March 1, 2007

Film Screenplays - The Perfect Story?

Ever since cinema began Hollywood executives and screenwriters have been looking for the holy grail - a story structure that will work over and over again in different environments, across different genres and with different characters to lay the foundations for a successful screenplay. If you had this formula it would be like pure gold or cash in the bank.

As film-making is a business no one wants to lose money. No studio wants a flop. Every screen writer wants to increase their chance of their script acceptance. Imagine having a story model that would hook the audience every time and draw them into the film and tap into universal human emotions.

Over the years there have been a couple of main contenders which have been used by screenwriters. Surprisingly, the first was of Russian origin.

Vladimir Propp (1928) made an analysis of Russian folk tales and discovered that they shared certain common structural features regardless of the individual differences in terms of plot, setting or characters. He proposed that there were certain roles that were present in the characters - the hero, the villain, the false hero, the donor, the helper etc. - that were always present in the characters despite the different setting and plot. He also defined 31 narrative units that described action in the story. These units were enough to describe all the stories but not all the units are present although the units that are there follow a prescribed order.

The Proppian analysis or structure does have its limitations. It is difficult to apply such an analysis to non linear story structures where there are several storylines intermingling. Examples include Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and several of Robert Altman’s movies eg. Nashville, Short Cuts.

The second major contender is based on the work of Joseph Campbell whose book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” is about storytelling and mythology. This was interpreted by Christopher Vogler, a story evaluator for many motion picture studios, and morphed into “The Writer’s Journey” (1992).

“The Writer’s Journey” shows how a mythic story structure can be used to invest films with a powerful story. There are analyses of many different popular and successful films using the Writer’s Journey structure. And this book has had such an influence on the way Hollywood films are written. George Lucas admitted to using mythic story structures in writing the Star Wars films.

Again, there are more character roles (the hero, the mentor, threshold guardian, trickster etc.) and action narrative units ( ordinary world, call to adventure, refusal of the call, meeting with the mentor etc.) It is probably more sophisticated than the Propp model and can be more flexible in analyzing non linear stories. As the book points out, the model is not a recipe or cook book.

In the epilogue to the book, Vogler says:

the ultimate measure of a story’s success or excellence is not its compliance with any established patterns, but its lasting popularity and effect on the audience.To force a story to conform to a structural model is putting the the cart before the horse.It’s possible to write good stories that don’t exhibit every feature of the Hero’s (Writer’s) journey; in fact, it’s better if they don’t. people love to see familiar conventions and expectations defied creatively. A story can break all the “rules” and still touch universal human emotions.

Whilst there is no perfect story, these models provide genuine insights into what works well and what doesn’t.

Script Supervising and Film Continuity: Miller, Pat P N