The Megahit Movies Ezine 1 November 1 2004 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * Story Design: Creating Popular Movies * The Megahit Movies Book 2004 Edition * RMS Story & Screenplay Consultations * LA Screenwriting Expo 3 November 5-7 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Story Design: Creating Popular Movies Each month this ezine will contain excerpts from the new 2004 edition of The Megahit Movies book. The Fundamental Question Hollywood has produced thousands of feature films, but only a few have received megahit status and generated more than $250 million in North American box office receipts. What is it about these films that made them so successful? Story Design for Creating Popular Hollywood Movies This book is designed to show a screenwriter how to create an original script that has the potential of becoming a popular Hollywood movie. Screenwriters reading this book should want to create commercially successful movies. We start our story development process with a discussion of what it means to be a Popular Hollywood Movie. Popularity is defined by different measures: U.S. Domestic Box-Office Grosses, Worldwide Box-Office Grosses, Academy Awards, and WGA Screenwriting Awards. Every film critic also has his own choice for The Best Movie of the Year, as do the filmmakers who attend the Sundance Film Festival and the IFP Independent Spirit Awards. A writer should be certain about which type of popularity he wants to achieve. From the start of the screenwriting process, the writer should understand that he is writing for a specific audience. This is made clear when we discuss genres and the standard categories of scripts as classified by Hollywood producers and agents. Genres segment the audience into groups of people who enjoy different types of stories. The total potential audience is partitioned into market segments. Some of the questions that a screenwriter should answer are: Why do I want to write a screenplay? Do I want to create a financially successful or a critically acclaimed screenplay? Who is my intended audience? The first thing that a writer should create is the concept of the story. Will it be a high concept story? Next, he should create a logline for the movie: a single sentence description of the main character and the goal that the character is trying to achieve. Most popular movies are designed around three main characters: the protagonist, the love interest, and the antagonist, as well as a unique object that they are trying to possess. Since only one character can eventually obtain the unique object, this structure guarantees conflict throughout the story. The climax scene is a life-and-death struggle between the protagonist and the antagonist for the unique object. A writer should try to imagine the movie poster that will be used to market the film to a global audience. Study the poster designs of the current popular movies. Within these images are the core elements of the story: protagonist, antagonist, love interest, and an image which defines the genre of the movie. A movie that hopes to become popular will need to have such a poster. Given these core elements, we then go on to discuss the psychology of the audience. The writer must understand the importance of creating empathy in the audience for the protagonist and love interest, while simultaneously generating enmity (fear and hatred) for the antagonist. This is essential for creating mass-market popular Hollywood movies. The classic Hollywood Three-Act Structure is used to this effect. We explicate this structure in terms of the plotting of the story that will create an emotionally satisfying experience for the audience. The key to creating popular and commercially successful Hollywood movies is to learn how to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience. The writer should create an empathy scene for the protagonist and love interest and an enmity scene for the antagonist. The writer should also cast the three primary characters (protagonist, antagonist, and love interest) with currently popular Hollywood actors. This will make the characters easier to write and also will eventually help in marketing the finished screenplay to Hollywood producers. We next focus on creating three-dimensional characters by analyzing character personality types, motivation, personal objectives, emotional decisions, character relationships, ethical values and codes of behavior, character arcs and transformations, and supporting characters. The screenwriter should write a description for the protagonist supporter, who should be humorous and likeable and the antagonist supporter, who should be vicious and hateful. They should also describe the motivation, personal objective, and transformation for each of the five primary characters of their story: protagonist, antagonist, love interest, protagonist supporter, and antagonist supporter. Hollywood recognizes the importance of supporting roles by giving Academy Awards each year to the Best Supporting Actor and Actress. Now that we have created the basic elements of our story, a unique object that is desired by the protagonist and antagonist and the key supporting characters, we will then show how to make the story unpredictable. This is done by creating subgoals to the protagonist's primary objective which conclude as plot twists. Plot twists result when the expected consequence of completing a subgoal does not happen once that subgoal is achieved. An example of this can be found in the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy believes that the Wizard will get her back home (her primary