Screenwriting: Learn to Write Plot Driven Films by Analyzing 'Arrival'

1. Introduction: In this class, I'm going to teach you how to write a plot driven film. Hi, my name is Piotr. Writing and directing movies is my job. And recently I also begin working as a consultant to help other people perfect their stories. Believe it or not but the most common struggle that people have with writing their scripts or finishing their scripts is this ominous question, "What do I write next?" Or even if they actually have the beginning and the ending of their stories they sometimes struggle to write whats in the middle. Ultimately, it always comes down to the structure of storytelling. If you know whether your story is plot driven or character-driven, you always know what to write next. So in this course, I'm explaining a structure of a plot driven film, to make this knowledge as applicable as possible I'm doing it on the example of the film that I love, which is "Arrival". Structure is something that you need to experience visually to understand. That's why I prepared a presentation that is available for you in the form of a Guidebook, so you can have it in front of you while you will be watching my course. After watching this class, you'll understand what are the differences between a plot driven film and a character driven film. You'll also going to be able to outline a plot driven story in a form of an eighth sequences. Hopefully this will lead you to writing a plot driven film of your own. Thank you so much for listening and hopefully see you in the class. 2. Contract with the audience in plot driven films: Thank you so much for taking my class about plot driven films. Before we begin, I want to tell you that I proofread the captions. So at anytime you can just turn on the subtitles and read from the screen if you feel like it. And the other thing that I want to tell you is that you have all the notes you need in the guidebook that I offer in resources in a PDF file that is convenient for you. So you can have them in front of you while I will be talking about all the stuff that is here, which I'm very... excited about giving you this information. So the whole course is about the differences between the character-driven films and the plot driven films. And I will be making many references to character-driven films. And I have a separate course about the character-driven films as well. When I'm analyzing the Joker, I advise you to check that out as well after you watch this, if you haven't seen it already. But if I would pinpoint the main difference between character-driven and a plot-driven film, It would be the importance of the contract at the beginning of the film. What I mean by contract? The contract is the premise of the movie. Contract is the central dramatic question. And it should be clear to you after watching the first sequence of the movie. So in character-driven films, you have the whole first sequence to establish the contract between you and the audience. So for example, in the Joker movie, It's, the contract is the question, how is this loser guy who is Arthur going to transform into this psychopathic villain, who is Joker? This is what people expect to get from the storyteller. So in character-driven films, you have the whole first sequence to establish this main dramatic question. And usually it's about the character. Is this character going to get what he or she wants, right? This is the main thing and this is most of the movies that you've seen. However, in a plot-driven films, the most important thing are the events that are going to happen. The external events. In plot-driven film, the characters are more like pawns who are going to experience the events, the action. Action driven or plot driven, means that the external events are going to change the characters, not the characters 'wants' or 'needs'. In character-driven films, you'll have the whole first sequence, meaning 10 to 15 minutes, to establish the central dramatic question. In plot driven films, you don't have that much time. You have to be much, much, much, much quicker than that. And I have an example here. Behind me there is an example of the beginning of the movie. I'm not going to tell you which movie it is. It's not "Arrival" that we are going to analyze here in this course. I wonder if you'll guess what movie it is. That's why I'm not telling you. So let's see the beginning of this particular movie and notice how fast the premise is established. Let's watch. Okay. So as you can see, we are two minutes in, I swear this is two minutes mark. And we already have a madman who is blowing up the city. And we see this from the perspective of police department. This is of course Die Hard 3. So in this film, the premise is: "if you'll keep watching, I am going to show you how lieutenant McLain is going to save the day". And you're going to have much fun watching him do it, right? So this is the premise. But the most important thing in this lesson is that you cannot afford to wait to hit your audience with the central dramatic question. So this is a very extreme example. "Arrival" that we are going to analyze is not that extreme. But as you will see, we begin the story very early on, and we don't wait until the ending of the first sequence, meaning 10 to 15 minutes. We begin in the first few minutes with the arrival of the aliens. 