May 30, 2024
- Aaron Sorkin
- Second draft, write the story over retype the whole thing
- Withhold information
- Build suspense
◦ from fam but not audience (in on it) - don’t just surprise
◦ from both audience & often family
- Build suspense
- Problem solving
- Arcs and sequences
- Plot twist – works like inevitable when they didnt see it coming
- Emotional misdirection
- Revelation
- Plot twist happy they happened
- Inevitable
- The twist not the point – more about its relationship with the characters arc
- Emotional revelation versus simple plot twist
- Watch movie with stopwatch, note when plot points happen
- Alfred Hitchcock
- explosion vs audience sees the time bomb
- Plotting =
- What information to withhold in the beginning
- What information to reveal
- In what order to reveal
- Intention and obstacle
- What the character does is what makes the character
- Stephen King
- Come with me and I’m going to show you something you’ve never seen before
- Lure of the forbidden
- Create an emotion in the audience
- mystery whodunit
- suspense – give the audience information
- wasted footage – no emotion to it
- The most precious commodity in the industry is a unique talented voice. if you can say it well people will notice
- Rian Johnson
- shotgun marketing, get it to everyone, who knows who your neighbor knows
- Character
- What does the character want?
- Consciously and unconsciously
- Put formidable obstacles in their way
- Give them moral choices
- Put character under pressure
- Back stories for readers/actors
- contradictions, e.g. antagonist loving with kids, brutal with others
- Character defining moments
- M Night Shyamalan
- Five drafts, down to where you say this line is bothering me
- Plot comes out of character organically
- Idea and angle
- Idea _ guy is the only one to survive a train crash and someone says you’re a real superhero
- Angle – not a good husband dad not doing what he’s supposed to do until he discovers himself
- Alternate – angle was this kid’s dad actually is a superhero
- Surprise, feature length twilight zone where something amazing happens in the end
- this is not the movie you thought you were seeing
- When you watch it the second time you should have that feeling that everything was inevitable
- Do you want to do revelation at the end of the movie
- Hearing gasps in the last five minutes of the movie
- Is that the tree angle to the pot gold? (whuhuh?)