objective). Her first major subgoal is to get to the Emerald City to see the Wizard. She overcomes many obstacles to achieve this subgoal. When she meets the Wizard, he does not help her go home, but instead assigns her the task of getting him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. This is a plot twist. Examples of many other plot twists from popular Hollywood movies will be discussed in this book. Creating expectations in the audience with the intention of having these expectations not fulfilled is the key to creating surprise and unpredictability. Essential to creating excitement is conflict that produces jeopardy for the protagonist and his supporters. These conflicts are generated by the obstacles and problems that the protagonist must solve in order to achieve the subgoals and primary objective. Jeopardy producing obstacles can be the result of self-conflicts, enemies, relatives, friends, lovers, physical objects, the natural world, and the supernatural world. We review many examples of each type of obstacle found in popular movies. The writer will also come to understand that in each scene of the script, there should be an obstacle or problem that the characters in the story must overcome. This ensures that there will be conflict and excitement in each scene. We next discuss the difference between a plot and a story, events and actions, the inciting event, subplots, and different ways that a writer can organize a plot. At this stage, the writer will be prepared to design a Prelude, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and Resolution structure for their story. They should be able to write a plot outline that contains forty (40) major obstacles; one for each scene. A story is different from a plot. While a plot is a series of events that constitute the movie, the story is the series of actions and decisions the protagonist makes in the movie. Story is the sphere in which human values, virtues, vices, and community ideals interact and come into the foreground of the movie. The screenwriter must choose virtues for their protagonist and vices for their antagonist. They should write scenes showing the protagonist exhibiting this virtue when confronting an obstacle and a scene showing the antagonist displaying a vice when dealing with a different obstacle or problem. An example of this is the way that Bruce Wayne and Jack Napier court Vickie Vale in Batman, or the way that Indiana Jones and the sadistic Nazi negotiate with Marion for the headpiece of the staff of Ra in Raiders of the Lost Ark. We next discuss the design of scenes, concentrating on scene actions, point-of-attack, crisis, confrontation, climax, resolution, exposition scenes, transition scenes, opening scenes, protagonist introduction, antagonist introduction, climax scenes, and resolution scenes. The writer should create a 3x5 index card (40 cards) for each scene that includes the major obstacle (or problem), crisis, confrontation, climax, and the emotional reactions of the characters in the scene. These elements constitute the essential moments or beats of the scene. From these index cards the writer should create a detailed plot outline. A full length screenplay can have between 40 and 60 scenes, each between 3 to 2 minutes in length. We then discuss connecting scenes together into sequences. Each sequence should be designed to have a specific emotional effect on the audience. We will also analyze ways of entertaining the audience and conveying information during exposition scenes. We will discuss how "Chase" sequences and "Ticking Clocks" sequences can generate suspense. These types of sequences are especially important in the third act of the story because they are used to drive the audience into an emotional frenzy before the final climax scene. Since the key to creating a popular Hollywood movie is to create an emotionally satisfying experience for the audience, it is critical for a writer to understand how to create situations that will elicit specific emotions in the audience. We discuss the relationship of emotion to story design, the Cognitive Theory of Emotions, techniques to heighten the intensity of emotional reactions, and ways to elicit specific emotional reactions to events, actions, and objects. Emotions also form the subtext underlying powerful dialogue. To entertain the audience is to make them laugh while vicariously experiencing situations of jeopardy. Eliciting emotions in the audience is very important when creating humorous scenes. We discuss the techniques used in creating humorous dialogue, humorous situations, and humorous characters. Ultimately, the writer must be clear on the theme of the story. What is the movie really about? What does it have to say about the human condition? What will the members of the audience learn about life and human relationships? Does the story have universal appeal? Does the narration rely on mythic structures? How does the theme of this movie compare with the themes found in many of the megahit movies? We next present the Standard Screenplay Format that Hollywood agents, producers, and Studio Executives expect to see in a script. Not having your script correctly formatted is the fastest way for it to get rejected by readers. The formatting rules are simple, but extremely critical, if the writer wants to be considered a professional screenwriter. Next we discuss Strategies for Selling a Screenplay.Topics include: the Screenwriting Business; Hollywood Studio Development Deals; Referrals from Family & Friends; Greenlighters- Players-Champions; Casting Bankable Actors; Packaging Bankable Directors; High