10 ms·

The 2005 screenwriting book that’s taken over Hollywood

278 points by markcmyers 13y ago

thenomad 13y ago
I may be somewhat odd for a professional filmmaker in this, but my reaction is less "aargh, no, my pure pure art!" and more "Hmm, interesting, I wonder if I have time to try that out?" Frameworks work well for visual design, adverts, web design, music (to a certain extent), so I can't see a problem with them for films. Of course, if one framework becomes the One Possible Framework, that's more of an issue. But there are enough filmmakers out there willing to try seriously wierd shit that I don't think that's a problem yet. For example, David Lynch is working on a new feature film right now. Call me crazy, but I don't think he'll be sticking to Save The Cat's formula.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Well, among the supposedly "Hollywood killing" samey movies mentioned in the article is "The Dark Knight", regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time. Which goes to show that there's still plenty of creativity to be had while following classic structure, and proving once again that broad ideas are meaningless and execution is everything.
  - thenomad 13y ago
    Yeah - if I only manage to make movies as good as "The Dark Knight" (one of my more favourite films), I'm reasonably OK with that.
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    Th best action movie as determined by whom? Obviously the generally movie-going populace likes the movies that Hollywood produces otherwise they wouldn't go see them.
    - thenomad 13y ago
      The comment above just said that TDK was "regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time.", rather than making an absolute judgement. I think that's a reasonably defensible statement - http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-dark-knight http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-dark-knight.
      - foobarqux 13y ago
        I'm questioning the validity of using the general population as an authoritative source of film critique. Although it's probably silly to ask for an artistic critique of an action film at all.
        georgemcbay 13y ago
        Who said I was using the general population as an authoritative source of film critique? "regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time" means just what it says. I never claimed nor even implied that the view was authoritative simply because it was widely held.
        foobarqux 13y ago
        You stated explicitly that you thought it was a quality film due to its wide popularity. (As an aside the article itself never criticizes Dark Knight for being poor only for being formulaic).
        vacri 13y ago
        'regarded by many as' is pretty much the living, breathing definition of 'authority as implied by popularity'.
        anigbrowl 13y ago
        it's probably silly to ask for an artistic critique of an action film Far from it; action films are extremely interesting from an artistic POV because they are often so uncontrived that they offer an unusually direct insight into the society that made them. John McTiernan's Predator is a superb film, for example - it's 30 years old and still plays well on TV or the big screen.
  - gambler 13y ago
    The Dark Knight is good despite using a lot of Hollywood conventions, not because of them. What Nolan can shrug off might annihilate the remnants of creativity in a lesser director. I've seen similar things happen in writing.
  - LokiSnake 13y ago
    TDK was mentioned for a having a villain that gets caught on purpose. I think TDK did it well, but doesn't change the fact that so many are applying it like a formula and failing.
    - regularfry 13y ago
      It's not just the "getting caught on purpose" trope that annoys me, it's the whole omnipotent-(bad/good)-guy thing. The Ocean's Eleven sequels were particularly bad at this.
- wahnfrieden 13y ago
  Tangential, but you got me excited about a new feature film project from Lynch... I can't find anything about one though. Did you make it up for an example? EDIT: seems to be just a script so far, http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/david-lynch-working-on-a-new-typically-dark-script-20130227 http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/david-lynch-working-o...
  - thenomad 13y ago
    Here's the source I have: http://www.screendaily.com/home/blogs/david-lynch-hints-at-new-film/5049373.article?blocktitle=Diary-Blog&contentID=2048 http://www.screendaily.com/home/blogs/david-lynch-hints-at-n... I'm also VERY excited about this one.
    - wahnfrieden 13y ago
      Fantastic! Thanks. Lynch holds a place in my heart for getting me deeply into abstract film early on, and then greater cinema in general, though I haven't watched him in ages now and don't really feel drawn toward revisiting. I guess I could say he prepared me eventually for the likes of Tarkovsky, Bergman (easy to see parallels with Persona in his work, though there're echoes of that one all over), Hou Hsiao-Hsien, etc. I've been meaning to watch Philippe Grandieux, who I've read compares well with Lynch.
dugmartin 13y ago
Some friends and I made a simple hot-or-not style site using the "Save the Cat" formula as a way to kill time on a 6 hour drive: http://www.pitchwar.com/ http://www.pitchwar.com/
- arjie 13y ago
  Some of these are outrageously funny. Well done.
- mey 13y ago
  I was laughing at "On the morning of a divorce a kleptomaniac construction worker tries to find himself but when terrorists forecloses on his house he/she must learn all that glitters isn't gold or all is lost." Nice site
- yahelc 13y ago
  I think you might have a bug. The winning version was on the right side for me nearly every time I tried (n equals more than 30).
- mhartl 13y ago
  Fun. One thing you might update: you use "he/she" in some places, but just "his" in others. I suggest "he...his" or "he/she...his/hers" instead.
  - dugmartin 13y ago
    We sort of ran out of steam and the joke got old after the drive so we never added or edited the template.
- gohrt 13y ago
  You coded a website while driving (I presume the passengers did most of the work) in a car? Nice.
- manish_gill 13y ago
  Haha. Those were some terrible pitches (sorry!). We have something similar on our IRC bot. Can be hilarious sometimes. :D <me> !movieplot <•rbot> Summary: He's a scrappy voodoo gangster from the Mississippi delta. She's a high-kicking mute pearl diver with the power to bend mens minds. They fight crime. <•rbot> Summary: He's a Nobel prize-winning white trash rock star looking for a cure to the poison coursing through his veins. She's an enchanted African-American detective from the wrong side of the tracks. They fight crime. etc etc.
georgemcbay 13y ago
I haven't read "Save the Cat" so I can't speak to it specifically, but the article doesn't do a great job of selling me on the idea that the book is responsible for the sameness of movie plots considering that for all the examples of "beats" given in the article, I can think of dozens and dozens of movies that hit those beats well before 2005 (when the supposedly ruinous screenplay manual was published). If anything, it seems like the book was just clearly documenting what nearly every writer was already doing anyway, in some cases basically as far back as three act storytelling has existed (even prior to movies existing at all).
- Semiapies 13y ago
  I think the premise is that this book codified it, and thus a lot of movies have been based on its specific formula rather than various writers' intuitions/interpretations of these broad pattern. I'm skeptical, but I picked up the book to take a look.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    Yeah, that seems to be the premise, but I really don't get the sense that movies, overall, got significantly more formulaic post-2005 (there was already a pretty major amount of sameness back in the 90s). I do think that at the highest end of budgets there is less risk taking (because of the extremely high cost of a flop), and thus perhaps there is increasing adherence to the tried and true story formula, but I believe that has more to do with astronomical budgets than the publication of this manual and as I mentioned, I believe this trend started well before 2005. See also: Big budget videogames, which also suffer from a similar sort of sameness, but without a widely accepted "How to Make a Big Budget Game" formula book.
    - squidfood 13y ago
      I was taught something very similar in a screenwriting class in the late 1980s (it was in 10-15 minute increments rather than minute-by-minute, but still).
    - davidgerard 13y ago
Semiapies 13y ago
Structure is important to storytelling, or else you end up with something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xslyoK9uobE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xslyoK9uobE On the other hand, dang, you need more than going beat-by-beat with nothing else to say.
