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Really? I missed it. Granted, I didn't read it too carefully because I felt he got repetitive, but I definitely got the impression that he was claiming that the
by scott_s 13y ago
Really? I missed it. Granted, I didn't read it too carefully because I felt he got repetitive, but I definitely got the impression that he was claiming that the book caused the scripts, and not the other way around. Near the beginning:
Maybe that’s what Snyder intended. But that’s not how it turned out. In practice, Snyder’s beat sheet has taken over Hollywood screenwriting. Movies big and small stick closely to his beats and page counts. Intentionally or not, it’s become a formula — a formula that threatens the world of original screenwriting as we know it.
I read that as "this book caused this kind of screenwriting," not "this book documents the kind of screenwriting that goes on."
- tripzilch 13y agoI suppose the point is, analysis of storytelling elements isn't new, there's many more books written about it than just the Cat one. An interesting question (and one that the article IMO does not quite attempts to answer) would be: the Cat's description of storytelling-elements is quite formulaic, descriptive and precise. did the explicitness of this particular book cause (or play an important role in causing) the explosion of formula Hollywood plot-lines[0], or is it merely part of a general movement, flavour of the times? in short, is this "beat-sheet" literally used as a "cheat-sheet", or does it just continues the tradition of storytelling deconstruction? Maybe this is what you meant by the article not really selling you on it, though. (there's a couple more questions along this line that I would think are interesting as well, but you can probably guess them) [0] in particular, the part of phenomenon that is real and not based on selection bias.