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'D'oh!' Boffins gaff about TV plotlines makes writers chuckle

11/14/2012

There's an unintentionally very funny article in New Scientist this week.

It seems a team of French boffins has invented enormously complex face recognition and audio recognition software called Story Visualizer (StoViz)that you can use to de-construct your favourite TV series and isolate plotlines involving your favourite character.

Wicked. Except that a quick phone call to the production house and sufficient money changing hands could have got them files full of detailed breakdowns of plotlines, character arcs, series arc, along with beat sheets, scene breakdowns, scripts - whatever they liked. All of these plot and character elements are, of course, planned long in advance by writers, producers, and often network executives. In fact, they often form a major part of the original pitch. Armies of people agonise over them throughout the creative development process - making sure they are original enough, complex enough, properly developed enough - and on and on.

I'm not quite sure how New Scientist or the boffins concerned think TV series get to the screen. Apparently the storylines kinda... just ... happen... Or is the article saying we writers are superhuman? Listen to this:

    Identifying key plot points and tracing character arcs are not easy, even for a human. In fact what makes     a show compelling is often the way it weaves these elements together in sophisticated ways.

Indeed. But look at the magnificent digital big guns StoViz throws at the problem.

    So StoViz's first task involved "de-interlacing" those themes into individual threads. To find a particular             storyline, it used image analysis to seek actors' faces and background scenery used in certain scenarios, in     addition to analysing the audio for key words associated with that story.
    The software then assembles a group of scenes that its video and audio algorithms have decided are             semantically similar, and therefore hopefully represents the same plot line. In the same way, if you are             interested in a certain actor, you can choose their face and only their scenes will be compiled into a                 summary.

Oh dear, dear.    A couple of experienced TV writers supplied with sufficient beer and peanuts could have deconstructed those storylines and character arcs in no time, indeed, possibly on the fly.

In the words of the great Homer 'D'oh'!   Check it out at http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628905.300-customise-your-favourite-tv-show.html

1 Comment

Ensemble films are structured totally differently from one hero films

11/10/2012

9 Comments

Hello everyone. I hope you've all recovered from this year's fantastic London Screenwriters Festival. And I hope you like my new streamlined website and blog!

I've just been running some videolectures from London to students at the Netherlands Film and TV Academy in Amsterdam on how to structure ensemble films, and thinking as I planned my lectures just how very complex the planning and plotting issues are in these films. So it was an interesting coincidence when a very pertinent question and lots of answers appeared on the Linked In Screenwriting forum about how many characters you can use in these sorts of films. If you follow this blog, you'll know that I responded. The most recent question asked about TV, so I replied to that too. I've put my response in here, below this post, and you can see the other responses on Linked in.

What is all boils down to really is that you can't approach ensemble films as if they are rather unruly 'one hero on a single journey' films. They are structured in a completely different fashion, as a series of separate stories, with all kinds of particular problems, particuarly with backstory and interweaving (you must interweave in such a way as not to be repetitive, and you have so many story strands, often about unfinished emotional business that your head sometimes spins) So the apparently odd question of 'how many characters...etc' is not odd at all. It's absolutely pertinent. What's scary about the flim industry at the moment is that so many people across all fields believe that you absolutely MUST have only one protagonist. Which wrecks lots of ensemblefilms (in which all of the characters' have stories).

Anyhow, I'm delighted that we're all talking about this stuff now, difficult as it is.

Here's what I wrote in Linked in when someone asked how many characters in TV series

Usually TV series use about six, because there is only sufficient time to handle that number of characters taking the limelinght in your max 50 minute time slot, and people devising TV series agonise about how many and who. For more info on TV writing see my ebook TV Writing The Ground Rules of Series, Serials and Sitcom http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Television_Writing.html?id=8j1AYBJKWvQC Regarding Ensemble films, they use different structural plans from one-hero films because they are running multiple stories. It's a different set of rules and a different mind set.

The question about 'how many characters are too many' goes to the heart of ensemble screenwriting in both film and TV because of the time restrictions on you as you try to tell but control all those stories/story strands. You don't have time for unlimited character numbers unless you use special forms and some of those forms permit more characters than others.

Why the time problem? Well, for example if the characters in your film know each other you can have huge amounts of backstory to sneak in about their past interactions and unfinished emotional business as you also try to tell the main group 'adventure'. You can have 17-20 story strands to run. Yes, there are ensemble forms in which you can use more characters (40 I think in Magnolia - although this is a film that has problems with its meaning and closure) but you have to quarantine them in stories or you'll get characters in search of a plot.This is a fascinating but huge topic! Anyhow, if you're interested there's a little video interview I did in Sweden on this sort of stuff on the home page of my site www.lindaaronson.com

9 Comments

How many is too many main characters in ensemble movies?

11/5/2012

14 Comments

This was a very interesting and crucial question that came up on Screenwriting Group on Linked In , so I answered it.
I then thought others who are not on that forum might also be interested because it's so easy for multiple characters to get out of control.

Controlling multiple characters is a bit like driving a team of charging horses that all want to go in different directions. You have to know where you want them to take you and how, and that’s where your choice of structure comes in. So none of this is academic, it's all about the nitty gritty of how you create and handle all of these stories. Here is the correspondence. Hope you find it interesting

Writer: How many is too many main characters in an ensembled cast?
Linda
Good question. There are all kinds of plotting issues connected with Ensemble pieces. It's really easy to get into a mess with this kind of piece because the term 'ensemble' is often used very loosely to mean every film that has lots of characters and isn't 'one hero on a single journey'. That means people are lumping togther films as structurally different as Pulp Fiction and American Beauty, which is utterly unhelpful.
I have written a lot about how to construct ensemble and nonlinear multiple storyline films in my book The 21st Century Screenplay because, as a writer, nobody could give me answers about how to construct flashback and ensemble films.

Okay. I am assuming you are thinking here of feature film about a group of characters with multiple storylines that run simultaneously in the same time frame (If you want to use time jumps, flashbacks etc they are very different structurally and in plotting terms. I also write about that in my book) .

There are two main types of structure here, with different plotting issues, each suitable for different kinds of story. The different plotting issues depend on whether you want to do a story about group interacting together, working together in some way on some kind of quest, reunion or siege situation (so your main aim is to explore the group dynamic and the tensions within the group, as in The Full Monty or LIttle Miss Sunshine or The Hangover ) OR whether you want to pursue a group of individuals, who are connected by theme but who go off into their individual stories - as, for example, in Nashville or Traffic, where the themes are, respectively, 'The strange heartbreaking town of Nashville' or 'The unwinnable war on drugs'

Obviously, your plotting problems are different if you have to keep a group of characters together on an 'adventure' while exploring the various personality tensions between them, than where you want to have a group of characters who don't, in most cases interact at all. In the first case (which I call ‘Multiple Protagonist’ structure), you need to run a number of story strands that will cover the 'adventure' they're all involved in, plus all of the relationships between the characters now and in the past (if relevant). That's the form that's used in most TV series about groups of doctors, lawyers, cops whatever. It's easier to think of these as 'different versions of the same protagonist'. Your big plotting problem here is that you have so many strands (sometimes about 30) to run that you need to combine several story strands in the same scene. You can usually only properly cover about 6 characters in this form,which is why TV shows usually have a maximum of about 6 or so characters. A little motto to help you work out whether you need this form is that multiple protagonist form is ‘same team, same adventure’ .
The other sort of multiple storyline/same linear time frame ensemble movie (Traffic, Nashville, Lantana etc,which I call ‘Tandem narrative, because it’s equally important stories running in parallel in the same time frame) requires you to construct separate stories for each character you’re following as they go off on their separate ‘adventures’. Clearly a different plotting problem. Your motto here is: ‘same theme, different adventures.' In these films you can run three-act, two-act or one-act stories for your various characters.
But the big issue about all ensemble films is that you need to plot out each little strand or storyline first THEN interweave. Too easy to get lost! Use index cards,
See my website for an intro to all this www.lindaaronson.info My book '21st Century Screenplay covers it in depth. For TV try my ebook 'Television Writing: The ground rules of series, serials and sitcom'.

Writer: Linda thank you,
I was aiming for a group of characters that go on an adventure and they work together or try to work together but eventually get separated and must overcome the adventure and the same goals separately. That was very helpful.

Linda
Ah, that's interesting! Because that means that you start out with a group quest, in classic multiple protagonist style, with them all working (and bickering) together (tensions, conflicts, unfinished emotional business as the ‘adventure’ or ‘quest’ proceeds etc – think of Saving Private Ryan, or Galaxy Quest) with a lot of story strands per scene, then, when you split them up you'll be facing tandem narrative problems because you'll have to follow each separately, creating and running separate storylines then jumping between stories as they all try to reach the goal in their separate ways. I’d say about six characters then, max. That’s probably all you’ve got time for.
You see what I mean about it being useful to think of them all being versions of the same protagonist, each reaching the goal in their own way? From what you are telling me, that’s what your story is really all about, how these separate versions of the same protagonist each reaches the goal.
You’ll have to create a separate little 'hero's journey' for each   I’d guess the moment they split up is probably the first act turning point in each of their individual stories. In other words, it’s the same scene for all of their stories. That's means you only have to write the second and third act for each separate storyline, probably pulling them into some kind of group climax (maybe not, though, maybe you’ll do each climax separately ).
You are actually doing something a little like Atonement, where the wrongful arrest of Jamie is the first act turning point for all 3 characters, then each goes their separate way and we have a story for each.   Multiple storyline films often pivot on the first act turning point like that by the way. For example, the repetitions in Run Lola Run and Groundhog Day also start at the first act turnign point. I'd say six-ish characters then, personally.

I'd say with this project, just take your time.   Hasten slowly. Work out your storylines first. Remember, because you have so many stories, none of them will be very long. Set up how each character is different from the others in the first act.

By the way, maybe another possibility to consider is whether you’d get more mileage character-wise by making them split up into twos – fighting all the way. Just a thought.

I hope it’s a great success for you. Good luck with it!

14 Comments

'D'oh!' Boffins gaff about TV plotlines makes writers chuckle

Ensemble films are structured totally differently from one hero films

How many is too many main characters in ensemble movies?

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