-    It’s people to people.
What is the writer’s purpose?
•    To connect:
o    Themselves
o    Their unique vision
o    The material
o    The drama
o    Others
Audiences want to be transported by a screenplay.

Where do you look for a story?
- inside yourself
- Everything to learn about other people is already in you.

Next week – 3rd person for the 50 word stories and reflections.

Week 3

Storytelling tool 1:

- Who am I talking about?
- Who is my character?
- What is he/she/it like it?
- What does he/she/it do?
- What happens to him/her/it in the story?

Observation

Mindless observation vs true observation
1) OBSERVE in a conscious way
2) DEVELOP the ability to SEE and RECORD people:
- their movements, physical characteristics,settings and places

- REFLECTION
-    PEOPLE-WATCH
-    Record (using your camera) any person you don’t know.
-    Reocrd oyur comments on the person’s physicality, action and your opinions on it (using Garage Band, etc)
-    Put it all together on iMovie,etc
-    Videos to be posted on the blog via youtube.

Exercise: AWARENESS LEVEL
- People rarely observe familiar people or things closely
- Most people pass through the day with 20% to 30% of awareness.

Week 4

According to Aristotle, tragedy…
•    creates a cause and effect chain clearly reveals what may happen
•    arouses not only pity but also fear, because members of this audience can imagine themselves within cause and effect chain

6 features

Plot (most important feature of the tragedy.

•    “the arrangement of incidents”
•    plot is not story! Is the way your arrange these incidents.

Story vs Plot
•    the story is what happens and plot is the way you arrange it.

Character (second important)
•    a character supports the plot.
•    Personal motivations are connected to the cause and effect chain
•    The protagonist is a tragedy should be renowned and prosperous, so his change can be from good to bad.
•    In the ideal tragedy, the protagonist will mistakenly bring abiut his own downfall-not because he is sinful or weak-but because he does not know enough.
•    This act of self-knowledge is called “hamartia”

Thought (comes after character)
- “where something is proved to be or not to be, a a general maxim is enunciated.”

*when you write a story there must always be a theme. Every single thought must be shown in the plot.

Diction
-    “the expression of the meaning in words” which are proper and appropriate to the plot, characters.

Melody
-    the musical element of the chorus.
-    Should be fully integrated into the play like actor. Choral odes should be “mere interludes,” but should contribute to the unity of the plot.

Spectacle
-    “the production of the spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet”
-    emotional spectacle must be there if not the story doesn’t happen.

Cause and effect
-    events that happened may be due to accident or coincidence. They may be particular to a specific
-    connects one another.
-    If there’s no cause and effect means there no relation to the film.
-    A good story needs it.
-
Unity of ACTION
1)    time – limits the supposed to the duration of a single day.
2)    Place – limits it to once general locality. Just one place where the action takes place.
3)    Action – single set of incidents that are related as cause and effect.
the action was the “vital principle and very soul of drama”.

What is Episodic Plot?
-    Simple put, think of William Shakespear’s works.
-    A sub plot within a plot
-    The example is the situation of King Lear and his daughters. (when his daughters tried to get King Lear’s wealth.
-    Point to note, Aristotle dislikes episodic plots.

WHY?
- he feels that the plot don’t link one another.
- They are disorganised in terms of physical structure
-  A-B-C (instead of AB)
- This is called “disunity”. The episodes does not continue like in PCK, the episodes very one another.

Definition of Kathasis
- Meaning then: Purification or cleansing
- Meaning now: The process of releasing, and thereby providing belief from strong on repressed emotions.
FYI: Aristotle gravitates towards literature for Kathasis because it allows events that could have on an ought to happen.

Definition of Mimesis
- Representation on imitation of the world in art and literature
- He likes it: People react to the acting which cnveys to them what characters feel, so that they may be able to relate to the characters and feel for them in return.
For e.g: The bangla show. Those who experience the feeling of the bangles would know how they feel.

Definition of Peripeteia
- It is the reversal of the situation in the plot of a tragedy.
- the change fortune for the hero should be an event that occurs contrary to audience’s expectations and therefore surprising.

Simple vs Complex Plot
Simple Plot:
Complex Plot: is a reversal of the dramatic situation or recognition unfold thru an internal logic and causality; they are not simply strings of episodes.
E.g Complex -  The Usual Suspects
Simple-

Conclusion
A complex plot is a reversal of a dramatic situation while a simple plot is just a “sensible” and has a predictable outcome.

Scriptwriter’s learnt:
-    to uses 6 elements; plot, character, theme, dialogue, music and spectacle.
-    Clichés are bad for scripts because they speak of laziness and the lack of imagination
-    Plot is more important than the character.

3 act structure
Advantage of working in three act structure is it breaks down the story and makes it more manageable. That means you don’t just have a mess of work.

1st act: set up
-    story begins with a goal-oriented character introduced at a point of crises
-    the character meets roadblocks produced by the plot and the antagonist

2nd act: confrontation
- action intensifies
- an event happens which forces the character to make his or her choice

3rd act: resolution
- level of effort rises to new heights. (son kills dad, next time, son must kill more person to keep audiences going)
- both plot and character is resolved.
- but the main character achieves or does not achieve his goal.

TEST IS NOT UNTIL WEEK 8.
Assignment for this week: VISUAL TRIGGER

Reflections –is plot more important  or post your people watch story and comment on it.

Week 5

Storytelling tool 2:
EXPERIENCE

-    A storyteller should be concerned with the potential of every experience.
-    Everything about you: where you were born, what food you eat,
-    Unique and irreplaceable
-    Many of your experiences are universal and translatable and can be used in any location.

TIPS
-    If you don’t know what to do with a character, make him yourself for awhile, see how he relates to the world around him.
-    See how he relates to the world he has been thrown into.
-    Plunder your own personal background
a) the things that happen to you as you grow up and the things that are currently happening
-    The stories may not be necessary be good stories.
-    Good stories have to work and re-worked.
-    Life is unpredictable
-    In a story, we can and must control events and sequences so that it give the appearance of like life .