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Act II to Act III Transition

I have been reading a lot of scripts lately where the writer struggles with the transition between Act II and Act III. I can relate, because when I first started writing, I had no idea how to handle that transition. The transition between Act I and Act II is easy. It’s where the adventure begins, and it is the moment the hero commits to the adventure and sets out to accomplish whatever outer goal has been set up.

But the transition from Act II to Act III is trickier.

The adventure is already happening. The hero hasn’t yet won the prize. What could possibly happen to make the story change directions again? I got my answer in a screenwriting class at USC when the instructor referred to it as the moment the hero loses everything. More commonly known as the “all-is-lost” moment, it’s the point in the screenplay where it looks like the hero has failed. What’s more, the hero has failed because she was unable to overcome whatever inner weakness has been blocking her. All protagonists must have this trait, and it must conflict with their ability to get what they want. That inability to overcome their inner weakness hits hardest at the Act II-Act III transition, causing the protagonist to appear to lose everything. Act III then becomes about the protagonist overcoming whatever their internal weakness is to either ultimately accomplish the goal or to ultimately fail.

Is that what always happens? Not necessarily, but most of the time, it is. The transition between Act II and Act III must be the most dramatic moment of your screenplay, and I have seen too many examples from aspiring writers when that moment falls flat. If that dramatic moment means Will breaks up with Skylar in Good Will Hunting, then that’s what it is. If it means Indiana Jones loses the Ark of the Covenant to the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark, then that’s what it is. Or it could be something like the Rebels deciphering the plans to the Death Star and figuring out how to destroy it as it bears down to destroy them in Star Wars. It isn’t an “all-is-lost” moment, but the direction of the story shifts from them trying to escape the Death Star to them trying to destroy it.

That is the overriding point of what is being said here. The transition from Act II to Act III must be and/or do a couple of things. It must either be the most dramatic moment in the script where your hero loses everything, or it must change the direction of the story because what had been the main goal of the story was either already accomplished or has been made impossible to accomplish. Either way, the hero is forced to change direction to accomplish her ultimate goal.

Consider Raiders of the Lost Ark for a moment. When Act I ends, Indy’s goal is to find the Ark of the Covenant. Well, he finds it in the middle of Act II. At that point, his goal shifts to keeping the Nazis from getting it. Act II ends with the Nazis doing just that, and they kidnap Marion to boot. It looks like Indy has failed, and now he must change direction again and spend Act III getting the Ark back from the Nazis.

The major plot points of a script should always change the story’s direction. Whether it’s setting off on the adventure at the end of Act I or appearing to have failed at the end of Act II and needing to overcome some inner weakness to accomplish that goal in Act III, new and experienced writers must make sure that moment that transitions us from Act II to Act III is dramatic enough to change the story’s direction. Otherwise, the story’s structure will fall flat, as will the story’s entire sense of drama.

Proofread Your Screenplay!

This might seem like an afterthought, but proofreading is an underrated skill in screenwriting. It should not be underestimated, though, how important it is. A script laden with typing errors, spelling errors, and formatting errors will be destined for the “pass” pile. It doesn’t matter how good your story is, how likable your characters are, or how the riveting action will keep people on the edge of their seats. If the script isn’t presented professionally, the people reading it will assume you’re an amateur, and they will move on to the next script in the stack.

Don’t be one of those writers.

You might think this goes without saying, but I have received several scripts over the years with multiple errors per page. I tell writers that if I were a studio reader or executive, I would stop reading after a certain number of errors. If you don’t care enough about your own screenplay to take the time to literally make sure your I’s are dotted and your T’s are crossed, why should I care about whether the story is any good or not?

The other problem is that it smacks of laziness when a screenplay clearly hasn’t been proofread. If you won’t make an effort to make sure your work is clean on your own, then how can I count on you to make the required effort when I call out notes or rewrites? The entertainment industry is a detail-oriented business, and if your script isn’t buttoned up, you will not be taken seriously as a writer.

I have been guilty of a few typing errors here and there, and some executives will let that slide while others will call it out. But when there are so many errors that it becomes distracting, there’s no way in hell you’re getting that executive, producer, or agent to consider your script. In fact, it’s not likely it will even make it that far, as the reader or assistant will probably pass on it before it even makes it up the ladder.