Concepts & Loglines; Creating Extraordinary Worlds; Pitching Stories & PitchFests; Query Letters, Synopsis, and Treatments; Agents, Managers, & Lawyers; Legal Issues for Screenwriters; Screenwriting Contests; Screenwriting Consultants; Screenwriting Conferences; Write the Novel Version of the Script. The new world of digital moviemaking offers alternative options to screenwriters. We explore this by discussing Independent Digital Video Movie Production; Internet Digital Broadband Distribution; and DVD Movie Production & Distribution. The screenwriter should be able to write a query letter. Then prepare a five minute verbal pitch of the story, based on the content of the query letter. They should be able to write a one page synopsis of their story based on the plot outline. The writer can expand their detailed plot outline into a screenplay format outline before they start writing the first draft screenplay of their story. Information about The Megahit Movies Hollywood Story Design Workshops is included at the end of the book. These workshops will be valuable to screenwriters who would like help further developing their original stories into commercial scripts. The Megahit Movies book is designed for screenwriters, directors, and producers who want to create commercially successful movies. We hope the reader finds this book to be a useful tool in achieving that objective. The Megahit Movies - http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9suv8a44.0.y69tp9n6.zb985y67.40637&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.TheMegahitMovies.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Megahit Movies Book 2004 Edition The new 525+ page 2004 edition analyzes The Megahit Movies, those films which have generated more than $250 million in North American Box Office receipts. It presents principles of story construction that can be used to develop popular movies by providing an analysis of cinematic techniques. It also offers stimulating ideas that can be helpful in the creative process. The book is designed for writers, directors and producers who want to create commercially successful films. The fundamentals of dramatic structure, the human emotions, and the construction of humorous characters and situations are explained, with examples drawn from some of the most popular motion pictures Hollywood has ever produced. The Foreword to the book is written by Christopher Lockhart, Executive Story Editor, International Creative Management (ICM) in which he discusses what Hollywood Producers, Agents and Studios are looking for when reading screenplays. Analysis of recent mega-blockbuster movies such as SHREK 2, SPIDER-MAN 2, HARRY POTTER, BRUCE ALMIGHTY, MATRIX TRILOGY, FINDING NEMO, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and THE LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING The book is available for purchase at www.TheMegahitMovies.com, www.Amazon.com and www.WritersStore.com Purchase The Megahit Movies Book 2004 Edition - http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9suv8a44.0.ru8vq8n6.zb985y67.40637&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.themegahitmovies.com%2Fordermeg.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ RMS Story & Screenplay Consultations A personal consultation on your original screenplay! Once you purchase this package, you will be permitted to submit a 120 page original screenplay. Between 3 to 5 pages of written comments about the screenplay will be emailed to you within 14 days after the receipt of the script by U.S. Priority Mail. Once you have read my comments, I will schedule a one-hour chat session to further discuss your script. Start developing your script into a feature screenplay that can be made into a popular Hollywood movie! Also included is The Megahit Movies Book 525+ pages of information about the structure of popular films. RMS Screenplay Consultations - http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=9suv8a44.0.9uxt57n6.zb985y67.40637&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.TheMegahitMovies.com%2FScriptConsult.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LA Screenwriting Expo 3 November 5-7 Richard Michaels Stefanik will be giving a Story Design: Creating Popular Hollywood Movies lecture at the LA Screenwriting Expo 3 November 6th Saturday 5 pm. For 3 days of Guests of Honor including Jerry Lewis, Robert McKee, William Goldman, Aaron Sorkin, Richard Donner, Paul Attanasio, Arnold Kopelson, and many more. A new guest every 2 hours! For 3 Days of Panels on the Business of Screenwriting including 2 panels of agents, a producers panel, plus panels on legal information, entering contests, making your own break, selling your script over the Internet, TV writing, making your own movies, and more. For Access to 300 Producers, Development Execs, Agents, and their Assistants at 6 different cocktail and networking parties. Don't miss this chance to network with these decision makers who can transform your dream into reality. Access to Over 350 Seminars and Worshops by the best teachers in the industry. These seminars are 90-minutes in length and cost $4 additional. Plus Pitching to over 60 Companies including Industry Entertainment (Warner Bros.); Spring Creek Productions (Warner Bros.); Neo Art & Logic (Dimension Films); Gross Entertainment (Disney/Fox); Evolution Entertainment (Lion's Gate/Disney/Universal); Brad Luff Productions (Sony); Firm Films (Fox); Mosaic Media Group (MGM, Sony); Circle of Confusion, Miramax/Dimension Films, and The Brant Rose Agency, to name a few... 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