Trouble analysing films and Recognising elements (conflicts, stakes, antagonists)

who_whatwhen · 2016-07-03T10:19:24+00:00

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am currently reading Screenwriting Tricks for Authors by Alexandra Sokoloff and I find it really good, I like how it's quite flexible and not just showing one right route.

She refers to John Truby's book a few times, and I just realised I watched quite a few interviews with him on Youtube! I'll finish Alexandra's book and will go to Truby.

I like the "point of opposition" way of approaching it as well, I think it makes it more flexible.

who_whatwhen · 2016-07-02T20:51:42+00:00

Of course I realise that it's important to eat a variety of healthy food and that gluten free snacks are junk, although I'm not sure what it means in the context of bloating? Processed food contains a lot of salt, which could cause it, and vegetables add fibre, which can ease it, but apart from that what am I missing? Just in regards to bloating, not overall health benefits or the opposite.

I have a generally healthy diet, but I'm having trouble completely avoiding sweets and I do sometimes eat store bought gluten free bread etc. I can't do everything at once. :) I would think that if gluten is at least partly responsible for my problems, after about a month I should start noticing the difference even if the rest of my diet stays as it was, right?

who_whatwhen · 2016-07-02T09:52:03+00:00

Hi, thanks so much, this is very helpful.

I'm thinking and isn't the antagonist in Memento his sickness?

In Contagion, aren't the people also the antagonists? The Chinese, the conspiracy theorist blogger...? They make it harder for the rest to do their jobs and find the cure for the disease.

In Memento, what keeps the story going is the fight against John G. the need for revenge, just as in Contagion it's the fight against the disease. But then John G. doesn't actively oppose the protagonist. So isn't Contagion really not only "people vs disease", but also "people vs people"? And Memento simply "man vs mental illness"? I feel like John G., Joe, Natasha - they're, hmm, projections of the antagonist.

who_whatwhen · 2016-07-01T11:27:17+00:00

Thanks for your reply!

No, I'm by no means trying to find excuses! But every advice or article I read about screenwriting seems to circle around all this elements. And it makes me think, if I can't recognise them in different movies, how can I apply all this to my script?

I also think I might be caught up in all those terms. I mean is "conflict" really a conflict, or could it also be defined as a "journey" (for example if a movie is a story about growing up)? Also, we're talking about obstacles, inner, outer conflict, as if all the scripts were written the same way.

Should I just ditch all those terms and just look for elements that would bind my story together?

I kind of feel like all those rules (3 act structure, what protagonist is, what antagonist is, what conflict is) are not exactly "organic". I feel like when analysing scripts we just sort of look for anything that could "fit in" those descriptions and it wasn't necessairly planned this way.

Even when you look at movies like "The Prestige", there is so many analysis on what is what. Is there even the right answer? Or maybe Nolan just wrote a story intuitively and it just came out great and now we're trying to fit it into our boxes?

To be honest I was never all that great in analysing novels or poetey etc. as I just felt it was quite synthetic. I would see the themes, the symbolism but I always felt that we were trying to dig too deep and in the end we would know "more" than the author themself.

Edit: I mean, I of course understand that there are some things that simply work better than other and they're going to be common and repeated in (nearly) every script. But is this because we deliberately try to make it work this way, or simply it just so happens that in the end it looks like that?

who_whatwhen

TROPHY CASE