Do yourself a favor.

Take pride in your work. Demonstrate your willingness to go the extra mile to ensure your work is presented professionally. Do not cut corners on proofreading because I don’t want to have to think about all the errors while I’m reading it when I should be thinking about how good the story is and how much I like the characters.

Story Structure In Your Screenplay and The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is an Excellent Tool for Structuring the Story of Your Screenplay

For all those screenwriters struggling with story structure, I like to suggest using the Hero’s Journey as an outline and determining where your hero is in the story at each of the Journey’s twelve stages. Looking at a diagram of the Hero’s Journey, one can see how the stages break down on a per-act basis. Rather than thinking of a script in terms of 30 or up to 60 pages, one can look at the twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey; with each stage being 5-10 pages, writing a screenplay becomes much more palatable.

Act I

  • Ordinary World: The Hero living her normal life. Something is wrong or out of balance, but no acknowledgment of that is made.
  • Call to Adventure: An inciting incident leads the Hero to discover this lack of balance that must be corrected.
  • Refusal: Believing the challenge is too great, the Hero turns down the opportunity to go on the adventure.
  • Meeting the Mentor: This character may already have been introduced, but he helps push the hero towards going on the adventure, often by giving the hero something, whether it’s a physical gift or just advice and encouragement.
  • Crossing the First Threshold: The Hero leaves the Ordinary World and enters the Special World, committing to the adventure.

Act IIA

  • Tests, Allies & Enemies: The first tests the Hero faces on her adventure. These prepare her for bigger challenges ahead.
  • Approach: The Hero prepares for what will be the biggest challenge yet.
  • Supreme Ordeal: This challenge often raises the stakes for the hero, and sends the story in another direction. Consider Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is when Indiana Jones discovers the Ark of the Covenant, so the story shifts from looking for the Ark to preventing the Nazis from getting it.

Act IIB

  • Reward: The Hero gets a break after surviving the Ordeal. This is often a love scene or a scene in a bar.
  • The Road Back: Sometimes referred to as the “all is lost” moment, the hero, unable to overcome her inner flaw, appears to lose all hope of accomplishing her outer goal.

Act III

  • Resurrection: The Hero overcomes her inner flaw, thus growing and learning as a person.
  • Return with the Elixir: In the story’s climax, the hero wins the day (or doesn’t) and gains new knowledge to become a more complete person (or she dies).

This template can be valuable to screenwriters of all levels, but especially for beginning or novice screenwriters who are still learning the craft and finding their voices. Using this as a template and fitting your protagonist into each of these stages will not only help structure the screenplay properly, but it will also help build drama, develop character depth, and maximize the story’s pacing.

Wicked: What Modern Cinema Should Be

I will preface this post by saying that while I have always been familiar with Wicked as a popular piece of modern musical theater, I have never seen the show, nor have I read the book by Gregory Maguire. I was familiar with many of the songs, like Defying Gravity, Popular, and The Wizard and I. If I’m being totally honest, I avoided the book because, to me, it was glorified fan fiction by someone who had no connection with the original story, taking it upon himself to take a classic piece of American literature and turn it on its head. That said, I was mildly interested in seeing the feature. It wasn’t anything that I was going to go out of my way for, but I needed to see it so I could podcast about it, and that podcast will be available on the Gen XvZ: A Movie Podcast this Tuesday, Nov. 26.

I will continue by saying that not only was I pleasantly surprised by Wicked, but I was also very nearly blown away. Wicked is one of my favorite movies of the year so far. While it’s not a perfect movie, it has all the components that a film should have. It has deep characters who grow throughout the story and have compelling outer goals and inner desires. It has an emotionally engaging story that allows the audience to root for those characters and feel engaged with what they’re experiencing. It looks amazing. I would expect to hear the names of the production designers, set designers, costume designers, and VFX artists quite a bit at this year’s Oscar ceremony.

Most of all, it’s fantastically entertaining.

