“I’ve got a great idea for a movie”
I asked my students to write down story ideas for a feature film on a small slip of paper — just a short paragraph made up of about four or five sentences.
I was hoping that they would learn early on how to write their pitch for a movie producer. Because coming up with a story idea and writing it down may be easy for some, but trying to tell that idea in so few sentences (so the movie producer doesn’t get bored) is a challenge for all. And it becomes more challenging to turn that brief paragraph into log lines — some sort of teaser that will intrigue the movie producer to listen to the pitch some more. It is from these log lines that the tagline for the movie ad is usually drawn. For instance, Season 5 of Lost could have had this premise for the pitch:
The season continues the stories of the survivors of the fictional crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, after some of them are rescued and those still stranded seemingly disappear to an unknown location and time with the island that they inhabit. This season is about why the people who have left the island need to get back. [This is adapted from the Wikipedia post on Lost (Season 5)]
From that premise, we can see the possible log line in the passage: “This season is about why the people who have left the island need to get back.” And from this possible log line comes the tag line, as shown in the poster: “Destiny calls.”
But then, that means my students should have very interesting story ideas to begin with, and not the usual fare that you and I get to watch on television or on the widescreen.
Now, it can be argued that all stories pared down to their basic parts will reveal that there is really only one story. (You can ask Vladimir Propp and other scholars who have done just that — dissected the narratives they could get their hands on so they could show us the formula on which the stories are based.)
However, it doesn’t mean the end of innovation if not originality. Because whatever the formula, there is always a way to twist it or tweak it around some more. After all, there seems to be no end to the slew of TV shows and movies that promise something new.
That’s where story engines can help, by providing innumerable combinations and permutations of characters and plot outlines for various genres. Behind the story engine lies the theory that says, as Anthony Friedmann outlines in his Writing for Visual Media, all stories have four “through lines” (179):
- the overall story through line
- the main character through line
- the main vs. impact character through line
- the impact character’s through line
It is in how my students will weave something out of these through lines, especially where the lines intersect, that something more intriguing than their original story ideas may reveal itself. (to be continued)
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