Late to this discussion, but Snyder didn't invent Save the Cat, he just detailed it based on researching successful movies. Hollywood was already making Save The Cat movies, it just wasn't formalized.
I really appreciate the clarification. Especially when you say that you have to practice fundamentals before making variations on a theme. I really believe that Save the Cat was meant for those who are trying to get into screenwriting. I'd like to cite what I believe to be one of the best quotes from the book: "True originality can't begin until you know what you are breaking away from."
+Brayden Toulouse It's long been a truism that before you "break the rules" in any creative endeavour - be it making some groundbreaking new music, playing fast and loose with the language or making a stunning and unusual movie - you first have to know and fully understand the rules.
+Wolf NZ Outdoors I have what I call "the cake analogy." As any baker will tell you, you must follow a fairly specific process in order to make a cake--if you deviate too far, the result will be such a failure that calling it "cake" would be incorrect. However, within the narrow procedural parameters that result in what we call "cake" there are dozens, if not hundreds of variations. The key is to first learn the basics--the things you absolutely have to do, the rules you cannot break--so that the product you produce can fairly be called "cake." Then you can play within those boundaries to produce something innovative. What I find often, from beginning writers who like to say things like "the only rule is that there are no rules," is that they're serving some mess of ingredients--maybe there's flour, butter, eggs, and milk, but they're mixed all wrong, and just sitting in a messy lump on the plate--and they don't know better than to call it "cake."
I have read all 3 books, Save the Cat!, Story and Syd Field's Screenplay. All are great tools, all have great information. Blake says in his book is he is writing this book to help you increase your odds in selling your script. And this is true. Nothing wrong with selling your script. And, much like all of the actors, once they have a fair amount of popularity, they always want to opt for the "artsy" film, the indie, one that will stretch them and possibly get them an Oscar nod. And, that is probably not a bad idea for a screenwriter either. Put some money in the bank, get a decent reputation and then do YOUR thing. I came out to Hollywood in the late 80's as a musician. And, after a few years, a very probable record deal and subsequent European/Japanese tour offering, it all fell apart. Why you ask? Because , there was a new latest greatest thing around, Grunge. All the hair bands (new bands, anyways) were pushed aside, even the bands that had talent because of the new sound. They wanted you to sound like X band, or Y band. They didn't care that you were talented, or anything. They just wanted to get something from the latest cookie mold. Hell, even most song writing follows a 3 act formula! Just look at the charts, listen to the radio. I challenge you to even identify which band is which when a new single comes out. Formulaic, just the way the big money wants it. And so it is. So, in closing, I think Blake was doing the up and comer a favor, telling them how to sell, based on his experience. It doesn't mean you have to stay that way, it is a great guide and , as in music, once you learn the rules, then you can learn when and where to break them. Good video, I appreciated it and the comments.
+Acharich Speaks I have a full time day job and I am in a performing Tribute act currently. Its a lot of fun and that is the bottom line for me. By day, I am a creative director for a POP Display and Marketing company. I write on the side for enjoyment when I can. The dream would be to do it full-time, but I actually love what I do currently as well. I guess I am blessed to be able to do the things I love and get paid, albeit I am not rich, I am well off.
Your analogy to baking a cake is dead on! Hollywood keeps baking the same cake over and over again and keeps telling audiences it’s all new because they changed the ribbon on the box.
Exactly.. Structure is necessary in all areas, but you have to push the envelope in order to make something great. I found all of the books helpful. Honestly, I wrote my script then read McKee, Field and Snyder and got a lot of insight to make it better. At the end of the day its your creation and if that creation is good then Hollywood will eventually give in, if you have the enough faith in your project to hold out.
Blake Snyder's system is the way it is "this happens on this page" etc, etc, because that is what the studios are looking for. His formula is so popular because it conforms to the studios dogma. All Snyder did was reveal where the decision maker's attention goes.
Christopher Keelty: The Dark Night of the Soul "should happen on page 75 of an 110 page screenplay and last for precisely 10 pages." Simply not true. If you'd read the book, on page 88 it states (precisely) that "It can last 5 seconds or five minutes."
I've been trying to write for twenty-five years and pretty-much everything I've written has been terrible. In the past few years I've gradually accepted that one of the reasons is that for most of that time I had no idea what the larger structure of a story looked like. The biggest moment in my own journey so far has been Will Schoder's TH-cam-PowerPoint on Dan Harmon's version of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, entitled "Every Story is the Same." (Because I'm not as smart as you are, I had to start with the triple-Cliff-notes version, but it still changed my life so I'm not complaining.) What Schoder so aptly illustrates is Harmon's observation that the reason a good story resonates is because it's hard-wired into our evolutionary track: We survived this long as a species because we're capable of leaving our comfy surroundings, facing a scary situation with uncertain skills, digging down to find the strength we need, and coming home with something new. That's it, really. And most of the films and books I've gone back and looked at seem to fit Harnon's "story circle" so perfectly that they should seem trite and hackneyed -- but they *don't*. LA Confidential, for instance, has three main characters whose every moves can be hung with effortless precision on Harmon's form. But I defy anyone to dismiss LA Confidential as formulaic, because the choices *within* that structure are so fresh, character-specific, credible, and unexpected. My non-rhetorical question for you, then, is this: when considering a storytelling template -- even Snyder's hilariously over-specified template -- isn't it really the fault of the craftsman for not adapting that template to a more customized-feeling property? A character's low moment doesn't, for example, have to be because he figured out too late that the villain was trying to get caught on purpose as part of his plan. He could find the accomplice of his dead partner under an old woman's porch. And the storyteller-baker's choice of which of those ways to flavor his cake wouldn't be Snyder's responsibility; it would be the storyteller's. And don't new writers who take your issue with Snyder risk doing what I did, which is to waste quarter-centuries of their lives killing perfectly good trees for no apparent reason? It's not just that Snyder didn't tell Hollywood to adapt his model so rigidly, as you concede, it seems to me; it's that Snyder didn't tell Hollywood *how* to adapt his model -- they did the Betty-Crocker part themselves.