ColinWright 13y ago
Single page: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollyw...
stfu 13y ago
No way! I am pretty sure big data strongly indicated that based on the past performance of similar movie structures these are going to perform strongly in the future. And I am quite confident that the studios are already implementing a data driven decision making process. At least since Google went around pretending being able to predict the box office numbers/success of a movie [1]... [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/07/googles-success-at-predicting-movie-success/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/07/googles-s...
- ippisl 13y ago
  Gladwell did a piece on using computers to predict a hit formula : http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_10_16_a_formula.html http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_10_16_a_formula.html
- wahnfrieden 13y ago
  Indeed, one of the biggest studios is using a data-driven approach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_Media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_Media Great for making money and giving audiences what they want, pretty dreadful for creative output, well, obviously.
zhemao 13y ago
If you look at the actual beat sheet. http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save... They all seem pretty general. I'm pretty sure you could stick to the structure without being very formulaic. And yes, I'm pretty sure most movies had a structure very similar to this one even before the book came along.
adamnemecek 13y ago
Monomyth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth) slightly adjusted for the 21st century? Sounds a lot like it.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  On that point, I seem to recall Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters (1992), which is more directly an adaptation and application of Campbell's monomyth, getting quite a bit of the same kind of "formula that's killing Hollywood originality" criticism.
icesoldier 13y ago
Sounds to me like someone just packaged up the Monomyth[0] in a version that makes more sense for movies. Formula in fiction is not necessarily new, as the article points out at the end. The trick is to dress it up, change it around, or throw it out if necessary. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
- pazimzadeh 13y ago
  Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writer%27s_Journey:_Mythic_Structure_For_Writers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writer%27s_Journey:_Mythic_...
__david__ 13y ago
This reminds me of pop music. At some point you realize most of the songs on the radio are "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus" with only subtle variations in structure. But in the end, I don't actually think that's a bad thing. There is a lot of variations you can do, even within such a limiting structure. Summer blockbusters are the pop music of movies. And just like pop songs, even if you know the overall structure you can still be surprised and entertained throughout. And, just like music, it doesn't mean that there can't be things that break the mold entirely, even if they aren't quite as popular. There's always going to be someone out there pushing the boundaries, and there's always going to be someone really skilled who makes something really popular that doesn't conform to the formula at all.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I wonder if, in future generations, schoolchildren will write their own formulaic pop-songs as today they write their own sonnets.
  - geuis 13y ago
    In all seriousness, where is this happening? I don't remember being taught to write sonnets in school. If this is something relatively recent, maybe education has improved a little.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      I wrote a few sonnets in 11th (iirc, may have been 12th) grade English class (public school, prior to the standardization craze apparently). We did half a year on English Renaissance drama, and wrote some sonnets while we were learning about Shakespeare. I assumed this was relatively typical. It was pretty fun, I think one of mine was about bears on the moon. We basically just learned the rhyming scheme 'abab cdcd efef gg'.
    - thenomad 13y ago
      I was taught to write sonnets at school (and most of the other obvious verse forms, from clerihews to iambic pentameter), but then my school also taught Ancient Greek and Latin.
Zimahl 13y ago
All I have to say about this is maybe. I mean, tropes are used, overused, and come and go - that's how the industry works. Writers are who they are just like directors. You aren't all of a sudden going to turn Zack Snyder into Scorsese or Abrams into Tarantino. But then again, Scorsese and Tarantino aren't making movies like 'Pirates of the Caribbean 7: Wet, Hot Caribbean Summer' that can be absolute shit, but as long a Johnny Depp is playing Jack Sparrow it's a billion dollars globally.
- RockyMcNuts 13y ago
  There are a lot of tropes - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NarrativeTropes http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NarrativeTropes sort of think anyone who is going by a formula wasn't going to do a masterpiece in the first place.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Masterpiece != originality. Originality is extremely overrated.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Funny you mention Tarantino, who built his whole career by cut-and-pasting tropes, beats, and clips from classic Asian movies. Or as Tarantino calls it, "homage"
guard-of-terra 13y ago
These days I try to avoid going to movie unless it promises something genuinely new and interesting. All kinds of comic-inspired movies are hard no. And when you spend less time on crap you actually begin to explore the good parts!
- angersock 13y ago
  Er, Avengers was pulled off pretty well. I'm not sure that you should auto write-off comic movies...
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    I'm not sure I lost anything by not watching it.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      How would you know, though? I personally found it Good Fun, but some other films such as The Dark Knight mentioned above are masterpeices, comic origin or not. Incidentally, Joss Whedon's latest film (which he made in his spare time between shooting and editin g The Avengers) is a fantastic rendition of Shakespeare's Much Ado about nothing, and stars some of the same actors.
      - guard-of-terra 13y ago
        I saw The Dark Knight and I would not have lost anything if I didn't. What's so good about it? Yes it has one or two nice jokes; the whole Joker character is nice; but not enough to agonize thru a 3 hour movie. (Inception was even more boring, they have one good joke and no Joker) While Avatar, for example, is a movie that does deliver something you would not have if you didn't watch it.
        anigbrowl 13y ago
        De gustibus non est disputandem (an ancient proverb stating 'in matters of taste, there is nodispute [that can result in an objective conclusion]). Ironically, the plot of Avatar is largely a retread of an animated 1992 film called Ferngully (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest). Other than showcasing some interesting 3d technology, and high-quality CG, it's not particularly groundbreaking. Come to think of it, the most impressive thing about Avatar (with a few years' perspective to think about it) was the marketing campaign.
linuxhansl 13y ago
Not surprised. It's not about making a good movie, but about making money. Specifically making money safely, with low risk. Making a different movie is risky, and thus producers prefer tried formulas, no rough edges, no thinking really. Shame.
gandalfgeek 13y ago
There's a sidebar that has the detailed outline, also called a "beat sheet". http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save... If you read that, you will notice that the arc of the hero almost exactly matches the one of the prototypical hero from many cultures and mythologies, as explained by John Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces There are just so many elements one can make a compelling story out of.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  If you read that, you will notice that the arc of the hero almost exactly matches the one of the prototypical hero from many cultures and mythologies, as explained by John Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." Exactly, almost to the point of plagiarism. We may or may not be doomed to exhaust the possibilities of fiction, but we definitely seem fated to rediscover (Joseph) Campbell once every few years.
- wj 13y ago
  My favorite screenwriting book is based on Joseph Campbell. It is called the Writer's Journey and applies the Hero's Journey to the three act structure. Based on that book I've decided that Die Hard was one of the better scripts ever written. It just nails the Hero's Journey. This topic has actually been on my todo list to write a blog post about for a while.
- 205guy 13y ago
  I came to say the same thing. I can't believe the article didn't trace the practice back to Campbell's book, especially after mentioning Star Wars (which Lucas pretty explicitly based on the formula in the book). To be fair, Campbell was writing about archetypical stories in human societies, not how to make a movie. Lucas correctly saw that they were one and the same.
chocolateboy 13y ago
It's odd that the article fails to mention the most high-profile film to follow Snyder's template, How To Train Your Dragon. Unlike the speculative examples in the article, the creators of that film have explicitly acknowledged Snyder's role in the development of their story (he's thanked in the credits). [1] I guess the fact that it was a huge commercial and critical hit (98% on Rotten Tomatoes) doesn't fit the simplistic, tabloid template that's taking over serious journalism. [1] http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/03/26/how-the-dragon-really-got-trained/ http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/03/26/how-the-dragon-really-...
- davidgerard 13y ago
  The three-minute pop song is as formulaic, as horrible done badly, and as wonderful done well. It's like haiku, for lots of money.
foobarqux 13y ago
For anyone else who doesn't like Hollywood here are some recent film recommendations: New World (South Korea) Le Capital (France) The Berlin File (South Korea) (although the end is disappointingly formulaic) After Fall, Winter
- foobarqux 13y ago
  And watch Old Boy before Hollywood ruins it.
- icebraining 13y ago
  I liked Barbara (Germany) and Lore (Australia/Germany), both from last year. The former reminds me of a verse from Pink Floyd's Time.
lukifer 13y ago
Stories have always made use of templates and archetypes. However, I vastly prefer Dan Harmon's story circle: http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/4570/673288-danharmonstorytellingchartwired.jpg http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/4570/673288-danharmonsto...
- robin2 13y ago
  Apparently Michael Moorcock swears by the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula: http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html
anigbrowl 13y ago
When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. Yes, like The Writer's Journey was an explosion that ripped through hollywood, and Story and a bunch of other books. It's amusing and instructive to look at classics like the Iliad or Macbeth through this structural formule. Clearly, this nefarious writer also owns a time machine! Hey, I think that story could sell...
gojomo 13y ago
In the mid 90s, writer David Siegel argued (in his writing and consulting) that a very, very similar "9 act" structure was the key to Hollywood screenplay success, based on his study of hundreds of blockbusters. See: http://web.archive.org/web/19980206083911/http://www.dsiegel.com/film/Film_home.html http://web.archive.org/web/19980206083911/http://www.dsiegel... So I agree with others that the 2005 book is more descriptive of long-existing patterns (and requirements of the movie format), than prescriptive and culpable for recent practice.
- julespitt 13y ago
  I remember that site! It's a shame he didn't get any recognition - IIRC his outline was a little more vague than the one being described in this article, and therefore had more room for surprise and creativity.
snikolic 13y ago
I would argue that this trend stretches back well before "Save the Cat" or even Syd Field or Joseph Campbell, all the way to Aristotle. This isn't really new stuff. A few years ago I was backpacking through the Gobi desert and stayed with a Mongolian family. On the floor next to my bed I found a copy of Syd Field's famous guide to screenwriting. Until that moment, I hadn't realized just how widespread this philosophy of storytelling had become.
vampirechicken 13y ago
The write lost me completely when he complained about the main character of the Oz movie being the main character of the book on which it's based. That's just stupid. I want my three minutes back.
biot 13y ago
It sounds like a good way to bootstrap a movie script. If someone came up with the same type of framework but for web development, would we end up with a lot of formulaic startups?
- icebraining 13y ago
  Well, we already have a lot of formulaic web designs thanks to Bootstrap.
  - biot 13y ago
    It appears my reference was too oblique...
- runevault 13y ago
  The problem is, the better ways to use formula is understand but not reference it during the initial writing, then use it AFTER if the story seems broken to try and figure out what is missing, not plug everything in as you start.
VladRussian2 13y ago
couple notes: - did author himself followed some formula (essay, etc..)writing this article? - after watching many Hollywood movies during last decade, i recently re-watched (as i had almost forgot the content of the movie, it was almost like watching for the first time) "For a fistful of dollars" - about half the movie in i was ready and felt like it was the climactic end with the showdown (bank robbery) and was genuinely surprised that it continues well beyond it
davidgerard 13y ago
See KLF's "The Manual", which did the same thing for pop music. http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/07/19/the-manual-hollywood-edition/ http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/07/19/the-manual-hollywood-editio... Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle-eight, chorus, chorus. Verse sixteen bars, others eight or sixteen bars. This didn't ruin pop music at the time (1988) because it was describing what was already happening. But the Manual damage over the next couple of decades is another question.
joshuak 13y ago
As others have pointed out the concept of a more detailed screenplay structure has been around for a very long time, and typically pretty well understood by working screenwritters. I remember reading about the 9 act structure in the 90s (can't remember if this is the guy who started it, but I think so): Edit corrected link (thanks to hncommenter13 below): http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com The problem with modern blockbuster films as described in the article is for the most part not because of a better understanding of structure but because of less understanding. Perhaps poor writers are using tools like Save the Cat to believe they understand writing better then they do. Or perhaps studio executives (who are notoriously near pathologically risk averse to new ideas) reading new screenplays use a poor understanding of Save the Cat to validate perspective scripts. I can say for sure that many modern movies, particularly summer movies, are absolutely not following these structures, good or bad. Mainstream narrative filmmaking always follows the hero's journey, whether your hero is a neurotic writer in new york, a young black girl in New Orleans, or a genetically modified super hero. Summer blockbusters these days are focused on something different. Visceral response. Well structured storytelling (whether you think that's "Save the Cat" or something else), is about stories and human relatable emotions and characters. Recent films have started focusing more on the roller coster ride of the visuals, and will do any distortion of the story necessary to motivate a visceral impact on the audience. Good storytelling takes a second seat to putting the audience into the most intense situations possible. This has been helping get people into the theaters because the trailers for these types of films make them seam very exciting. But I would argue that Hollywood is struggling right now - the visual effects industry in particular - due to the audience getting wise to these ploys. A bad film is still a bad film, formalized story telling structure won't save you. Even less so if you ignore it so that you can have a bigger explosion. Want to be a good screenwriter? First learn how to write a story. And then guess what? You can still have explosions too.
- hncommenter13 13y ago
  It was actually David Siegel, one of the first well-known web designers, who wrote about the Nine Act structure. I remember reading this sometime in the late 90s. Here is the archived version from 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com/film/Film_home.html http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com...
petegrif 13y ago
I was a pro screenwriter for 20 years and am intimately familiar with a great deal of 'prior art' in thinking about screenplays. There is nothing new in 'Save the Cat.'
petegrif 13y ago
I was a pro screenwriter for 20 years and am intimately familiar with a great deal of 'prior art' in thinking about screenplays. There is nothing new in 'Save the Cat.'
jemfinch 13y ago
What I'm more interested in, but the author (unfortunately) didn't expound upon: tell me what movies don't follow the expected "beats". Those are the ones I want to see.
steve19 13y ago
Is there an equivalent popular/influential book for modern fiction?
philmcc 13y ago
You don't actually have a problem with movies using formulas, you have a problem with them feeling formulaic. (Chances are.) Formulas exist because, when followed properly, they work. For the casual movie viewer, I'm sure that 90% of your favorite movies adhere to this structure, more or less. That, alone, won't cause your movie to feel bad. There are countless other variables that affect whether or not a movie feels formulaic but, very roughly, I'd suggest that it's when a writer/production team feels like the formula -alone- is enough, that it should work. The beats are just there, but there's still no pulse. IMHO, this summer, Fast Six nailed the beats perfectly, and people walked away mostly satisfied. Man Of Steel didn't, people were unhappy. Most Pixar movies are lockstep with this structure. Few people gripe about the formulaic pixar movies. You could probably convince me that movies, as an artform, are more or less built for this structure in the same way that sonnets have a particular rhyme scheme. Sure you can make other kinds of poems, but if the audience really likes sonnets, what's the point? I think the average movie-goer really likes Sonnets, so to speak. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has seen enough movies to develop an appetite for The Tree of Life. Note: I've read Save the Cat, have studied screenwriting at a graduate level, and have a (very humble) IMDB listing. So consider this my 2.1 cents worth.
lazyeye 13y ago
Globalization is a significant influence on screenwriting big films. Because blockbuster are now being produced for a global market they turn up the special effects and visual action and turn down the plot subtlety and complexity which might otherwise be confusing to a non-English speaking audience.
- icebraining 13y ago
  I don't get it, why do you assume a non-English speaking audience would be more confused by subtlety and complexity? From my experience, Hollywood movies have always been less subtle than the films from most other countries. And not only in movies; for example, British comedy seems to be turned into a caricature of itself when remade in the US.
TrevorJ 13y ago
It's like anything else - to create, it is first helpful to be able to deconstruct examples first and understand how they work.
cafard 13y ago
After seeing "Top Gun" ca. 1986, I said to those I went with that Hollywood had forgotten how to make movies. It knew how to make commercials (TG is full of sequences that would fit right into a Navy recruiting commercial) and music videos ("You've lost that loving feeling"), but that was about it. The rest of the movie was negligible, though perhaps I should have added in video games to allow for the fighter-jet stuff. But was it ever that different? The stuff we still watch is the exception. Hollywood cranked out a hell of a lot of stuff 80 and 70 years ago that nobody but a film studies graduate student could bring himself to sit through. Read for example S.J. Perelman on how the studios worked. As for "adolescent men coming to grips with who they are", arrested development is one of Hollywood's favorite subjects. I noticed this in watching "Sideways", but would Dean and Brando have ever made their names without it? [Edit] On consideration, isn't "adolescent men coming to grips with who they are" a large theme in Western literature? (And I suppose, but can't cite, other literatures also.) The Odyssey kicks off with Athena inspiring Telemachus to independence. Shakespeare's Henry IV plays are all about Prince Hal becoming Henry V. War and Peace follows three men from adolescence to maturity, and one of them, Prince Andrei, to a couple of levels. And I think one could find examples of literature following adolescent women through.
callmeed 13y ago
I have read this book 3x and it has always been a favorite. The thing is, as soon as you read this book, you'll recognize the formula in most movies you watch, including movies that came out before the book and especially family + rom-com movies. Personally, I doubt the book is responsible. It just heightened awareness. After all, Hollywood rarely likes to take risks. If a formula works, they're going to green light such projects.
yurylifshits 13y ago
Notes on screenplay structures by Reddit's CEO Yishan Wong http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/things-i-learned-from-my-wifes-screenwriting-education-part-i.html http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/things-i-learned-from-my-wifes... Vladimir Propp was the original pioneer of narrative structures, published the foundational research on fairytale sequences in 1928 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  You might want to check into Aristotle's Poetics.
6ren 13y ago
It makes sense we'd refine our theory of story telling. It is modelling an aspect of humanity, analogous to how lossy image compression models human visual perception. Along the way, we might have a spuriously precise theory, that excludes perfectly good stories that would resonate with us. But ultimately, when the theory is as accurate as it can be, it does not mean that stories become formulaic. I don't just mean that some variation is still possible. I mean that the theory is merely a way to communicate effectively - like spelling and grammar, like public speaking techniques, and the fundamental ancient story rules, like having a narrative, having characters, having a problem to solve, having help from outside. Is having a narrative - a sequence of events - really that limiting? Yes, it is. But you can still work within that structure. There are infinite possibilities within it, the same for any other framework for communication. However, a more serious problem is that the "theory" of summer blockbusters is not modelling the human story perception at all - it is modelling the particular demographic of male-adolescent story perception. Who knew? I think it's perfectly fine that some particular demographic is being served - like bubble gum pop music. Other movies are still being made, with the long tail, as are books and blogs etc. And, really, male adolescents are not completely divorced from the rest of humanity. We can still enjoy their films.
6ren 13y ago
It's a refinement of the Hero's Journey (see Vogler's memo; Joseph Campbell). The formula itself: http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save...
6ren 13y ago
About 2/3...3/4 the way through, the mood felt a bit forced, and it occurred to me that he was applying the formula to the piece itself. This may be a taste of the problem... but I think it's more imperfect application than damning the formula itself. Like grammar, it constrains but doesn't limit.
gohrt 13y ago
See also Dan Harmon's story circle, a less detailed version of this: http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_...
gohrt 13y ago
Oh boy, I can't wait to see the article Peter Suderman writes when he discovers tvtropes.com.
ricardobeat 13y ago
For anyone still doubtful of how much structure and intent there is in a screenplay, this deconstruction of Jurassic Park is an amazing read: http://www.blakesnyder.com/2013/04/05/the-jurassic-park-beat-sheet/ http://www.blakesnyder.com/2013/04/05/the-jurassic-park-beat... While not exactly following the 'save the cat' formula, and probably being a much better movie for that, it clearly rests on the same principles.
hristov 13y ago
I remember an old Vladimir Nabokov quote that is very apropos to this. I do not remember the quote exactly and i do not have the book with me, so I cannot look it up, but it went something like this: "The play was in perfect harmony with the modern rules of drama and storytelling or, in other words, it was perfectly idiotic." I read this quote about 10 years ago in a Nabokov short story but I keep getting reminded of it whenever I see a modern movie. And they are getting very idiotic. The strict plot structure is making characters say or do stupid things just so the action can follow the predefined plot lines. This really prevents one from creating believable characters. All the reverses (the false victories and false losses) often make characters reverse themselves until they become mostly unbelievable to anyone that tries to remember the entire movie from beginning to end.
x0054 13y ago
It's not that they are so formulaic, it's that they are so identical. It's as if every one who used bootstrap for web design also used identical color schemes and layouts. Take a look at the upcoming "RIP Department." It's like someone just took the Men in Black script and replaced all references to aliens with references to the undead. It's the same movie!

278 points by markcmyers 13y ago

I may be somewhat odd for a professional filmmaker in this, but my reaction is less "aargh, no, my pure pure art!" and more "Hmm, interesting, I wonder if I have time to try that out?" Frameworks work well for visual design, adverts, web design, music (to a certain extent), so I can't see a problem with them for films. Of course, if one framework becomes the One Possible Framework, that's more of an issue. But there are enough filmmakers out there willing to try seriously wierd shit that I don't think that's a problem yet. For example, David Lynch is working on a new feature film right now. Call me crazy, but I don't think he'll be sticking to Save The Cat's formula.

georgemcbay 13y ago
Well, among the supposedly "Hollywood killing" samey movies mentioned in the article is "The Dark Knight", regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time. Which goes to show that there's still plenty of creativity to be had while following classic structure, and proving once again that broad ideas are meaningless and execution is everything.
- thenomad 13y ago
  Yeah - if I only manage to make movies as good as "The Dark Knight" (one of my more favourite films), I'm reasonably OK with that.
- foobarqux 13y ago
  Th best action movie as determined by whom? Obviously the generally movie-going populace likes the movies that Hollywood produces otherwise they wouldn't go see them.
  - thenomad 13y ago
    The comment above just said that TDK was "regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time.", rather than making an absolute judgement. I think that's a reasonably defensible statement - http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-dark-knight http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-dark-knight.
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      I'm questioning the validity of using the general population as an authoritative source of film critique. Although it's probably silly to ask for an artistic critique of an action film at all.
      - georgemcbay 13y ago
        Who said I was using the general population as an authoritative source of film critique? "regarded by many as the greatest "action" movie of all time" means just what it says. I never claimed nor even implied that the view was authoritative simply because it was widely held.
        foobarqux 13y ago
        You stated explicitly that you thought it was a quality film due to its wide popularity. (As an aside the article itself never criticizes Dark Knight for being poor only for being formulaic).
        vacri 13y ago
        'regarded by many as' is pretty much the living, breathing definition of 'authority as implied by popularity'.
      - anigbrowl 13y ago
        it's probably silly to ask for an artistic critique of an action film Far from it; action films are extremely interesting from an artistic POV because they are often so uncontrived that they offer an unusually direct insight into the society that made them. John McTiernan's Predator is a superb film, for example - it's 30 years old and still plays well on TV or the big screen.
- gambler 13y ago
  The Dark Knight is good despite using a lot of Hollywood conventions, not because of them. What Nolan can shrug off might annihilate the remnants of creativity in a lesser director. I've seen similar things happen in writing.
- LokiSnake 13y ago
  TDK was mentioned for a having a villain that gets caught on purpose. I think TDK did it well, but doesn't change the fact that so many are applying it like a formula and failing.
  - regularfry 13y ago
    It's not just the "getting caught on purpose" trope that annoys me, it's the whole omnipotent-(bad/good)-guy thing. The Ocean's Eleven sequels were particularly bad at this.
wahnfrieden 13y ago
Tangential, but you got me excited about a new feature film project from Lynch... I can't find anything about one though. Did you make it up for an example? EDIT: seems to be just a script so far, http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/david-lynch-working-on-a-new-typically-dark-script-20130227 http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/david-lynch-working-o...
- thenomad 13y ago
  Here's the source I have: http://www.screendaily.com/home/blogs/david-lynch-hints-at-new-film/5049373.article?blocktitle=Diary-Blog&contentID=2048 http://www.screendaily.com/home/blogs/david-lynch-hints-at-n... I'm also VERY excited about this one.
  - wahnfrieden 13y ago
    Fantastic! Thanks. Lynch holds a place in my heart for getting me deeply into abstract film early on, and then greater cinema in general, though I haven't watched him in ages now and don't really feel drawn toward revisiting. I guess I could say he prepared me eventually for the likes of Tarkovsky, Bergman (easy to see parallels with Persona in his work, though there're echoes of that one all over), Hou Hsiao-Hsien, etc. I've been meaning to watch Philippe Grandieux, who I've read compares well with Lynch.

dugmartin 13y ago

Some friends and I made a simple hot-or-not style site using the "Save the Cat" formula as a way to kill time on a 6 hour drive: http://www.pitchwar.com/ http://www.pitchwar.com/

arjie 13y ago
Some of these are outrageously funny. Well done.
mey 13y ago
I was laughing at "On the morning of a divorce a kleptomaniac construction worker tries to find himself but when terrorists forecloses on his house he/she must learn all that glitters isn't gold or all is lost." Nice site
yahelc 13y ago
I think you might have a bug. The winning version was on the right side for me nearly every time I tried (n equals more than 30).
mhartl 13y ago
Fun. One thing you might update: you use "he/she" in some places, but just "his" in others. I suggest "he...his" or "he/she...his/hers" instead.
- dugmartin 13y ago
  We sort of ran out of steam and the joke got old after the drive so we never added or edited the template.
gohrt 13y ago
You coded a website while driving (I presume the passengers did most of the work) in a car? Nice.
manish_gill 13y ago
Haha. Those were some terrible pitches (sorry!). We have something similar on our IRC bot. Can be hilarious sometimes. :D <me> !movieplot <•rbot> Summary: He's a scrappy voodoo gangster from the Mississippi delta. She's a high-kicking mute pearl diver with the power to bend mens minds. They fight crime. <•rbot> Summary: He's a Nobel prize-winning white trash rock star looking for a cure to the poison coursing through his veins. She's an enchanted African-American detective from the wrong side of the tracks. They fight crime. etc etc.

georgemcbay 13y ago

I haven't read "Save the Cat" so I can't speak to it specifically, but the article doesn't do a great job of selling me on the idea that the book is responsible for the sameness of movie plots considering that for all the examples of "beats" given in the article, I can think of dozens and dozens of movies that hit those beats well before 2005 (when the supposedly ruinous screenplay manual was published). If anything, it seems like the book was just clearly documenting what nearly every writer was already doing anyway, in some cases basically as far back as three act storytelling has existed (even prior to movies existing at all).

Semiapies 13y ago
I think the premise is that this book codified it, and thus a lot of movies have been based on its specific formula rather than various writers' intuitions/interpretations of these broad pattern. I'm skeptical, but I picked up the book to take a look.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Yeah, that seems to be the premise, but I really don't get the sense that movies, overall, got significantly more formulaic post-2005 (there was already a pretty major amount of sameness back in the 90s). I do think that at the highest end of budgets there is less risk taking (because of the extremely high cost of a flop), and thus perhaps there is increasing adherence to the tried and true story formula, but I believe that has more to do with astronomical budgets than the publication of this manual and as I mentioned, I believe this trend started well before 2005. See also: Big budget videogames, which also suffer from a similar sort of sameness, but without a widely accepted "How to Make a Big Budget Game" formula book.
  - squidfood 13y ago
    I was taught something very similar in a screenwriting class in the late 1980s (it was in 10-15 minute increments rather than minute-by-minute, but still).
  - davidgerard 13y ago

Semiapies 13y ago

Structure is important to storytelling, or else you end up with something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xslyoK9uobE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xslyoK9uobE On the other hand, dang, you need more than going beat-by-beat with nothing else to say.

ColinWright 13y ago

Single page: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollyw...

stfu 13y ago

No way! I am pretty sure big data strongly indicated that based on the past performance of similar movie structures these are going to perform strongly in the future. And I am quite confident that the studios are already implementing a data driven decision making process. At least since Google went around pretending being able to predict the box office numbers/success of a movie [1]... [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/07/googles-success-at-predicting-movie-success/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/06/07/googles-s...

ippisl 13y ago
Gladwell did a piece on using computers to predict a hit formula : http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_10_16_a_formula.html http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_10_16_a_formula.html
wahnfrieden 13y ago
Indeed, one of the biggest studios is using a data-driven approach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_Media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_Media Great for making money and giving audiences what they want, pretty dreadful for creative output, well, obviously.

zhemao 13y ago

If you look at the actual beat sheet. http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save... They all seem pretty general. I'm pretty sure you could stick to the structure without being very formulaic. And yes, I'm pretty sure most movies had a structure very similar to this one even before the book came along.

adamnemecek 13y ago

Monomyth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth) slightly adjusted for the 21st century? Sounds a lot like it.

dragonwriter 13y ago
On that point, I seem to recall Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters (1992), which is more directly an adaptation and application of Campbell's monomyth, getting quite a bit of the same kind of "formula that's killing Hollywood originality" criticism.

icesoldier 13y ago

Sounds to me like someone just packaged up the Monomyth[0] in a version that makes more sense for movies. Formula in fiction is not necessarily new, as the article points out at the end. The trick is to dress it up, change it around, or throw it out if necessary. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

pazimzadeh 13y ago
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writer%27s_Journey:_Mythic_Structure_For_Writers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Writer%27s_Journey:_Mythic_...

__david__ 13y ago

This reminds me of pop music. At some point you realize most of the songs on the radio are "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, chorus" with only subtle variations in structure. But in the end, I don't actually think that's a bad thing. There is a lot of variations you can do, even within such a limiting structure. Summer blockbusters are the pop music of movies. And just like pop songs, even if you know the overall structure you can still be surprised and entertained throughout. And, just like music, it doesn't mean that there can't be things that break the mold entirely, even if they aren't quite as popular. There's always going to be someone out there pushing the boundaries, and there's always going to be someone really skilled who makes something really popular that doesn't conform to the formula at all.

jlgreco 13y ago
I wonder if, in future generations, schoolchildren will write their own formulaic pop-songs as today they write their own sonnets.
- geuis 13y ago
  In all seriousness, where is this happening? I don't remember being taught to write sonnets in school. If this is something relatively recent, maybe education has improved a little.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    I wrote a few sonnets in 11th (iirc, may have been 12th) grade English class (public school, prior to the standardization craze apparently). We did half a year on English Renaissance drama, and wrote some sonnets while we were learning about Shakespeare. I assumed this was relatively typical. It was pretty fun, I think one of mine was about bears on the moon. We basically just learned the rhyming scheme 'abab cdcd efef gg'.
  - thenomad 13y ago
    I was taught to write sonnets at school (and most of the other obvious verse forms, from clerihews to iambic pentameter), but then my school also taught Ancient Greek and Latin.

Zimahl 13y ago

All I have to say about this is maybe. I mean, tropes are used, overused, and come and go - that's how the industry works. Writers are who they are just like directors. You aren't all of a sudden going to turn Zack Snyder into Scorsese or Abrams into Tarantino. But then again, Scorsese and Tarantino aren't making movies like 'Pirates of the Caribbean 7: Wet, Hot Caribbean Summer' that can be absolute shit, but as long a Johnny Depp is playing Jack Sparrow it's a billion dollars globally.

RockyMcNuts 13y ago
There are a lot of tropes - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NarrativeTropes http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NarrativeTropes sort of think anyone who is going by a formula wasn't going to do a masterpiece in the first place.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Masterpiece != originality. Originality is extremely overrated.
gohrt 13y ago
Funny you mention Tarantino, who built his whole career by cut-and-pasting tropes, beats, and clips from classic Asian movies. Or as Tarantino calls it, "homage"

guard-of-terra 13y ago

These days I try to avoid going to movie unless it promises something genuinely new and interesting. All kinds of comic-inspired movies are hard no. And when you spend less time on crap you actually begin to explore the good parts!

angersock 13y ago
Er, Avengers was pulled off pretty well. I'm not sure that you should auto write-off comic movies...
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  I'm not sure I lost anything by not watching it.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    How would you know, though? I personally found it Good Fun, but some other films such as The Dark Knight mentioned above are masterpeices, comic origin or not. Incidentally, Joss Whedon's latest film (which he made in his spare time between shooting and editin g The Avengers) is a fantastic rendition of Shakespeare's Much Ado about nothing, and stars some of the same actors.
    - guard-of-terra 13y ago
      I saw The Dark Knight and I would not have lost anything if I didn't. What's so good about it? Yes it has one or two nice jokes; the whole Joker character is nice; but not enough to agonize thru a 3 hour movie. (Inception was even more boring, they have one good joke and no Joker) While Avatar, for example, is a movie that does deliver something you would not have if you didn't watch it.
      - anigbrowl 13y ago
        De gustibus non est disputandem (an ancient proverb stating 'in matters of taste, there is nodispute [that can result in an objective conclusion]). Ironically, the plot of Avatar is largely a retread of an animated 1992 film called Ferngully (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FernGully:_The_Last_Rainforest). Other than showcasing some interesting 3d technology, and high-quality CG, it's not particularly groundbreaking. Come to think of it, the most impressive thing about Avatar (with a few years' perspective to think about it) was the marketing campaign.

linuxhansl 13y ago

Not surprised. It's not about making a good movie, but about making money. Specifically making money safely, with low risk. Making a different movie is risky, and thus producers prefer tried formulas, no rough edges, no thinking really. Shame.

gandalfgeek 13y ago

There's a sidebar that has the detailed outline, also called a "beat sheet". http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save... If you read that, you will notice that the arc of the hero almost exactly matches the one of the prototypical hero from many cultures and mythologies, as explained by John Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces There are just so many elements one can make a compelling story out of.

CamperBob2 13y ago
If you read that, you will notice that the arc of the hero almost exactly matches the one of the prototypical hero from many cultures and mythologies, as explained by John Campbell in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." Exactly, almost to the point of plagiarism. We may or may not be doomed to exhaust the possibilities of fiction, but we definitely seem fated to rediscover (Joseph) Campbell once every few years.
wj 13y ago
My favorite screenwriting book is based on Joseph Campbell. It is called the Writer's Journey and applies the Hero's Journey to the three act structure. Based on that book I've decided that Die Hard was one of the better scripts ever written. It just nails the Hero's Journey. This topic has actually been on my todo list to write a blog post about for a while.
205guy 13y ago
I came to say the same thing. I can't believe the article didn't trace the practice back to Campbell's book, especially after mentioning Star Wars (which Lucas pretty explicitly based on the formula in the book). To be fair, Campbell was writing about archetypical stories in human societies, not how to make a movie. Lucas correctly saw that they were one and the same.

chocolateboy 13y ago

It's odd that the article fails to mention the most high-profile film to follow Snyder's template, How To Train Your Dragon. Unlike the speculative examples in the article, the creators of that film have explicitly acknowledged Snyder's role in the development of their story (he's thanked in the credits). [1] I guess the fact that it was a huge commercial and critical hit (98% on Rotten Tomatoes) doesn't fit the simplistic, tabloid template that's taking over serious journalism. [1] http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/03/26/how-the-dragon-really-got-trained/ http://www.blakesnyder.com/2010/03/26/how-the-dragon-really-...

davidgerard 13y ago
The three-minute pop song is as formulaic, as horrible done badly, and as wonderful done well. It's like haiku, for lots of money.

foobarqux 13y ago

For anyone else who doesn't like Hollywood here are some recent film recommendations: New World (South Korea) Le Capital (France) The Berlin File (South Korea) (although the end is disappointingly formulaic) After Fall, Winter

foobarqux 13y ago
And watch Old Boy before Hollywood ruins it.
icebraining 13y ago
I liked Barbara (Germany) and Lore (Australia/Germany), both from last year. The former reminds me of a verse from Pink Floyd's Time.

lukifer 13y ago

Stories have always made use of templates and archetypes. However, I vastly prefer Dan Harmon's story circle: http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/4570/673288-danharmonstorytellingchartwired.jpg http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/4570/673288-danharmonsto...

robin2 13y ago
Apparently Michael Moorcock swears by the Lester Dent Master Plot Formula: http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html

anigbrowl 13y ago

When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. Yes, like The Writer's Journey was an explosion that ripped through hollywood, and Story and a bunch of other books. It's amusing and instructive to look at classics like the Iliad or Macbeth through this structural formule. Clearly, this nefarious writer also owns a time machine! Hey, I think that story could sell...

gojomo 13y ago

In the mid 90s, writer David Siegel argued (in his writing and consulting) that a very, very similar "9 act" structure was the key to Hollywood screenplay success, based on his study of hundreds of blockbusters. See: http://web.archive.org/web/19980206083911/http://www.dsiegel.com/film/Film_home.html http://web.archive.org/web/19980206083911/http://www.dsiegel... So I agree with others that the 2005 book is more descriptive of long-existing patterns (and requirements of the movie format), than prescriptive and culpable for recent practice.

julespitt 13y ago
I remember that site! It's a shame he didn't get any recognition - IIRC his outline was a little more vague than the one being described in this article, and therefore had more room for surprise and creativity.

snikolic 13y ago

I would argue that this trend stretches back well before "Save the Cat" or even Syd Field or Joseph Campbell, all the way to Aristotle. This isn't really new stuff. A few years ago I was backpacking through the Gobi desert and stayed with a Mongolian family. On the floor next to my bed I found a copy of Syd Field's famous guide to screenwriting. Until that moment, I hadn't realized just how widespread this philosophy of storytelling had become.

vampirechicken 13y ago

The write lost me completely when he complained about the main character of the Oz movie being the main character of the book on which it's based. That's just stupid. I want my three minutes back.

biot 13y ago

It sounds like a good way to bootstrap a movie script. If someone came up with the same type of framework but for web development, would we end up with a lot of formulaic startups?

icebraining 13y ago
Well, we already have a lot of formulaic web designs thanks to Bootstrap.
- biot 13y ago
  It appears my reference was too oblique...
runevault 13y ago
The problem is, the better ways to use formula is understand but not reference it during the initial writing, then use it AFTER if the story seems broken to try and figure out what is missing, not plug everything in as you start.

VladRussian2 13y ago

couple notes: - did author himself followed some formula (essay, etc..)writing this article? - after watching many Hollywood movies during last decade, i recently re-watched (as i had almost forgot the content of the movie, it was almost like watching for the first time) "For a fistful of dollars" - about half the movie in i was ready and felt like it was the climactic end with the showdown (bank robbery) and was genuinely surprised that it continues well beyond it

davidgerard 13y ago

See KLF's "The Manual", which did the same thing for pop music. http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/07/19/the-manual-hollywood-edition/ http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/07/19/the-manual-hollywood-editio... Intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle-eight, chorus, chorus. Verse sixteen bars, others eight or sixteen bars. This didn't ruin pop music at the time (1988) because it was describing what was already happening. But the Manual damage over the next couple of decades is another question.

joshuak 13y ago

As others have pointed out the concept of a more detailed screenplay structure has been around for a very long time, and typically pretty well understood by working screenwritters. I remember reading about the 9 act structure in the 90s (can't remember if this is the guy who started it, but I think so): Edit corrected link (thanks to hncommenter13 below): http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com The problem with modern blockbuster films as described in the article is for the most part not because of a better understanding of structure but because of less understanding. Perhaps poor writers are using tools like Save the Cat to believe they understand writing better then they do. Or perhaps studio executives (who are notoriously near pathologically risk averse to new ideas) reading new screenplays use a poor understanding of Save the Cat to validate perspective scripts. I can say for sure that many modern movies, particularly summer movies, are absolutely not following these structures, good or bad. Mainstream narrative filmmaking always follows the hero's journey, whether your hero is a neurotic writer in new york, a young black girl in New Orleans, or a genetically modified super hero. Summer blockbusters these days are focused on something different. Visceral response. Well structured storytelling (whether you think that's "Save the Cat" or something else), is about stories and human relatable emotions and characters. Recent films have started focusing more on the roller coster ride of the visuals, and will do any distortion of the story necessary to motivate a visceral impact on the audience. Good storytelling takes a second seat to putting the audience into the most intense situations possible. This has been helping get people into the theaters because the trailers for these types of films make them seam very exciting. But I would argue that Hollywood is struggling right now - the visual effects industry in particular - due to the audience getting wise to these ploys. A bad film is still a bad film, formalized story telling structure won't save you. Even less so if you ignore it so that you can have a bigger explosion. Want to be a good screenwriter? First learn how to write a story. And then guess what? You can still have explosions too.

hncommenter13 13y ago
It was actually David Siegel, one of the first well-known web designers, who wrote about the Nine Act structure. I remember reading this sometime in the late 90s. Here is the archived version from 1996: http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com/film/Film_home.html http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com...

petegrif 13y ago

I was a pro screenwriter for 20 years and am intimately familiar with a great deal of 'prior art' in thinking about screenplays. There is nothing new in 'Save the Cat.'

petegrif 13y ago

I was a pro screenwriter for 20 years and am intimately familiar with a great deal of 'prior art' in thinking about screenplays. There is nothing new in 'Save the Cat.'

jemfinch 13y ago

What I'm more interested in, but the author (unfortunately) didn't expound upon: tell me what movies don't follow the expected "beats". Those are the ones I want to see.

steve19 13y ago

Is there an equivalent popular/influential book for modern fiction?

philmcc 13y ago

You don't actually have a problem with movies using formulas, you have a problem with them feeling formulaic. (Chances are.) Formulas exist because, when followed properly, they work. For the casual movie viewer, I'm sure that 90% of your favorite movies adhere to this structure, more or less. That, alone, won't cause your movie to feel bad. There are countless other variables that affect whether or not a movie feels formulaic but, very roughly, I'd suggest that it's when a writer/production team feels like the formula -alone- is enough, that it should work. The beats are just there, but there's still no pulse. IMHO, this summer, Fast Six nailed the beats perfectly, and people walked away mostly satisfied. Man Of Steel didn't, people were unhappy. Most Pixar movies are lockstep with this structure. Few people gripe about the formulaic pixar movies. You could probably convince me that movies, as an artform, are more or less built for this structure in the same way that sonnets have a particular rhyme scheme. Sure you can make other kinds of poems, but if the audience really likes sonnets, what's the point? I think the average movie-goer really likes Sonnets, so to speak. And there's nothing wrong with that. Not everyone has seen enough movies to develop an appetite for The Tree of Life. Note: I've read Save the Cat, have studied screenwriting at a graduate level, and have a (very humble) IMDB listing. So consider this my 2.1 cents worth.

lazyeye 13y ago

Globalization is a significant influence on screenwriting big films. Because blockbuster are now being produced for a global market they turn up the special effects and visual action and turn down the plot subtlety and complexity which might otherwise be confusing to a non-English speaking audience.

icebraining 13y ago
I don't get it, why do you assume a non-English speaking audience would be more confused by subtlety and complexity? From my experience, Hollywood movies have always been less subtle than the films from most other countries. And not only in movies; for example, British comedy seems to be turned into a caricature of itself when remade in the US.

TrevorJ 13y ago

It's like anything else - to create, it is first helpful to be able to deconstruct examples first and understand how they work.

cafard 13y ago

After seeing "Top Gun" ca. 1986, I said to those I went with that Hollywood had forgotten how to make movies. It knew how to make commercials (TG is full of sequences that would fit right into a Navy recruiting commercial) and music videos ("You've lost that loving feeling"), but that was about it. The rest of the movie was negligible, though perhaps I should have added in video games to allow for the fighter-jet stuff. But was it ever that different? The stuff we still watch is the exception. Hollywood cranked out a hell of a lot of stuff 80 and 70 years ago that nobody but a film studies graduate student could bring himself to sit through. Read for example S.J. Perelman on how the studios worked. As for "adolescent men coming to grips with who they are", arrested development is one of Hollywood's favorite subjects. I noticed this in watching "Sideways", but would Dean and Brando have ever made their names without it? [Edit] On consideration, isn't "adolescent men coming to grips with who they are" a large theme in Western literature? (And I suppose, but can't cite, other literatures also.) The Odyssey kicks off with Athena inspiring Telemachus to independence. Shakespeare's Henry IV plays are all about Prince Hal becoming Henry V. War and Peace follows three men from adolescence to maturity, and one of them, Prince Andrei, to a couple of levels. And I think one could find examples of literature following adolescent women through.

callmeed 13y ago

I have read this book 3x and it has always been a favorite. The thing is, as soon as you read this book, you'll recognize the formula in most movies you watch, including movies that came out before the book and especially family + rom-com movies. Personally, I doubt the book is responsible. It just heightened awareness. After all, Hollywood rarely likes to take risks. If a formula works, they're going to green light such projects.

yurylifshits 13y ago

Notes on screenplay structures by Reddit's CEO Yishan Wong http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/things-i-learned-from-my-wifes-screenwriting-education-part-i.html http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/things-i-learned-from-my-wifes... Vladimir Propp was the original pioneer of narrative structures, published the foundational research on fairytale sequences in 1928 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Propp

anigbrowl 13y ago
You might want to check into Aristotle's Poetics.

6ren 13y ago

It makes sense we'd refine our theory of story telling. It is modelling an aspect of humanity, analogous to how lossy image compression models human visual perception. Along the way, we might have a spuriously precise theory, that excludes perfectly good stories that would resonate with us. But ultimately, when the theory is as accurate as it can be, it does not mean that stories become formulaic. I don't just mean that some variation is still possible. I mean that the theory is merely a way to communicate effectively - like spelling and grammar, like public speaking techniques, and the fundamental ancient story rules, like having a narrative, having characters, having a problem to solve, having help from outside. Is having a narrative - a sequence of events - really that limiting? Yes, it is. But you can still work within that structure. There are infinite possibilities within it, the same for any other framework for communication. However, a more serious problem is that the "theory" of summer blockbusters is not modelling the human story perception at all - it is modelling the particular demographic of male-adolescent story perception. Who knew? I think it's perfectly fine that some particular demographic is being served - like bubble gum pop music. Other movies are still being made, with the long tail, as are books and blogs etc. And, really, male adolescents are not completely divorced from the rest of humanity. We can still enjoy their films.

6ren 13y ago

It's a refinement of the Hero's Journey (see Vogler's memo; Joseph Campbell). The formula itself: http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save_the_cat_beat_sheet.html http://www.slate.com/content/slate/sidebars/2013/07/the_save...

6ren 13y ago

About 2/3...3/4 the way through, the mood felt a bit forced, and it occurred to me that he was applying the formula to the piece itself. This may be a taste of the problem... but I think it's more imperfect application than damning the formula itself. Like grammar, it constrains but doesn't limit.

gohrt 13y ago

See also Dan Harmon's story circle, a less detailed version of this: http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_Basic_Shit http://channel101.wikia.com/wiki/Story_Structure_101:_Super_...

gohrt 13y ago

Oh boy, I can't wait to see the article Peter Suderman writes when he discovers tvtropes.com.

ricardobeat 13y ago

For anyone still doubtful of how much structure and intent there is in a screenplay, this deconstruction of Jurassic Park is an amazing read: http://www.blakesnyder.com/2013/04/05/the-jurassic-park-beat-sheet/ http://www.blakesnyder.com/2013/04/05/the-jurassic-park-beat... While not exactly following the 'save the cat' formula, and probably being a much better movie for that, it clearly rests on the same principles.

hristov 13y ago

I remember an old Vladimir Nabokov quote that is very apropos to this. I do not remember the quote exactly and i do not have the book with me, so I cannot look it up, but it went something like this: "The play was in perfect harmony with the modern rules of drama and storytelling or, in other words, it was perfectly idiotic." I read this quote about 10 years ago in a Nabokov short story but I keep getting reminded of it whenever I see a modern movie. And they are getting very idiotic. The strict plot structure is making characters say or do stupid things just so the action can follow the predefined plot lines. This really prevents one from creating believable characters. All the reverses (the false victories and false losses) often make characters reverse themselves until they become mostly unbelievable to anyone that tries to remember the entire movie from beginning to end.

x0054 13y ago

It's not that they are so formulaic, it's that they are so identical. It's as if every one who used bootstrap for web design also used identical color schemes and layouts. Take a look at the upcoming "RIP Department." It's like someone just took the Men in Black script and replaced all references to aliens with references to the undead. It's the same movie!