Raindance: Bill Martell - Breaking Your Story

• Martell - Breaking Your Story
  Time: 1:00 pm
  "You have an idea or a character - how do you turn that into a story? We'll tale you step-by-step from finding the ""story seed"" at the core of your idea or character to growing a screenplay. What scenes will you need? What supporting characters will you need? Making sure all of the story elements are organic.
  

Braking the story

Find out what the story seed is.

Make sure we don’t have a soft story, always want to be hard

Soft story: ends up being vague – we don’t want a vague story. Not specific enough.

A frequent thing is called a conflict condom

Protagonist

You want to make sure whatever the problem is that it is the protagonist problem.

Don’t make it too easily solved

Whatever the conflict is, make sure that it hits the protagonist hard

Major problem

Basic story idea is dramatic

What physical conflict could be is that two people atht are having an argument, or two people that are trying not to have an argument but we can see it –

We need to include the viewer in anything that’s happening, interlectually or emotionally, and that’s why we need to dramatise it on screen

We need our charaacters to do things, not just sit around, but something physically that’s giving us a clue about whats going on inside with them

If theres an emotional conflict we need to make it external.

Romantic comedys will have a bellemy character (guy always in 1940s movies that always plays the other guy) the male lead isattracted to a felmale who has a boyfriend (ralph bellemy) the symbolic other choice, the nice guy

Make sure u have stakes and you know what the stakes are.

Make sure we havea  character who has to deal with an emotional problem because that makes them human. We want to get into the emotional side of the problem in order to deal with a  physical problem that we see on the screen.

Steaks end up being personal or global

Personal is a love story – that 1 true love, and if you don’t hang onto them you will forever be alone and unhappy. You need to make it if it has t obe personal, it needs to be the biggest personal steaks ever. This persons one true love. If it’s the second most impoirtant stake then it’s the wrong stake.

The number 1 biggest personal steak, the biggest event in this persons life

(speaks about annie hall)

global stakes needs to be the biggest event in the story. Could be something where a guy has lost his job and he is unemployable

know what your steaks are, and know what your conflicts are for failure. If the protagonist fails, you need to know what will happen. Needs to be hard hitting, not soft! What are the consiquences?

Goals

What is the protagonist goals and how can we see that?

The protagonist wants freedom, how do we show that?

Romance in the stone – Michael douglas, has a dream to sail the world but how do we show that?

We know it exists he has a picture of a sail boat in his jeep and when it crashes that’s the only thing he saves from the crash.

Whatever the goal is we need ot show its physical, even if its emotional we need to turn it into something we can see.

Supporting character

Inconsistance

All supporting characters are tied to the story, which makes them all important characters – even the smallest characters otherwise they wouldn’t be there

Make sure you know completely who they are enough that their not inconsistent

Tough part as a writer, that if you include a character, and then you see the character 25 pages later, he needs to be acting consistency

know who your characters are – so that they are not changing their personality.

No two characters can serve the same story purpose. every character has his own purpose. If  the protagonist has two best friends, they both need to have two different personal views.

Challenging the elements

You have your story and take each part of the story and question is this the best this part can be.

Is these the best charaacters to tell the story

Is this the best location to tell the story

Make sure you have the best protagoniost

The best conflict – look at every element and challenge it – and find the best part

The best supporting actors

Taking interesting locations, interesting actors, interesting conflicts, and you will have a different movie entirely to what has been done.

Aways look for the contradiction

The emotional conflict the protagonist has to deal with

The theme of the story

The central conflict which is where the emotional and physical conflict intercept

Writing a zombe script - If I do dead and alive, my question is, what does it mean to be alive? – every character has their own opinion of what it means to them to be alive

What things could I not deal with with being a line?

-       paralyzed

-       without a roof over my head

-       drug addict

-       blind

-       family

i couldn’t live without being able to use my body – then can flip it around, I couldn’t live without my head!

Make a list, I couldn’t live without….

Calls it the ‘twitch’ a physical item that helps define the character. He/she holds up a picture of their mum, shows they are thinking of their mum.

Always better to come up with something that has two purposes, two uses for example bill used characters that could only take 1 luxery item with them on a deserted island. A man whose obsessed with woman and he brings a box of condoms. – the second use for this would be to fill the condoms with rum, to light on fire and throw at the zombies attacking them. Another character would be a body builder that has rubber strings to help with his work out exercise – the second use for this would be to create a bow and arrow and attack the zombies.

Always make sure that your characters show different aspects of whatever the protagonists story is. If there are two pathways, you want to show what each pathway is through two different characters. If they solve the problem this way it ends up this way, if they sove the problem another way it ends up another way. – if you take these two characters and put them in the same room it will create conflict as they wont agree.

You never want to have the perfect character to fit what the story is. You want to have the person that is a little off.

When your coming up with supporting characters and take htem, this is the guy that is the obvious part, take that and look for the guy that is just a little bit more different because you don’t want the audience thinking this is a cliché character.

Creating scenes

After creating characters, what happens next?

In the zombie scenes (dead and alive) he has dead and alive, he knows he has people trappen on an island with zombies – yes they fight zombies but how do I make a specific scene with fighting zombies.

So how do the people escape the island? Well one person saw a motor boat that look broken earlier but isn’t sure if it will work. They check it out, one person happens to be a machinic but not for boats – (someone that isn’t perfect but could maybe fix the motor boat) a twist could be the machinic turns into a zombie so how do they fix it now?

Each one of the character may have some skill that helps. Survivor vs zombies. Camera man has his equoipmemt on the island. Lights could scare the zombies. Use the tools that your with. (what are the colors on the palet, and how are we going to used the palet to tell our story)

Make sure there are complications and your story has room for complications.

Make it different from its core

Always look for set backs, always look for complications that can go really really wrong.

Your story needs to come up with a solution

When writing a story, the beginning gives you the end, whatever the problem is in the beginning will either be resolved or not. The hero resolves the problem or the problem resolves the hero

Pacific rim

Giant robots fighting Godzilla – if shakespear wrote a robot film, this would be it

Need two people to sync together so one can use the left sideo f the robot and the right side of the robot. Two people that know eachother so well. Father and son, brothers and sisters, protagonists are two brothers that operate a robot, so each person access their relatives mind. This creates conflict because they can think into eachothers heads. Personal, emotional connection. You may love someone but you have a list of things they do that get on your nerves. This is the core story that makes pacific rim so good. In this movie all the characters are paired. Instead of 1 scientist, there are two scientists. But they have to come together, set aside their differences to resolve the problem. When one scientist works together he has problems so needs to work with the other. One of the brothers die so the other brother doesn’t want to work with a robot again so he goes to build a wall instead, and meets a woman, who witnessed her parents die – so both have emotional backgrounds.

Starting with the protagonist

Need to know what the story is because it will be about this character

Story is conflict

Conflict is a thing that gets them out their confort zone, unless there is a problem we don’t show ourselves

When a problem occurs we need to show ourselves.

If someone walked into this room with a gun – everyone would in their own mind try to resolve the issue.

What is the characters greatest fear? (not talking about spiders)

What is the greatest fear that’s an emotional issue

-       I don’t measure up to my dad

-       My loved one doesn’t love me back

What is the characters floor?  problem? – use it to create problems

Liar liar – jim Kerry prefers to lie, which creates problems for [people around him, but he doesn’t care.

Take a protagonist that would never do something – and make him do it. Now this protagonist has the ultimate contrast.

Instead of the small conflict, where a character travels and becomes homeless – have him have everything and then lose everything and become homeless.

If you have a sort of constricted thing (i.e with rules that will make you insane) I am going to dream big! That im not just somebody in uniform, but that can fly, or be invisible, or have some sort of power.

The matrix – guy makes a wish, want to be superman, gets a call saying he is the one, now has to save the world and step up to become superman – every scene is about him not believing in himself. Now he got his wish, he doesn’t believe it. Hes presented in situations where he wont have his powers unless he believes in himself.

Once you figure out their dream gone wrong, their problems, their floor…

Always take it to the limit, always figure out what the worst possibility that could happen so the character comes out!

Most important elemnt of a story is theme

Can be any one of these things:

-       Point of the story if the story has a point

-       Element of human condition

-       Reason why your telling this story

-       You want to tell a sotry that serves a purpose that isn’t just this happens this happens this happens…

-       Fairy tales all have a moral to the story (teaching tool and story combined)

-       Even when telling your story of your day – underneath it all there is a reason for it (it could be that this guy is an idiot) there is an underline meaning – we may not no what the purpose is

If you can identify what that thing is…. Okay so I am doing a story about…

Tools to help working backwards is spending time thinking of what your story is and why you want to tell it.

No matter what the story is, it will be important to you – usually will give you the doorway to the theme.

Paper being cheap  - you can write your script, and you can go and change it. You will make a second, third, fourth draft. Each draft you will find out more pieces of the story.

We don’t have to like characters, we just have to understand them. What is driving them? If your characters not likable you have to make him fascinating.

Always better if the motivation is obvious to the audience.

What would the audience like to do?

What as a normal person in real life would I like to get away with?

‘I’d love to tell my boss to go fuck himself’ – for example

false conflict is a time killer