Here's something great about your baker's recipe analogy. When a baker gets a recipe perfect, and everyone loves it, he keeps using the same recipe. Cause it works.
As he said in the video, simply because something is great doesn't mean it needs to repeated endlessly. And isn't that a but of an insult to the original artist? Yes, Save the Cat was a great template but as this dude so rightly illuminated: how many times will the super duper evil doer "allow" himself to be captured. these sorts of plots work the 1st or maybe even second time around because they're unexpected. But it's the worst plan ever. Even the dumbest of bank robbers won't wait for the cops, unless they want a shootout, and this more aptly applies to intelligently designed heists. Every time we copy something--not to confuse with borrowing an idea--we lose the original value. And while Hollywood does this because it's safe, they are clearly thinning out the quality of our entertainment. Jurassic World, Marvel movie #36, Batman V Howard the Duck, they make plenty O' dollars but it's time we shake up the recipe. Michael Corleone wasn't fantastic to watch because he was redeemable. What we like to see are complicated characters who have a good story, regardless.
I think if you go back to Aristotle Poetics, you can't argue that a 3 act "formula" doesn't work. Save the cat just breaks that down and delivers it to the laymen -still working within those principles. You can get immensely creative within those three acts. It's the difference between watching The Tree of Life, and Star Wars. Again, with baking, you can make a chocolate cake with chocolate, or dates. People are going to expect and love one of those more than the other - cause it works.
+Film Magician Yes, you're right. Chocolate cake won't taste good with cat piss, at least, so I doubt. There are the basic foundations or recipes for the backbones of creative works. But the topic at hand is about too rigid a structure that's been implemented too often. Now, if you feel that today's movies, particularly those with big budgets, are very diverse in their stories, then I suppose we are just on different sides of the track. If, however, you do find that there is a repetitiveness and predictability, with a splash of laziness, then I think you'll find truth to what the creator of these videos is saying.
I've been writing off and on personally for decades. I had a few short stories picked off the slush pile and published. I have been just following the Pied Piper of "ART". What I needed was some structure. I'm looking forward to applying "Save the Cat" principles to my old Novel manuscript and new YT videos and short stories. I've come to realize through hard knocks that no matter how well I express ideas, how subtle, how forceful, that (my) artistry does not apply directly 1 for 1 to holding the readers interest. And all else falls pell mell if you don't hold and build that interest. No matter how great the individual scene and the conflict, STC helped me realize a story does need to be in a scaffold that the reader or viewer can climb. I'll check out McKee, also, so my sincere thanks for that. I agree these are tools not recipes and that treating it as a recipe is tantamount to hackery. OTOH, using it as a tool might give me the fundamentals I need to cross the goal line of creating something folks are excited to read.
I have found Save the Cat a very useful guide on screenwriting. I think it is easy to be arrogant and feel you are above it's strictures but I am keen to see if students or especially experienced people are able to execute it. That is not to see if it is "right" or "wrong" but to see if it can help focus your story better. It is just analytic tool. If people can't master it's seemingly simplistic or fundamental "rules" it is usually because they don't want to. I do believe in experiments in form and or content but I think if people want to be artists they should at least know how to draw.
Hi Chris. Thank you for your videos. I've read STC multiple times and find his technique very helpful. I've also read Story and Screenplay and they too are wonderful tools. Writing a good screenplay is so hard that I think any good tool helps. Because STC is primarily about structure, I tend to think of it less as a "magic recipe" and more as a "guide for creating an effective skeleton." Think of all of the varied and wonderful human beings that have walked the Earth since the beginning of time. With the exception of birth defects and accidents, all of them have had one head, two arms, two legs, two eyes, etc. My point is that, while staying true to basic fundamentals of what a human body is, there have been and still are infinite possibilities in what a human can be. I think Blake's books are wonderful tools that make a screenplay work rather than fail while still providing plenty of room for creativity and adaptation. My 2 cents. Thanks!
+William Watkins Insightful comment! I like your skeleton metaphor quite a bit. I guess the only way I might push back is to say you're presuming all movies are humans, with human skeletons--what if some movies might be elephants, or whales, or mice, if producers weren't so frequently pushing screenwriters to build from a human skeleton? I may be pushing my metaphor there, but hopefully you see my point. Maybe the elephants and whales and mice are other forms; drama and novels and comics. But maybe there's more room for variation in filmmaking, if we aren't aiming for everything to find the same audience and reach viewers in the same way. I appreciate your comment, and it definitely adds something to this conversation. Thanks!
I love STC structure and get sick of it the same time. I work with producers who love STC. But I've noticed some ballsier movies don't even have STC MOMENT so you like the hero. Writing is like a comedian telling a joke. If you get a laugh, your structure worked.
We don’t make movies. We leverage IP from franchises to create content. It’s a very different process. In reality his book highlighted an inevitability in the commodity production type of way of making movies. Capitalists abhor risks and want a healthy rate of return on their investments. They don’t see scripts as art, they see them the same way they see a goldmine or oilfield or worker: a source of value. Not a thing or person unto itself or themself, an avenue of value creation Homogenization is inherent to capitalism, because it’s an inherently unstable type of economy prone to boom/bust cycles. All bubbles burst, there are no guarantees, and eventually everything will come crashing down. So get while the getting is good. You need to move as many units as possible, as quick as possible, to as many people as possible, to make as much money as possible. There’s also a consistent trend overall for the rate of profit to fall. Movies only get more expensive to make, requiring ever better guaranteed opening weekends and overseas performance to make their money back. Even while the cost of living plummets, or really because capitalists devalue, deskill, and unemploy us, making it more difficult for us to consume luxury goods like entertainment-which is a shame for the only species in the known universe to create storytelling for free around the campfire. We still create all the culture, but it is robbed from us an commoditized, then resold at an inflated rate. But i digress. No one person can change the trajectory of a billion dollar industry. People and industry are linked together, so individuals typically express historical trends. People, in aggregate, do change the world, but we are first shaped by the world before we change it. The samey-ness of film, like the samey-ness of modern cars, phones, computers, big box stores, etc, is an inevitability of the system that ironically proposes to encourage individuality. But this is the system that invented uniform assembly lines and factory farming, automation, etc. individuality is really only for the extremely wealthy. The rest of us have to cobble together an identity out mass produced commodities that “speak to our lifestyles” or whatever airy BS
Thanks for both these videos, Christopher.... very refreshing and well said. My film director son, Jeff, is encouraging me to write out a movie in my head about suppression of "free energy" devices. His frequent comment to me is "That's a really good idea - have it on my desk by Monday morning." So, this time, I am actually doing it. I am reading Save the Cat and frankly I am a little put off by his comments about never being able to "sell" the movie unless you follow the rules. Your videos suggest that it may be possible to do my own thing within certain guidelines. Can you suggest any "conspiracy" movies that fall within his template and some that fall without? Thanks ....... Dave
couldn't agree with you more Christopher. Love Save The Cat, McKee, and Truby. Nothing wrong with template. But yeah not all the time, please! I've even given STC outlines to producers who asked for them after they already read/liked the script. A book a must, equal to the 3 others, is Dara Marks INSIDE STORY
"You mean to tell me, there is no almond milk for my latte? " .- This is as tragic as it gets these days (10 years later). It's the writer that need saving, no the cat.
