Jun
29
POV: When to Shift?
Filed Under Free Content | Leave a Comment
Because the first shift of POV in a film may jolt the audience’s experience, it works best where this brief ‘disconnection’ doesn’t hurt the story: after a climax.
The start of Act Two is a good place to move to the antagonist’s POV.
We have just seen that our protagonist is ready to take on the main mission of the film. He knows what he is up against, he may even have a plan on how to approach it.
At the beginning of Act Two, you can immediately increase the stakes by creating dramatic irony. You show the protagonist only knows half of the truth and the antagonist is really a lot more powerful and the protagonist may be missing a crucial piece of information.
The shift can happen to any other character, exceptionally even to an omniscient POV. But the most powerful and most frequently used POV outside the protagonist will be that of the antagonist.
Almost always does this increase the stakes as you show how well the villain is prepared, how much stronger this character is than we (and the protagonist) believed and what he/she is capable of.
One of my favourite Act Two opening scenes is in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Roger Thornhill has to clear his name of the UN murder and he must find out why he is being mistaken for the mysterious Mr. Roger Kaplan.
At the opening of Act Two we are in a boardroom full of unknown faces. The audience’s instinctive reaction will be to find a character to empathise with, to latch on to. None such in this scene.
This is the Secret Service, discussing a fictitious agent, created by them as a decoy for the spies. Now Roger Thornhill has been identified by the spies as this imaginary agent, the secret’s service’s plan works better than hoped for.
Not only do we now know Thornhill’s predicament, we also realise he cannot expect any support from the government as confirmed in the last line of the scene, spoken by one of the agents:
SECRET AGENT
Goodbye, Mr. Thornhill, wherever you are.
This scene shows how powerful a shift of POV can be to reveal an important piece of information the protagonist doesn’t have.
Another favorite example of dramatic irony created by a shifting point of view is taken from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST and it constitutes the Mid Point Reversal.
McMurphy has just been on a fishing trip with his mates, sampling freedom outside the asylum.
The next scene shows the staff of the asylum discussing his fate, whether they should send him back to the work farm or keep him. McMurphy’s antagonist nurse Ratched drives the scene and the outcome is disastrous: he will stay in the asylum indefinitely.
See also:
Introduction to POV
Omniscient POV
Shifting POV
When to Shift?
POV in Ratatouille’s Deleted Scene
POV as Controller of Tone
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Jun
27
Arcs and Endings (2)
Filed Under Free Content | Leave a Comment
Should you write a happy ending?
Commercial common sense will tell you: yes, you should.
Robert McKee says: “Tell the truth.” (see the previous post)
McKee means: your story needs to reflect your worldview. If you contradict whatever you believe in for the sake of commerce, you will fail. During his Arthouse seminar, he gives the example of Bergman’s THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, where Bergman forced an ending upon the story in which he didn’t really believe. The story didn’t work, McKee says. Even the great Bergman couldn’t go against his instinct.
The discussion about happy endings is not exactly the same as the discussion about arcs. Protagonists without arcs have starred in films with tremendous success (see the reference to Mystery Man on Film in the previous post).
Although writers with a positive world may have more success in connecting with a large audience, I believe that talented and skilled screenwriters can create stories that work, irrespective of their worldview.
First-timers will have a harder time.
Here is the dilemma: to break in, you need to write something the market wants to see. Yet you’ll have a better chance if this first spec screenplay is written from the heart. You need to tell the truth.
My advice to beginning screenwriters: see how different genres allow to make different statements about the human condition without compromising the chances of success. Horror, crime and satire are darker genres than romance, adventure or kids movies.
Finally, to illustrate McKee’s point, below is a transcript of his introduction to THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY for British television.
______________________________________
Robert McKee: I saw my first Bergman film in Detroit, Michigan when I was 15. It was The Virgin Spring, a tale of revenge for rape and murder. Next came a comedy, Smiles of a Summer Night. After that Brink of Life, a social drama set in a maternity ward, Monika: A Teenage Love Story, Hour of the Wolf, a psycho-horror film. Bergman was like a one-man film studio bringing a fresh eye to many genres and by word of mouth filling cinemas everywhere. But then in the sixties he became a creature of the critics. They treated his films as intellectual crossword puzzles and drove the audience back behind a barricade of critic-speak � symbology, metaphysics, alienation � until it was impossible to watch a Bergman film without the feeling that you were taking an exam. And that�s where he stands today, on a pedestal, intimidating, distant, watched only by a tiny circle of cineastes. I think that over the years we forgot what the early audiences instinctively knew � above all else, Ingmar Bergman was a master storyteller.
Bergman�s difficult. Not to understand, but emotionally tough. He shines light into the darkest corners of life. He asks us to empathise with complex characters who, although very human, are not particularly loveable. Then he spins his stories over an emotional rollercoaster, taking us on a quest for the truth, truth that explodes the little lies that make life comfortable. To watch a Bergman film you have to be willing to invest all your humanity, to open yourself up, to care about life so much you want to know the truth though heaven may fall. It is not intellect Bergman demands so much as courage.
Bergman�s also difficult because he explains nothing. He doesn�t force his ideas into the mouths of his characters. Like Hollywood he tells stories visually, writes naturalistic dialogue and layers his meaning in the subtext. Unlike Hollywood his films are not tales of wish fulfilment, telling seductive lies about how everything works out for the best.
1a: The Film
�for now we see through a glass, darkly:
but then face to face; now I know in part;
but then I shall know even as also I am known
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Jun
5
Arcs and Endings (1)
Filed Under Free Content | Leave a Comment
The finest writing not only reveals true character,
but arcs or changes to that inner nature, for better or worse.
In 1998 McKee signed my first edition hardback of STORY. He wrote:
“To Karel: Tell the TRUTH!”
Ironically with the quote at the top of this article, McKee is not telling his own truth.(*)
He contradicts something he teaches in his art film seminar. On Ingmar Bergman’s THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY(**), McKee makes the point that Bergman
“set out to prove what he desperately wanted to believe and carefully designed this film as a rhetorical argument in dramatic form to make his point. But then his instincts, his integrity, his sense of truth overwhelmed his intellectual ambitions and somehow all the scenes that say the opposite of what he believed overwhelmed the other and as a result the film says that rather than love showing the way to happiness, the more likely fate is that you will end up alone, desperate, blinded with self deception.”
In other words:
If you don’t believe the happy ending, don’t write it.
If you don’t believe characters change in the real world, don’t make them in your screenplays. Tell the Truth.
You don’t have the option to choose between a-protag-with or a-protag-without arc. You must write what you believe in.
Bergman, one of the great storytellers of all time, tried to end THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY on an uplifting note.
He didn’t believe it. It didn’t work.
(*) Earlier this year, Mystery Man refered to the same quote before building his brilliant Case AGAINST Character Arcs. MM substantiates his point with numerous classic films.
(**) Full transcript of McKee’s television introduction to that movie in my next post.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
