My wife started the day by showing me this article about systemic racism at the Groundlings Comedy Theater. Wow, I thought, I gotta read this! Here was the LA Times telling me that my life and career was directly impacted by systemic racism. Maybe there is something to this national Continue Reading
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The Sixth Sense: How a Bad Perception Turned into a Good Conclusion
The most difficult part of telling a story comes right at the midpoint. If you have a decent beginning—where the premise gets set up—you can have a decent chance of getting to a satisfying end…but only if you don’t mess it up halfway through!
The Sound of Music: The Family That Sings Together Motivates Together
Let’s take a look at the plot of The Sound of Music to appreciate how a song sung to one audience in the middle had different connotations when it was sung to a different audience near the end.
Mary Poppins: When Your Two Cents Make Up The Whole Story
“Feed the Birds” (from Mary Poppins, above) seems like a sweet, lilting lullaby simply meant to put two misbehaving children to sleep. That’s its brilliance, however, for a deeper look at this number provides us the key to the whole story.
Fiddler on the Roof: How to Stay on Top When You Debate the Story Issues
Taking the exploration of motivations at the midpoint a step further, let’s look at what happens when the truth of a character’s very values are challenged. This is basically the premise of the musical, Fiddler on the Roof (1971)—the story of a a poor Jewish milkman, Tevye, raising his daughters in the social upheaval of the final years of Tsarist Russia.
Oliver!: Looking for Love in a Grueling World.
In the middle—where stories twist and turn (or at least are supposed to twist and turn)—that’s when character motivations really do the work they are meant to do. They explore the themes and arguments of the story’s thematic premise.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?: a Funny Bunny Gets Some Serious Attention
The key to not boring the audience is to keep the beats of a story moving up and down in opposition to each other, in a way that engages their attention and then maintains it long enough to reward them with a fulfilling pay-off.
The Lego Movie: How Moving Pieces Make Movies that Move
In order to use these building blocks then, the key is to take a “block” from one point of your story, and show it in a different context at a later point.
On the Verge: Ashley Bratcher from ‘Unplanned’
Ashley Bratcher has IMDb credits going back to 2012, but the box office success of her most recent film, “Unplanned,” has brought her to the breakthrough moment she is currently experiencing.
Ben-Hur: the Win of a Vengeance Loses Out to the Victory on a Cross
n any case, a well-told story creates a compelling dynamic that balances out the personal journeys of its characters while creating a larger context for the audience to draw meaning from for their own lives.