I think it depends on who the audience is: the mass public, critics, or amateur film buffs. The latter two will love more original works, while the mass public enjoys STC just fine without understanding the beats. Spider-Man: Homecoming is a really well-done film that hits all the STC beats. Most people have no clue it's so formulaic because it feels fresh with the diverse cast, down to earth setting, and stylistic tone to set it apart from the other Marvel movies. Critics have to judge it based on all superhero movies and the action movies of the year, and amateur film buffs will judge it compared to the extremes of cinema, so they might roll their eyes and say, "Oh, great, another Save the Cat formula", but it's not for them per se. It's for the mass public, and it manages to be a good film within that focus.
I think this beat sheet is a very good place to start. The idea is to write a few throw away stories using the formula and maybe get some feedback to how well the story is resonating with people. Figure out why the structure works the way it does. Then play with it and experiment to see what happens when you skip or add beats to the story.
To cite two diverse examples of the craft: Bringing up Baby (1938) and LA Confidential (1997) were written and made before STC existed, yet follow the STC approach. How one chooses to execute the template, in the name of art that does not violate the mode of entertainment, is open to the many ways that the Art of Rhetoric may be employed. As Robert McKee has said, most recently, Hollywood has forsaken art for the spectacle that is most universally appreciated across cultures and which feeds the business of entertainment and commerce that goes from strength-to-strength. As for Hollywood: Hollywood does not hold a state-enforced monopoly on the industry. Nor does Hollywood deny anyone who can write a script, the possibility of making a movie of their own, with the aid of today's inexpensive technology, and use Vimeo and/or TH-cam for distribution. How one successfully monetises this effort, is another issue. Robert Rodriguez shot El Mariachi for about $7,000, at a time when he still had to use the film stock that is a serious expense and is no longer necessary. Perhaps we ought to simply get on with the craft of movie creation, and forget about Hollywood as the whipping-boy-of-convenience. STC and/or other systems such as Contour or Dramatica, etc., are more of a help than an impediment. Most broadly: a story does have a beginning, a middle, and an end. More helpfully, as per Dan O'Bannon and Warren Murphy, a story has a situation (beginning - ACT 1), complications and a crisis (middle ACT - 2) and a climax (end - ACT 3).
I just want to say that coming from a writer who is new to the industry i really appreciate your points of views. I always find myself critiquing hollywood films and i never understood why until i watched your videos.Your right!i dont think the author f 1'saving the cat" ruined hollywood himself ,but hollywood just abused the book and its templates to justify their film making . hollywood is definitely stuck in a repetitive formulated cycle. it is enormously difficult to produce a film/tv show now artfully whilst still pursuing a paycheck due to these "standards" but i think there are always exceptions to rules.I think hollywood might just be waiting for the next one to smak em in the face haha ! it might take a while but why not pursue to be the one who represents the possibility :) thats what im doing !thanks for all your insight,i feel better about my own script and writing structure already
Well said. As a film maker as well as a writer, the editors can make that cake into a pie if they want to. The script or story is a King soon to be dethroned by the editor. I think the originality of the post process can turn Hollywood on its ear. Who knows maybe editors read that book too. Lol.
Interesting stuff. I'll be checking out "Story" as you talked about in the other video. I'm new here, so I probably don't have the right to comment... But the link and twitter handle flashing up every 30 seconds was really distracting. Every time I was like, "What's that?! Oh, it's the link again. Ooh. This is inter-- What they flip?! Oh, it's the twitter handle." ;P
I personally find a lot of what comes out of Hollywood to be extremely formulaic. Not merely in structure (slavishly following the beats of STC), but in plotlines and frequent tropes. The book ''How To Train Your Dragon'' was a bildungsroman about a young boy becoming a dragon rider like the others of his clan. The _movie_ not only followed STC down to the last second, the whole story got reworked into yet another "bright but 'different' kid shows up stupid adults" story - with romantic subplots thrown in because "ya gotta have a love interest". It's bad enough that the majority of movies based on TV series, cartoons, comic strips (newspaper comics like Marmaduke, Garfield etc) seem to just be "take a standard, "popular" movie plotline and change the character names and locations to those in the original" without completely throwing out the original plot of a written full-length story in favour of a "safe" formulaic plot - it's not like the "coming of age" story is impossible to translate from written to visual media or HTTYD was an impossible book to adapt faithfully into film. They did it just to stick with "safe" formulas guaranteed to appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator and make sure they'd get their money back at the box office - at the cost of the original story. I get that Hollyweird is about business and "the bottom line", but they play it safe with formulas and "tried and true" tropes too often.