There have been many entertaining movies this year, but Wicked takes its entertainment value to the next level. All the above components combine to create a spectacle for the eyes, ears, and heart.

As mentioned, it’s not perfect. I felt like the first half of the movie was a little too much Harry Potter meets a little too much High School Musical. It was hitting a lot of the same beats, and even the hat that ends up belonging to Elphaba looked an awful lot like the Sorting Hat. However, once Elphaba Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) go to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, the stronger components of the storytelling kicked in, and that was when the movie reached its full potential. Not that the first half lacked entertainment value in its own right. The musical numbers were great, and the seeds of the story were all sown in the first two hours. But for me, the story really got interesting when they got to the Emerald City.

Side note, there are also a couple of awesome cameos when they get there.

From a structural perspective, the screenplay worked very well despite its nontraditional structure. This film is two hours and forty minutes long, and it only represents the first half of the story. Presuming part two, when released next year, will have a similar runtime, it’s reasonable to presume that Wicked Part I ended at the Supreme Ordeal stage of the Hero’s Journey.

If that’s the case, this film gave Elphaba an outstanding Supreme Ordeal and also gave her a tight Hero’s Journey to this point. We see her Ordinary World before arriving at the Shiz school. She refuses the call to attend the school, but her display of magic leads her to meet her mentor in Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), who convinces her to study magic which could lead to an opportunity to work with the Wizard of Oz. From there, Shiz is the Ordinary World, and Elphaba meets many allies and enemies and experiences many tests. Glinda is a terrific archetypal shapeshifter in that she starts out as an enemy to Elphaba before shifting to an ally. They cross the first threshold together when they take the train to the Special World of the Emerald City. The Approach happens as they make their way through the city to meet the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum), which leads Elphaba to her Supreme Ordeal of realizing the Wizard and Madam Morrible are not who they pretend to be, which starts her down the path to becoming the Wicked Witch of the West.

That is outstanding story development, and I’m excited to see where it goes from here. It’s also a good example of how malleable the Hero’s Journey can be. Director Jon M. Chu and screenwriters Winnie Holzman and Dana Fox effectively shook up the order of The Hero’s Journey while still giving us a dramatic story that felt like it was naturally developed.

There is one other significant imperfection.

Actually, there are two, and I would be remiss for not mentioning them. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum sing made a pretty bad mistake. It’s not quite to the level of Russell Crowe’s singing performance in Les Miserable, but it’s close. The one saving grace was that both of their songs were short, so we didn’t have to listen to either of them sing for long. However, each song was long enough to see that neither of them was a trained singer in a cast that had some fantastic singers, and putting Yeoh and Goldblum in that position was not fair to them.

In the grand scheme of this film, however, that was a relatively minor transgression. Overall, this is an outstanding film that should have an incredible opening weekend and should do amazing numbers at the box office throughout its run. It should also do very well come awards season, and I can see it getting nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Actress in a Leading Role, and Actress in a Supporting Role, as well as the aforementioned artistic categories and other technical categories.

One other thing I would recommend is seeing Wicked in IMAX if you can. The art direction of this film is stunning, and the only way to truly appreciate it for all its worth is to see it on as big a screen as you possibly can. It deserves to be seen that way.

Gladiator II Makes Us Look in the Mirror

Years ago, when I first heard that there would be a sequel to Gladiator, a film that won Best Picture and is one of the greatest films of this century’s first decade, my initial thought was, “Why?” Why do they feel the need to make a sequel to a film that had a closed and satisfying ending, was fully self-contained, and had been released two decades ago? Now, here we are, 24 years after the first one came out, and finally getting a sequel. I always have a bit of trepidation when a sequel comes out a decade or two rather than a year or two after the original. Would it be able to capture that same magic? Would too much time have passed making the idea now seem stale? The answer to both of those questions is yes and no.

I found Gladiator II to be very much a mixed bag. The plot bothered me, and I felt I was only truly engaged for about twenty or thirty minutes around the transition from Act II to Act III. A lot of great character and story moments were revealed during that stretch, and I found myself feeling entertained and emotionally impacted by what was going on. But most of the rest of the movie felt like a rehashing of the first one. They were trying to do the same thing, but more. Instead of tigers chained in the arena, they had to fight baboons. Instead of one psychopathic emperor, there were two. Instead of Lucilla (Connie Nelson) being in love with the gladiator, Lucius (Paul Mescal), he was now her son.

