The Megahit Movies by Richard Stefanik

Author:Richard Stefanik
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 1882373049
Publisher: RMS Productions Company
Published: 2013-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

SEQUENCES DESIGNING A SERIES OF SCENES

Entertaining the Audience

Visual Material

Excitement

Surprise

Suspense

The Chase

Ticking Clocks

Using Props

Exposition ENTERTAINING THE AUDIENCE

“Movies are for audiences...Don’t be boring!!!” —Richard Walter, Screenwriting “If the spectators are interested, they will sit still and be silent; if they are amused, they will laugh; if they are pleased, they will applaud.” —Raymond Hull, How To Write A Play

Entertainment is something that is performed to amuse an audience. Amusement causes people to laugh or smile and to make time pass pleasantly. To entertain an audience means to give them the thrills and excitement of vicariously being in the midst of danger while still having a pleasurable and humorous experience.

“A correct dramatic construction presents the story content in the most effective manner. It should prevent the spectator from feeling boredom, fatigue, dissatisfaction, and lack of speed. It should cause surprise, hope, fear, suspense, and forward movement.”

—Eugene Vale, The Technique of Screen and Television Writing

Every scene should be constructed in terms of its effect on the audience. Each character’s action or any event that occurs in the story should be designed in terms of its impact on the audience. The audience’s emotional reactions should be carefully designed to maintain the intended character empathy, along with the appropriate levels of tension, stress, fear, surprise, and laughter.

“We must learn to so construct a story that it will arouse, sustain, and steadily increase the interest of the spectator. To achieve this, we must make use of the spectator’s capacity and ability to anticipate.” — Eugene Vale, The Technique of Screen and Television Writing

Humor in the midst of conflict relieves tension, and produces pleasure in the audience. To entertain an audience is to make them laugh in the midst of terror and excitement. The audience desires thrills and the experience of seeing fascinating images that they have never seen before. What they want is a sense of adventure: to journey somewhere they’ve never gone before. Most of the popular films considered contain elements of adventure in which all the characters are in great danger and jeopardy in a strange environment. But most importantly, the audience will be entertained if they have a pleasurable and emotionally satisfying experience.

VISUAL MATERIAL “One picture is worth a thousand words...for this reason it may be wise for the writer to depend on the visual sources of information than on dialogue.”

—Eugene Vale, Technique of Screen and Television Writing

Film is a visual medium. It is not radio, an audio medium, nor is it literary, in which all information is expressed with written words. The visual image is essential to the cinematic form.

A story must be told through images. In narrative films, the story is dominant, and the images must be chosen and ordered to construct a story that is emotionally effective. Story is more fundamental than image, even though the story is necessarily communicated through the use of images. A sequence of vivid images will not constitute a story unless the essential elements of story structure, such as character, objectives, values, decisions, obstacles, and emotional conflicts organize these images.

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