After a cup of coffee this morning, I took care of business. It also had a beginning, a middle and an end. But that barely gave it any structure, and claiming that three acts gives a story structure is a gross oversimplification. Just like my example.
i watched both videos and really great analysis.how about this for an analogy: its the difference between being a cook and a chef.(taken from your "cake" analogy)i just ordered 2 of the STC books but after those im going to go deeper with the "story" book you mentioned.a person can always use more information; its what a person does with said information thats makes the real differencethanks for the video
+Christopher Davis If I were you I'd work on learning how to write even one sentence with proper punctuation before going any further. I'm embarrassed for you...
The problem with Save the Cat is if you use it as a strict formula. This applies to both the writer and studio/producers. It's great for organizing the story, structure wise, but then you should let the story tell itself organically after that. If you were beholden to the page count for the catalyst moment, we'd never have the great extended opening to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The problem is when the beats are so obvious, you can call them out as you watch them. Let's Be Cops is an example of this, where it wouldn't be any less obvious if the 'Low Point' appeared onscreen as it happened. On the flip side, in Close Encounters, Neary is captured by govt officials and interrogated and about to be sent away from Devil's Tower. He's come all that way and spent so much time and effort, as well as losing his family, to get there. Spielberg nails that beat but it's subtle enough that it's not hitting you over the head. Too obvious beats equal the same as on the nose writing... Bad writing.
+bmovies75 I'd certainly agree with this. Interesting you bring up Raiders; if you're into screenwriting I presume you heard the Scriptnotes guys break down Raiders? They suggested (and I'm inclined to agree) that there's no way Raiders would make it to the screen today as it did in 1981.
+Christopher Keelty I've listened to it probably 4 times since the first time they did it. Raiders might actually be underrated due to its genre. That script is perfection. Both Raiders and Close Encounters would be very different if made today, and not in a good way.
So really it's the question of art. Entertainment is far easier to identify, generally more agreed upon and easier to sell yet both it and art have some form of a template. Considering it's an industry built on commerce, it's obvious which route will be taken. They can be one in the same but Hollywood reacts to what we choose to consume. It's a tricky debate economics vs. art. Nothing is ruining Hollywood other than the public. As far as STC, it's a basic tool for a start in basic structure. There could be art within the formula if the ideas are original. As you said it's a matter of understanding of the structure before you deviate/alter it. All it has done is provide a basic language for non-screewriters to communicate with ones that are.
Anyone notice the monster EAT THE CAT in SHAPE OF WATER? At the time I didn't know del Toro wrote but I knew the writer just gave a middle finger to SAVE THE CAT. I watch about 140 movies in the theater a year. Thank you Movie Pass
I'm reading save the cat right now and find it really unfocused and derpy, I'm only halfway and I'm really fighting the urge not to though it a cross the room. I haven't gotten to the structure chapters which is only a part of the book, everything I've read is mostly dumbed down storytelling and filler. I think it's impotent to note, he prefers to write popcorn munching time wasters not thought provoking movies. I'm trying to remember that must have wrote a lot of his scripts in the 90's and I'm wondering if that mentality is even useful in an evolving media landscape.
I have to say I agree with you. I think film industry, in general, has become more interested in making money than making art. And it´s very scary to risk and to try something "new" than just follow a set of instructions and apply them to your theme. The only thing I would do is change the title hehe I would have written, how Holliwood has ruin Holliwood. :)
money drives everything..bur once the artist finds economical freedom and if he has something original and important to say then even these books wont be able to ruin his art.
Couldn't it be said that the formula also skews how readers see potential scripts? If it isn't in the formula the author is "doing it all wrong"? That's what worries me about the Save the Cat formula.
I knew about the "shape" of the western novel at school 50 years ago. Kurt Vonnegut knew about it in his lecture on the shapes of stories. Personally I blame the Bible, you know the Jesus bit. Almost every story follows the same arc.
Donald Sayers Actually... Jesus is based pretty closely on Moses, and Moses is based on Gilgamesh, and Gilgamesh... It's more like this story is programmed into human brains than like we learned it somewhere specific.
@@ChristopherKeelty Of course you're right, but then again the New testament story is probably the one known best by Western readers. Perhaps it is something hard wired.
Sadly, it's the box office hits that bring in the big dollars. And it's low IQ, teens and Millennial's that need their stories spoon-fed to them who overwhelmingly fill box office seats. The box office seat fillers are the low attention span crowd that have been conditioned TH-cam and the like, to get bored after two minutes. So movies today have to have constant action, special effects and theatrics. Gone are the days when Alfred Hitchcock movies kept the general public on the edge of their seats. I can't imagine a teen today watching Rear Window without walking out. Maybe this just means, we need to tell better stories with better themes. OR Hollywood needs to produce those better stories and reprogram it's audiences.
Yeah... SKYFALL, DARK KNIGHT, AVENGERS were formulaic crap. That's why no one went to see them. **CORRECTION: combined box office for said films was a bajillion dollars.
The reality of show BUSINESS is that if all the zebras are running together away from the lions, at some point, one of the brave (stupid?) zebras may turn left when all the others run right. Guess what happens to the zebra that turned left? I guess it's possible that the brave zebra may develop some super power that allows him to kick the lion's ass, but unless you're super zebra, you need to stay with the pack. Hopefully, you run with some STYLE as you escape the lion.
Late to this discussion, but Snyder didn't invent Save the Cat, he just detailed it based on researching successful movies. Hollywood was already making Save The Cat movies, it just wasn't formalized.
I really appreciate the clarification. Especially when you say that you have to practice fundamentals before making variations on a theme. I really believe that Save the Cat was meant for those who are trying to get into screenwriting.
I'd like to cite what I believe to be one of the best quotes from the book:
"True originality can't begin until you know what you are breaking away from."
+Brayden Toulouse It's long been a truism that before you "break the rules" in any creative endeavour - be it making some groundbreaking new music, playing fast and loose with the language or making a stunning and unusual movie - you first have to know and fully understand the rules.
+Wolf NZ Outdoors I have what I call "the cake analogy." As any baker will tell you, you must follow a fairly specific process in order to make a cake--if you deviate too far, the result will be such a failure that calling it "cake" would be incorrect. However, within the narrow procedural parameters that result in what we call "cake" there are dozens, if not hundreds of variations. The key is to first learn the basics--the things you absolutely have to do, the rules you cannot break--so that the product you produce can fairly be called "cake." Then you can play within those boundaries to produce something innovative.
