A script-editor called Syd Field read about 1500 scripts during 25 years, and noticed a certain receipt for what made a movie successful or not, and developed the Screenplay-formula. During the movie we watched we were told to look for how the screenplay-formula is used in the script. What is particular with the screenplay-formula is that all sections of the movie is of a particular length, and if you follow the correct direction 1 minute screen page means 1 minute screen time.
We were supposed to watch “3 Kings” but ended up watching an older movie from 1973, called “West world”. This was a science fiction movie that takes place somewhere in the future where it has been created a special high tech amusement park for rich people. They pay to get into RomanWorld, Medieval or Western World, and the people they meet there are human-looking robots how are programmed to respond positive to the guest, and the guests can kill them or involve with them romantically if they want.
ACT 1: approx. 30 min
Who? The main characters of the movie are two cowboys who travel together to this amusement-park where they have chosen to stay in Western World. We meet them first as they are sitting and talking together on the air plane about their expectations for the vacation. They seem like ordinary men who only seek a different and exciting holiday in WestWorld. Both are lawyers of profession, something that indicates that they have no extraordinary powers or skills. When we meet them they are talking about guns and gun belts and are discussing what they are going to do when they arrive in Western World, so we know which world they are going to.
Where? The setting is set somewhere in the future in reality world, where technology has reached as far as creating human robots to please the needs and pleasures of humans. It is created for rich people, as being something expensive and unique for them to experience. It’s a place for them to realise their material desires.
What? The story is about these two cowboys and their vacation in this futuristic amusement park and the problems that occur and it is also about how the robots works, the functions they have and what happens when everything does not works. It is clearly that something will happen between the human visitors in the world and the robots. The resorts slogan “where nothing can possibly go wrong” gives us an idea that something then will go wrong, and what happens when it does.
Plot Points:
The script formula also talks about plot points, points in the movie that turn the story around, makes it more interesting and pushes it forward. They will force the character into take action in some way. Plot point one also turns the movie into act two of the movie, from the set up to the confrontation, and the next plot point will further turn it from the confrontation into the resolution part. The plot points can also be more and rapidly in thriller movies, with a lot of smaller heights of drama, instead of fewer, big ones.
Plot point 1:
In the movie, the first plot point is when one of the honky tonk girl’s eyes suddenly opens wide and stiff, and the engineers later find out there is an increasingly malfunction with the robots. This gives us an idea that something is staring to go wrong.
Plot point 2:
When the remaining of the cowboys sees the bottle of acid and throws it in the face of the cowboy. He has found a weakness in the robots and can use it as a way of rending harmless the gunslinger.
Although I have pointed out these episodes as the plot points, there are also several small pitches (minor plot points) that keep up the tension, and indicate that the movie is of the thriller genre.
The five essential elements of the plot in “WestWorld”:
1. Believable lead character: The two cowboys, who are ordinary people travelling in to a high technological world, where little else seems ordinary.
2. Their urgent and difficult problem: The malfunctions of the robots
3. Their attempt to resolve the problem, which fails and make their situation even more desperate: The cowboy escapes on his horse out in the desert to escape the gunslinger. Takes up the fight with him but fails and escape further into Roman world and down into the underground tunnels.
4. The crisis, their last chance to win, the anticlimax: The face to face fight with the gunslinger down in the robot work shop/lab, when he ends up being faced with the gun pointed to his face.
5. The successful resolution: Fights off gunslinger by throwing acid into his face and finally destroys him as the robots stops working in the end.
Image sources:
http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/06/Westworld.jpg
http://www.daniellight.co.uk/uploaded_images/filmpara-776508.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment