Workshop Results

One of our days we got to do a workshop with Mark Grindle. Great guy, and he really knows what he's talking about. We got to talk about story development and things of the like. My notes are kinda sporadic, and I really shoulda done this post closer to when he talked to us but I decided to be a procrastinator and here I am, so bare with me. :D So one thing crucially mentioned during his talk was simplicity. Getting things too complicated can make you go down inspirational dead ends and then the story doesn't quite wrap up nicely. So when in doubt, keep it simple. There are 3 main things that can develop or drive a story; one Authority/Power, two Desire/Emotion, and three Destiny. Now, all of these can drive a story or just one. You can pair these with a theme for further success. Themes for storylines are, Need for Desire or Need for Love, Want for Acceptance or Desire for Validation, Desire for Order, Good vs. Evil, Desire for Morality, Horrors or Fear of the Unknown, and lastly Desire for Justice. After he gave us this list I saw a lot of these aspects in movies I'd watched, and it gave us a great base of knowledge to add to our own story development.  So when it comes to a story, you definitely get characters. An important thing with them, is to keep them true. No matter how they're developed, you don't want them being all back and forth in their ideology. Some of the main characters include the Protagonist (main), Antagonist (opposite of main character, could be anything that needs dealt with person or objects), and your obstacles.  Once creating a story, you need to follow some basic steps. You need to establish a setting, theme, and the where and when. After you tick off that, your character needs to solve something in the real world. You can follow the structure of a 3 act or 5 act system. In the 1st: Time, Place, Character, Antagonist, Desire, Event all need to be learned. At the end of the act comes the *Insighting Incident* This would be the why a character goes on his or her journey. An example being Bruce Wayne's Parent's being killed in the alley way and his need from then on for Justice thus his journey to becoming Batman. 2nd: Point at which you can't go back, challenge, confrontation. 3rd:Resolution, who do they become? Over the course of a five act, you can add more details in and stretch the story out a bit more.  After this we broke for lunch and then when coming back, were suppose to come up with a quick storyline of our own either as a group or singularly. This could be for a 3 min or 90 min film or a 6 part series and would incorporate the elements we went over during his talk. I worked with a classmate Penny for ours.  Our setting, is a medium sized American City. Not a large one like Detroit, but also not a small one where the population is 20. Its modern day. We chose a theme of Justice.  Act 1: Charlie and his wife are out to dinner, you see them acting like a normal couple. Small details like a couple empty glasses next to this dinner plate, her looking at the glasses with slight contempt. Things go blurry, flashes of scenes start to play out almost through hazy eyes. Charlie's wife is walking, him near her. Lights blare on the screen. Disorientation is shown. A car schreeches, you see charlie holding his wife as a car drives off. Cops show up, start investigating, Charlie's being questioned. In his drunken sadness and anger he lashes out and hits a cop, they arrest him for Public Intox. Results in ordered AA treatment. Act 2: He gets sober, learns cops have no idea who did it. He wants Justice. Starts looking into it himself. Looks over cop reports, Finds time gaps in his memory and their facts. Report of his wife yelling at him when leaving the restraunt. Challenges with himself if he could have done what he thinks he's done. Keeps delving to only find out it was him who killed his wife and his memories were a drunken lie. Act 3: He falls off the wagon, wars with himself on what to do. Does he turn himself in? Keeps drinking. Next, see him eating in the restraunt where it all began, no glasses next to him this time. Then he's in his car, drives to the scene where his wife was killed. Drives off into the ditch as fast as he can, totaling his car into the nearby trees.  One thing Mark mentioned we could do is open up with the crash and rework the first Act some. We kinda planned the Crash and accident being the Insighting Incident. But he said that could be the AA and getting sober, and thus since he's overcomed this he should find Justice for his wife as well.  It was a fun exercise and we learned a lot on story development. All and all a good class that we had.