What I find often, from beginning writers who like to say things like "the only rule is that there are no rules," is that they're serving some mess of ingredients--maybe there's flour, butter, eggs, and milk, but they're mixed all wrong, and just sitting in a messy lump on the plate--and they don't know better than to call it "cake."
Christopher Keelty Excellent analogy..!
I have read all 3 books, Save the Cat!, Story and Syd Field's Screenplay. All are great tools, all have great information. Blake says in his book is he is writing this book to help you increase your odds in selling your script. And this is true. Nothing wrong with selling your script. And, much like all of the actors, once they have a fair amount of popularity, they always want to opt for the "artsy" film, the indie, one that will stretch them and possibly get them an Oscar nod. And, that is probably not a bad idea for a screenwriter either. Put some money in the bank, get a decent reputation and then do YOUR thing.
I came out to Hollywood in the late 80's as a musician. And, after a few years, a very probable record deal and subsequent European/Japanese tour offering, it all fell apart. Why you ask? Because , there was a new latest greatest thing around, Grunge. All the hair bands (new bands, anyways) were pushed aside, even the bands that had talent because of the new sound. They wanted you to sound like X band, or Y band. They didn't care that you were talented, or anything. They just wanted to get something from the latest cookie mold. Hell, even most song writing follows a 3 act formula! Just look at the charts, listen to the radio. I challenge you to even identify which band is which when a new single comes out. Formulaic, just the way the big money wants it. And so it is.
So, in closing, I think Blake was doing the up and comer a favor, telling them how to sell, based on his experience. It doesn't mean you have to stay that way, it is a great guide and , as in music, once you learn the rules, then you can learn when and where to break them.
Good video, I appreciated it and the comments.
Curious, are u still a professional musician..?
+Acharich Speaks I have a full time day job and I am in a performing Tribute act currently. Its a lot of fun and that is the bottom line for me.
By day, I am a creative director for a POP Display and Marketing company. I write on the side for enjoyment when I can. The dream would be to do it full-time, but I actually love what I do currently as well. I guess I am blessed to be able to do the things I love and get paid, albeit I am not rich, I am well off.
Your analogy to baking a cake is dead on! Hollywood keeps baking the same cake over and over again and keeps telling audiences it’s all new because they changed the ribbon on the box.
you know that old tale there are no new stories just stories told by different ppl
Exactly.. Structure is necessary in all areas, but you have to push the envelope in order to make something great. I found all of the books helpful. Honestly, I wrote my script then read McKee, Field and Snyder and got a lot of insight to make it better. At the end of the day its your creation and if that creation is good then Hollywood will eventually give in, if you have the enough faith in your project to hold out.
Blake Snyder's system is the way it is "this happens on this page" etc, etc, because that is what the studios are looking for. His formula is so popular because it conforms to the studios dogma. All Snyder did was reveal where the decision maker's attention goes.
Christopher Keelty: The Dark Night of the Soul "should happen on page 75 of an 110 page screenplay and last for precisely 10 pages."
Simply not true. If you'd read the book, on page 88 it states (precisely) that "It can last 5 seconds or five minutes."
I've been trying to write for twenty-five years and pretty-much everything I've written has been terrible. In the past few years I've gradually accepted that one of the reasons is that for most of that time I had no idea what the larger structure of a story looked like. The biggest moment in my own journey so far has been Will Schoder's TH-cam-PowerPoint on Dan Harmon's version of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, entitled "Every Story is the Same." (Because I'm not as smart as you are, I had to start with the triple-Cliff-notes version, but it still changed my life so I'm not complaining.)
What Schoder so aptly illustrates is Harmon's observation that the reason a good story resonates is because it's hard-wired into our evolutionary track: We survived this long as a species because we're capable of leaving our comfy surroundings, facing a scary situation with uncertain skills, digging down to find the strength we need, and coming home with something new. That's it, really. And most of the films and books I've gone back and looked at seem to fit Harnon's "story circle" so perfectly that they should seem trite and hackneyed -- but they *don't*. LA Confidential, for instance, has three main characters whose every moves can be hung with effortless precision on Harmon's form. But I defy anyone to dismiss LA Confidential as formulaic, because the choices *within* that structure are so fresh, character-specific, credible, and unexpected.
My non-rhetorical question for you, then, is this: when considering a storytelling template -- even Snyder's hilariously over-specified template -- isn't it really the fault of the craftsman for not adapting that template to a more customized-feeling property? A character's low moment doesn't, for example, have to be because he figured out too late that the villain was trying to get caught on purpose as part of his plan. He could find the accomplice of his dead partner under an old woman's porch. And the storyteller-baker's choice of which of those ways to flavor his cake wouldn't be Snyder's responsibility; it would be the storyteller's. And don't new writers who take your issue with Snyder risk doing what I did, which is to waste quarter-centuries of their lives killing perfectly good trees for no apparent reason? It's not just that Snyder didn't tell Hollywood to adapt his model so rigidly, as you concede, it seems to me; it's that Snyder didn't tell Hollywood *how* to adapt his model -- they did the Betty-Crocker part themselves.
Mayer once said "Give us the same thing but different."
Sage Drake Mayer? John Mayer?
Here's something great about your baker's recipe analogy. When a baker gets a recipe perfect, and everyone loves it, he keeps using the same recipe. Cause it works.
Even if it's a cake everyone loves, not everyone wants to eat that same cake every day forever.
As he said in the video, simply because something is great doesn't mean it needs to repeated endlessly. And isn't that a but of an insult to the original artist? Yes, Save the Cat was a great template but as this dude so rightly illuminated: how many times will the super duper evil doer "allow" himself to be captured. these sorts of plots work the 1st or maybe even second time around because they're unexpected. But it's the worst plan ever. Even the dumbest of bank robbers won't wait for the cops, unless they want a shootout, and this more aptly applies to intelligently designed heists. Every time we copy something--not to confuse with borrowing an idea--we lose the original value. And while Hollywood does this because it's safe, they are clearly thinning out the quality of our entertainment. Jurassic World, Marvel movie #36, Batman V Howard the Duck, they make plenty O' dollars but it's time we shake up the recipe. Michael Corleone wasn't fantastic to watch because he was redeemable. What we like to see are complicated characters who have a good story, regardless.