It’s that plot component that bothered me the most. Not that Lucius was her son, but how they handled it from a storytelling standpoint. We are shown that Lucilla ushered Lucius out of the Colosseum immediately after Maximus killed Commodus and also died from his wounds. Fearing that he was now the heir to the throne, she sent him into hiding and never saw him again. I’m not going to get into all of it, but there was a whole lot of confusion over who he was, how he felt about Rome, and how he felt about his mother. He seemed to be bitter toward all of it before suddenly turning, and I just didn’t buy it.

My main critique of the story is that, until we get to the end of the second act, is that it’s disorganized and confused. There is a solid structure to the story, and it’s clear who we’re rooting for, but the motivations of Lucius and General Marcus Acasius (Pedro Pascal) seem very confused. Pascal actually did a good job of bringing Acasius’ ambiguity about expanding the empire simply to suit the egos of twin emperors Geta and Caracalla. Another thing the movie doesn’t explain is how the two of them came to power. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. Like Maximus in the first movie, we see Acasius win a glorious victory at the beginning of the film, but his glory is tempered by the real-world consequences of the blood he had a hand in spilling. He’s tired of it and believes Rome needs new leadership.

So, like in the first movie, he has his troops outside the city, ready to come in and overthrow the emperors. However, like in the first movie, they get wind of the plot before it can be consummated and bring their wrath on the conspirators.

One thing that Director Ridley Scott did differently is the brilliant addition of Denzel Washington as the slave trader Macrinus. Unlike Oliver Reed’s Proximo, Macrinus has more devious plans in mind than just making money off of the gruesome deaths of others. He has revenge on his mind, and he wants to change the entire political order of Rome. Washington played this character with terrific charm and sinister villainy and kind of stole the show. He was absolutely the most interesting character in the film.

Otherwise, I felt a lot of the acting was subpar, which was disappointing. The acting in the first Gladiator is fantastic, but outside of Washington and perhaps Pascal, the other actors didn’t bring their A-games. Or maybe they did, and it just wasn’t good enough. Mescal was particularly flat in his performance, and Nelson, reprising her role from nearly a quarter century ago, didn’t seem all that interested in being there.

After reflecting on the movie overnight, I will say that there is a lot of great stuff going on thematically. In the ultimate answer to my question of why this movie was made at all, and specifically why it was made now, I have my answer. It was made to make us look in the mirror. Rome in Gladiator was still a majestic empire. The city was clean, the population happy, and the society was prosperous despite the fact that they were living under a dictatorship. The Rome of Gladiator II exists sixteen years after the events of the first movie and is clearly a society in decline. Poverty ravages the population while the elite conduct wars and conduct games in the Colosseum. Homeless people beg for food, and society is constantly teetering on the verge of unrest and revolt.

It’s impossible to watch this movie and not consider it to be a parable for what is happening in the United States and several other democracies around the world. Our nations seem more and more to be led by people who are more concerned with maintaining their grip on power than sharing prosperity with their citizens. Gladiator II is holding a mirror in front of us, warning us that we are heading down a path to a much worse place than where we currently reside.

I tried like hell to watch this movie with an open mind. Gladiator is a film that I love, and I knew this one would have a hard time measuring up to it. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to enjoy Gladiator II as much as I could have if I had been able to get the first movie out of my head. But that’s what sequels do. For better or worse, they invite comparison to their predecessors. I do believe that the strong thematic components come close to saving Gladiator II and making it a better film than it had a right to be, but I will always defer to the first one. I could see myself watching it again many more times. I do not see myself revisiting Gladiator II any time soon.

Own the Future: Why Screenwriters Should Embrace AI

To say the movie industry is in a transitional stage would be an understatement. Studios are still behind their pre-strike production output. Despite the outcome of the strikes, AI is still seen as an existential threat to professional screenwriters and the screenwriting community at large. The trend of studios staking all their output on tentpole franchises hasn’t seemed to lose momentum inside Hollywood studios, despite the fact that audiences speaking with their wallets want to see something new.

