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.