I think if you go back to Aristotle Poetics, you can't argue that a 3 act "formula" doesn't work. Save the cat just breaks that down and delivers it to the laymen -still working within those principles. You can get immensely creative within those three acts. It's the difference between watching The Tree of Life, and Star Wars. Again, with baking, you can make a chocolate cake with chocolate, or dates. People are going to expect and love one of those more than the other - cause it works.
+Film Magician Yes, you're right. Chocolate cake won't taste good with cat piss, at least, so I doubt. There are the basic foundations or recipes for the backbones of creative works. But the topic at hand is about too rigid a structure that's been implemented too often. Now, if you feel that today's movies, particularly those with big budgets, are very diverse in their stories, then I suppose we are just on different sides of the track. If, however, you do find that there is a repetitiveness and predictability, with a splash of laziness, then I think you'll find truth to what the creator of these videos is saying.
"beginning and ending" - where's three act in old fart words?
I've been writing off and on personally for decades. I had a few short stories picked off the slush pile and published. I have been just following the Pied Piper of "ART". What I needed was some structure. I'm looking forward to applying "Save the Cat" principles to my old Novel manuscript and new YT videos and short stories. I've come to realize through hard knocks that no matter how well I express ideas, how subtle, how forceful, that (my) artistry does not apply directly 1 for 1 to holding the readers interest. And all else falls pell mell if you don't hold and build that interest. No matter how great the individual scene and the conflict, STC helped me realize a story does need to be in a scaffold that the reader or viewer can climb. I'll check out McKee, also, so my sincere thanks for that. I agree these are tools not recipes and that treating it as a recipe is tantamount to hackery. OTOH, using it as a tool might give me the fundamentals I need to cross the goal line of creating something folks are excited to read.
I have found Save the Cat a very useful guide on screenwriting. I think it is easy to be arrogant and feel you are above it's strictures but I am keen to see if students or especially experienced people are able to execute it. That is not to see if it is "right" or "wrong" but to see if it can help focus your story better. It is just analytic tool. If people can't master it's seemingly simplistic or fundamental "rules" it is usually because they don't want to. I do believe in experiments in form and or content but I think if people want to be artists they should at least know how to draw.
You mentioned McKee and Fields, but I'm curious on what you think about John Truby?
Evan Wray I'd also like to hear his opinion on John's work
Hi Chris. Thank you for your videos. I've read STC multiple times and find his technique very helpful. I've also read Story and Screenplay and they too are wonderful tools. Writing a good screenplay is so hard that I think any good tool helps. Because STC is primarily about structure, I tend to think of it less as a "magic recipe" and more as a "guide for creating an effective skeleton." Think of all of the varied and wonderful human beings that have walked the Earth since the beginning of time. With the exception of birth defects and accidents, all of them have had one head, two arms, two legs, two eyes, etc. My point is that, while staying true to basic fundamentals of what a human body is, there have been and still are infinite possibilities in what a human can be. I think Blake's books are wonderful tools that make a screenplay work rather than fail while still providing plenty of room for creativity and adaptation. My 2 cents. Thanks!
+William Watkins Insightful comment! I like your skeleton metaphor quite a bit. I guess the only way I might push back is to say you're presuming all movies are humans, with human skeletons--what if some movies might be elephants, or whales, or mice, if producers weren't so frequently pushing screenwriters to build from a human skeleton?
I may be pushing my metaphor there, but hopefully you see my point. Maybe the elephants and whales and mice are other forms; drama and novels and comics. But maybe there's more room for variation in filmmaking, if we aren't aiming for everything to find the same audience and reach viewers in the same way.
I appreciate your comment, and it definitely adds something to this conversation. Thanks!
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I love STC structure and get sick of it the same time. I work with producers who love STC. But I've noticed some ballsier movies don't even have STC MOMENT so you like the hero. Writing is like a comedian telling a joke. If you get a laugh, your structure worked.
We don’t make movies. We leverage IP from franchises to create content. It’s a very different process.
In reality his book highlighted an inevitability in the commodity production type of way of making movies.
Capitalists abhor risks and want a healthy rate of return on their investments. They don’t see scripts as art, they see them the same way they see a goldmine or oilfield or worker: a source of value. Not a thing or person unto itself or themself, an avenue of value creation
Homogenization is inherent to capitalism, because it’s an inherently unstable type of economy prone to boom/bust cycles. All bubbles burst, there are no guarantees, and eventually everything will come crashing down. So get while the getting is good.
You need to move as many units as possible, as quick as possible, to as many people as possible, to make as much money as possible.
There’s also a consistent trend overall for the rate of profit to fall. Movies only get more expensive to make, requiring ever better guaranteed opening weekends and overseas performance to make their money back. Even while the cost of living plummets, or really because capitalists devalue, deskill, and unemploy us, making it more difficult for us to consume luxury goods like entertainment-which is a shame for the only species in the known universe to create storytelling for free around the campfire. We still create all the culture, but it is robbed from us an commoditized, then resold at an inflated rate. But i digress.
No one person can change the trajectory of a billion dollar industry. People and industry are linked together, so individuals typically express historical trends. People, in aggregate, do change the world, but we are first shaped by the world before we change it.
The samey-ness of film, like the samey-ness of modern cars, phones, computers, big box stores, etc, is an inevitability of the system that ironically proposes to encourage individuality. But this is the system that invented uniform assembly lines and factory farming, automation, etc. individuality is really only for the extremely wealthy. The rest of us have to cobble together an identity out mass produced commodities that “speak to our lifestyles” or whatever airy BS
Popular and artistic......yes its possible.....Charlie Kauffman!!!