It is the last point I would like to focus on. Justine Bateman recently wrote an OpEd for The Hollywood Reporter in which she declared that Hollywood is dead and a new model will rise from its ashes. Naturally, this is her opinion, and you can say what you want about the career she has had, but the fact remains that she has spent her entire life and career in the entertainment industry, and she knows as much as anyone about how it worked then and how it works now. It’s reasonable to believe that her ideas on how it will work in the future are more than plausible.

In her article, Bateman opined that the phoenix that rises from the ashes of old Hollywood will be one of unbridled creativity. It will be a leaner system where artists and other creatives will be able to work unencumbered by the traditional Hollywood executives who have dominated the business for the past thirty years. Smaller, more independent studios will grow in this new garden of creativity, blossoming fresh, innovative story ideas that would never see the light of day in the current system.

While such a utopia seems unlikely at this point, there is reason for optimism. No one ever made money betting against technology, and now that the Pandora’s Box of AI has been opened, it will never be closed. The future of the industry will likely be split between AI’s masters and those who are left in its wake. It’s time for all of us to take a cue from Walt Disney. When television first became a thing, all of the Hollywood studio heads were terrified of it. Seeing it as the wave of the future, Disney embraced it and made it a significant part of the work they produced. In so doing, the Disney studio was in a position to take advantage of a burgeoning market and technology, which helped the studio grow. Disney the studio was at the forefront of showing their library of content on television because Disney the man had the foresight to recognize television as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Screenwriters must have the same foresight that Disney had. There’s no reason to allow executive producers and studios to dictate the terms of AI’s use and expansion. AI must be seen as a tool. Yes, it is going to change the industry in a profound way. It’s already doing that in fact, but it doesn’t have to be a death knell for screenwriters. The future is open-ended. As Yoda told Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, “Always in motion is the future.”

This is a similar transition that happened in the animation industry a quarter century ago.

Animation was the first form of filmmaking, dating back to Windsor McKay’s Gerti the Dinosaur cartoons that first mesmerized audiences in 1914. From that point on, animation was drawn and painted by hand. Disney developed the CAPS system, which turned ink and paint into a digital process in the late 80s and early 90s, and Tron showed the first glimpses of what computer animation could do in the mid-80s. By 1996, PIXAR released Toy Story, the first feature-length CGI film, and a decade later, hand-drawn animation seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be dead.

I was working at Disney in the early 2000s. I worked on three of Disney’s last hand-drawn movies before the switch to CGI, and I worked on Disney’s first all-CGI film. To say the transition was clunky would be an understatement. A lot of talented people who had worked at Disney for decades lost their jobs. But an interesting thing also happened. Those who were willing to either embrace or accept the fact that CGI was the way Disney animation was going to make movies moving forward, for the most part, held on. Animators who made a living working in graphite made the transition to pixels. They realized the computer, as different as it is from a pencil, was simply nothing more than another tool they could use to create their art. Many of those artists are still working today, whether it’s at Disney, DreamWorks, or any other studio around town.

The animation industry has been one thing for eight decades.

There had been one way to make an animated film, and many people felt it would be the only way to make one moving into the future. But the future has a funny way of changing. It also has a funny way of being feared by the very people who should embrace it.

The same thing can be said about screenwriting. The art of writing a screenplay has been relatively unchanged from the time sound was introduced into filmmaking. Certainly, there have been variations on the craft. There have also been movies that have been made without traditional screenplays, but those movies are few and far between. Ninety-five percent of the movies you have ever seen started with a man or woman in front of a typewriter or computer pounding away on a keyboard. Just like Disney made The Princess and the Frog after the CGI revolution happened and several other international studios continue to produce animated films in the traditional way, there will always be a place for the traditional screenwriter in the production pipeline.

But now is the time to explore other options. This is a curve you want to be in front of. This is a wave you want to be on top of rather than getting swept underneath. Now is the time to own the future because, as Jimmy Buffett said, “I can’t see the future, but I know it’s coming fast.”