Hi Chris, you are spot on regarding the cake baking analogy! :-)
Thanks for both these videos, Christopher.... very refreshing and well said.
My film director son, Jeff, is encouraging me to write out a movie in my head about suppression of "free energy" devices. His frequent comment to me is "That's a really good idea - have it on my desk by Monday morning." So, this time, I am actually doing it.
I am reading Save the Cat and frankly I am a little put off by his comments about never being able to "sell" the movie unless you follow the rules. Your videos suggest that it may be possible to do my own thing within certain guidelines.
Can you suggest any "conspiracy" movies that fall within his template and some that fall without?
Thanks ....... Dave
Have u put it on his desk yet..?
Hi Chris,
How do you feel about John Truby's work?
couldn't agree with you more Christopher. Love Save The Cat, McKee, and Truby. Nothing wrong with template. But yeah not all the time, please! I've even given STC outlines to producers who asked for them after they already read/liked the script. A book a must, equal to the 3 others, is Dara Marks INSIDE STORY
"You mean to tell me, there is no almond milk for my latte? " .- This is as tragic as it gets these days (10 years later). It's the writer that need saving, no the cat.
See Crazy Rich Asians and then see if STC ruined Hollywood . Huge hit. Great ROMCOM.
I think it depends on who the audience is: the mass public, critics, or amateur film buffs. The latter two will love more original works, while the mass public enjoys STC just fine without understanding the beats. Spider-Man: Homecoming is a really well-done film that hits all the STC beats. Most people have no clue it's so formulaic because it feels fresh with the diverse cast, down to earth setting, and stylistic tone to set it apart from the other Marvel movies. Critics have to judge it based on all superhero movies and the action movies of the year, and amateur film buffs will judge it compared to the extremes of cinema, so they might roll their eyes and say, "Oh, great, another Save the Cat formula", but it's not for them per se. It's for the mass public, and it manages to be a good film within that focus.
I think this beat sheet is a very good place to start. The idea is to write a few throw away stories using the formula and maybe get some feedback to how well the story is resonating with people. Figure out why the structure works the way it does. Then play with it and experiment to see what happens when you skip or add beats to the story.
To cite two diverse examples of the craft: Bringing up Baby (1938) and LA Confidential (1997) were written and made before STC existed, yet follow the STC approach. How one chooses to execute the template, in the name of art that does not violate the mode of entertainment, is open to the many ways that the Art of Rhetoric may be employed. As Robert McKee has said, most recently, Hollywood has forsaken art for the spectacle that is most universally appreciated across cultures and which feeds the business of entertainment and commerce that goes from strength-to-strength.
As for Hollywood: Hollywood does not hold a state-enforced monopoly on the industry. Nor does Hollywood deny anyone who can write a script, the possibility of making a movie of their own, with the aid of today's inexpensive technology, and use Vimeo and/or TH-cam for distribution. How one successfully monetises this effort, is another issue. Robert Rodriguez shot El Mariachi for about $7,000, at a time when he still had to use the film stock that is a serious expense and is no longer necessary.
Perhaps we ought to simply get on with the craft of movie creation, and forget about Hollywood as the whipping-boy-of-convenience. STC and/or other systems such as Contour or Dramatica, etc., are more of a help than an impediment. Most broadly: a story does have a beginning, a middle, and an end. More helpfully, as per Dan O'Bannon and Warren Murphy, a story has a situation (beginning - ACT 1), complications and a crisis (middle ACT - 2) and a climax (end - ACT 3).
I just want to say that coming from a writer who is new to the industry i really appreciate your points of views. I always find myself critiquing hollywood films and i never understood why until i watched your videos.Your right!i dont think the author f 1'saving the cat" ruined hollywood himself ,but hollywood just abused the book and its templates to justify their film making . hollywood is definitely stuck in a repetitive formulated cycle. it is enormously difficult to produce a film/tv show now artfully whilst still pursuing a paycheck due to these "standards" but i think there are always exceptions to rules.I think hollywood might just be waiting for the next one to smak em in the face haha ! it might take a while but why not pursue to be the one who represents the possibility :) thats what im doing !thanks for all your insight,i feel better about my own script and writing structure already
Well said. As a film maker as well as a writer, the editors can make that cake into a pie if they want to. The script or story is a King soon to be dethroned by the editor. I think the originality of the post process can turn Hollywood on its ear. Who knows maybe editors read that book too. Lol.
Interesting stuff. I'll be checking out "Story" as you talked about in the other video.
I'm new here, so I probably don't have the right to comment... But the link and twitter handle flashing up every 30 seconds was really distracting. Every time I was like, "What's that?! Oh, it's the link again. Ooh. This is inter-- What they flip?! Oh, it's the twitter handle." ;P
I personally find a lot of what comes out of Hollywood to be extremely formulaic. Not merely in structure (slavishly following the beats of STC), but in plotlines and frequent tropes.
The book ''How To Train Your Dragon'' was a bildungsroman about a young boy becoming a dragon rider like the others of his clan. The _movie_ not only followed STC down to the last second, the whole story got reworked into yet another "bright but 'different' kid shows up stupid adults" story - with romantic subplots thrown in because "ya gotta have a love interest".
It's bad enough that the majority of movies based on TV series, cartoons, comic strips (newspaper comics like Marmaduke, Garfield etc) seem to just be "take a standard, "popular" movie plotline and change the character names and locations to those in the original" without completely throwing out the original plot of a written full-length story in favour of a "safe" formulaic plot - it's not like the "coming of age" story is impossible to translate from written to visual media or HTTYD was an impossible book to adapt faithfully into film. They did it just to stick with "safe" formulas guaranteed to appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator and make sure they'd get their money back at the box office - at the cost of the original story.
I get that Hollyweird is about business and "the bottom line", but they play it safe with formulas and "tried and true" tropes too often.
After a cup of coffee this morning, I took care of business. It also had a beginning, a middle and an end. But that barely gave it any structure, and claiming that three acts gives a story structure is a gross oversimplification. Just like my example.
Would like to hear your thoughts on Dramatica.
+Zack Charney Cohen You know I'm not familiar enough with Dramatica. I may have to check it out and see.
i watched both videos and really great analysis.how about this for an analogy: its the difference between being a cook and a chef.(taken from your "cake" analogy)i just ordered 2 of the STC books but after those im going to go deeper with the "story" book you mentioned.a person can always use more information; its what a person does with said information thats makes the real differencethanks for the video
+Christopher Davis If I were you I'd work on learning how to write even one sentence with proper punctuation before going any further. I'm embarrassed for you...
Christopher Davis Sorry if the truth hurts.
Good luck getting into high school...
The problem with Save the Cat is if you use it as a strict formula. This applies to both the writer and studio/producers. It's great for organizing the story, structure wise, but then you should let the story tell itself organically after that. If you were beholden to the page count for the catalyst moment, we'd never have the great extended opening to Raiders of the Lost Ark. The problem is when the beats are so obvious, you can call them out as you watch them. Let's Be Cops is an example of this, where it wouldn't be any less obvious if the 'Low Point' appeared onscreen as it happened. On the flip side, in Close Encounters, Neary is captured by govt officials and interrogated and about to be sent away from Devil's Tower. He's come all that way and spent so much time and effort, as well as losing his family, to get there. Spielberg nails that beat but it's subtle enough that it's not hitting you over the head. Too obvious beats equal the same as on the nose writing... Bad writing.
+bmovies75 I'd certainly agree with this. Interesting you bring up Raiders; if you're into screenwriting I presume you heard the Scriptnotes guys break down Raiders? They suggested (and I'm inclined to agree) that there's no way Raiders would make it to the screen today as it did in 1981.
+Christopher Keelty I've listened to it probably 4 times since the first time they did it. Raiders might actually be underrated due to its genre. That script is perfection. Both Raiders and Close Encounters would be very different if made today, and not in a good way.
So really it's the question of art. Entertainment is far easier to identify, generally more agreed upon and easier to sell yet both it and art have some form of a template. Considering it's an industry built on commerce, it's obvious which route will be taken. They can be one in the same but Hollywood reacts to what we choose to consume. It's a tricky debate economics vs. art. Nothing is ruining Hollywood other than the public.
As far as STC, it's a basic tool for a start in basic structure. There could be art within the formula if the ideas are original. As you said it's a matter of understanding of the structure before you deviate/alter it. All it has done is provide a basic language for non-screewriters to communicate with ones that are.
Anyone notice the monster EAT THE CAT in SHAPE OF WATER? At the time I didn't know del Toro wrote but I knew the writer just gave a middle finger to SAVE THE CAT. I watch about 140 movies in the theater a year. Thank you Movie Pass
Save the Cat has it's opposite. It's in the book.
I'm reading save the cat right now and find it really unfocused and derpy, I'm only halfway and I'm really fighting the urge not to though it a cross the room. I haven't gotten to the structure chapters which is only a part of the book, everything I've read is mostly dumbed down storytelling and filler. I think it's impotent to note, he prefers to write popcorn munching time wasters not thought provoking movies. I'm trying to remember that must have wrote a lot of his scripts in the 90's and I'm wondering if that mentality is even useful in an evolving media landscape.
I have to say I agree with you. I think film industry, in general, has become more interested in making money than making art. And it´s very scary to risk and to try something "new" than just follow a set of instructions and apply them to your theme.
The only thing I would do is change the title hehe I would have written, how Holliwood has ruin Holliwood. :)
money drives everything..bur once the artist finds economical freedom and if he has something original and important to say then even these books wont be able to ruin his art.
Thank you for sharing a different perspective on the matter!
Yup, we are on the same page, we just say it differently...or rather I am likely less coherent in saying the same thing.
Couldn't it be said that the formula also skews how readers see potential scripts? If it isn't in the formula the author is "doing it all wrong"? That's what worries me about the Save the Cat formula.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simon. His name is not "Michael Angelo!"
Well that wasn't interesting. Have you read the book yet?
I knew about the "shape" of the western novel at school 50 years ago. Kurt Vonnegut knew about it in his lecture on the shapes of stories. Personally I blame the Bible, you know the Jesus bit. Almost every story follows the same arc.
Donald Sayers Actually... Jesus is based pretty closely on Moses, and Moses is based on Gilgamesh, and Gilgamesh... It's more like this story is programmed into human brains than like we learned it somewhere specific.
@@ChristopherKeelty Of course you're right, but then again the New testament story is probably the one known best by Western readers. Perhaps it is something hard wired.
Sadly, it's the box office hits that bring in the big dollars. And it's low IQ, teens and Millennial's that need their stories spoon-fed to them who overwhelmingly fill box office seats. The box office seat fillers are the low attention span crowd that have been conditioned TH-cam and the like, to get bored after two minutes. So movies today have to have constant action, special effects and theatrics. Gone are the days when Alfred Hitchcock movies kept the general public on the edge of their seats. I can't imagine a teen today watching Rear Window without walking out. Maybe this just means, we need to tell better stories with better themes. OR Hollywood needs to produce those better stories and reprogram it's audiences.
The sound of water in the BG in this video is so incredibly distracting.
And the weird closeups that are mixed louder.
I'm right with you!
It did. It did ruin Hollywood. It gives a roadmap to uncreative posers who are now churning out garbage...en masse.
Good channel you've got here!
Show me the Money!
Excellent!
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Yeah... SKYFALL, DARK KNIGHT, AVENGERS were formulaic crap. That's why no one went to see them.
**CORRECTION: combined box office for said films was a bajillion dollars.
i blame weak uninspiring writers
The reality of show BUSINESS is that if all the zebras are running together away from the lions, at some point, one of the brave (stupid?) zebras may turn left when all the others run right. Guess what happens to the zebra that turned left? I guess it's possible that the brave zebra may develop some super power that allows him to kick the lion's ass, but unless you're super zebra, you need to stay with the pack. Hopefully, you run with some STYLE as you escape the lion.
Everything you say is true...sort of.
You're so handsome!
Let me stop you right there... and block your channel.