3. Turning points in plot driven films: In this lecture, I'm going to tell you about the turning points in plot driven film. So it's kind of self-explanatory in a way, because in character-driven films, the turning points will be character-driven, which means that they're going to happen because of the character's internal decisions. So, for example, the character is in crisis. He cannot take it anymore. That's why he decides to change his behavior. And we can see that a guy who has been, for example, a loser now suddenly does something courageous and it maybe motivates him to progress on this path. This is the character-driven film. In the plot driven film, the external events are the ones that are going to impact the character. Which means that the character is really not going to change. And this is the huge, huge difference between understanding the character driven film and a plot driven film. So, for example, the character in 'Arrival', which I'm going to explain in a very detailed manner later on in my analysis, is not really changing the way she thinks or behaves. It's other external events that impact her, so that she very delicately and very slowly changes her perspective on something in this particular case, it's going to be her viewpoint on how to experience life. Either to engage, or not. Okay, so the key thing to understand here is that in plot-driven films, it's always the external event that is the turning point. Not the character's decision to change the strategy. So remember this. In plot driven films, character doesn't change. The external events change the character. So this was the definition. If you're in any way confused about it, as I was back in the film school, then, don't worry, we will have a thorough analysis of the 'Arrival' here in this course and I'm sure it will shed a lot of light on that particular topic. So in the next lesson, I'm going to tell you about conveying meaning in plot-driven films. See you there. 4. Conveying meaning in plot driven films: My favorite thing about plot driven films is that you can convey much more abstract meanings then in character-driven films. Because the character in plot driven film doesn't develop. And you have all this time, which is a screen time with your audience to explore your ideas. However, I will admit that most of the plot driven films are not really taking advantage of that. The film that we've seen here, "Die Hard 3", is an example of a meaningless film where even if you would argue that there is some sort of meaning in there, It's a banana truistic thing that it's not even worth mentioning. And there is nothing wrong with enjoying a meaningless film. I have to admit that whenever 'Die Hard 3' came out in the nineties, I quite enjoyed it, but I chose 'Arrival' for our analysis here, because I feel that this film has both of these worlds. I mean, it has this appealing Hollywood show, which is the encounter with the aliens, sci-fi kind of genre. And then it has this philosophical backbone where you experience determinism and get to wonder about the concept of free will. So these were the main key points and definitions. And in the next lesson we're going to start our analysis of 'Arrival'. See you there. 5. 'Arrival' summary and meaning explained: In this lecture, I'm going to summarize 'Arrival' for you and share my interpretation of it's meaning. If you have seen the film recently, you may want to skip ahead, but I highly advise you watching it with me. It's just three minutes. But if you haven't seen 'Arrival' at all, this summary is not going to substitute watching the movie. I advise you to watch the film first and then come back to watch my analysis. Now, it's because I'm not going to show you any of the scenes of 'Arrival' in their entirety. I'm just going to show you little snippets of the scene just to refresh your memory. Now, 'Arrival' is a very interesting film and it's really worth experiencing for yourself. As a screenwriter and a director, I always mention to make sure if the source of the film that you will be watching is legal. It really makes a huge difference for the creators of the movie. And now, without further ado, let's watch the summary. The movie Arrival tells us to experience life fully. Even if sometimes it's going to hurt. We meet Louise as a mother who is morning her daughter's death, detached from other people she lives in an emotional vacuum. Then she's offered a job opportunity that she simply cannot refuse. Louise is going to learn a language of aliens from outer space. Along the way, we learn that these flashbacks of a deceased daughter are actually visions of what's going to happen in the future. Louise didn't had a child yet. By learning Heptapod's language, she got unstuck in time. Thanks to the gift, Louise manages to save the world from World War 3, but more importantly, she opens up emotionally. And it's all there to encourage us, the audience, to embrace life, even if pain is going to be a part of it. Now, when you decided to watch the movie 'Arrival', you probably didn't entertain the idea that a film with a flying saucer in it is going to introduce you to the philosophical doctrine. But that's exactly what happened. It's called determinism. It's basically the idea that free will doesn't exist and that human life is a calculable process that cannot be changed. There are two very interesting cinematic tools that screenwriter of 'Arrival' took advantage of to help us, the audience, to really experienced determinism. One is tricking us into believing that we are watching retrospection's with the daughter and then revealing later that these were projection a future. Another tool is an extensive use of parallel action in the third act. When Louise is able to acquire information from the future events. Usually I'm not a fan of fancy, gimmicky montage, but here it's justified by the film's meaning. The authors used it to encourage us, limited beings as we are, to just strap in and enjoy the ride, that is our life. 6. First act: This lecture is about the first act of the 'Arrival'. But before we'll get into the movie, I'll briefly tell you about the three-act structure in general. And then I'm going to specify the sequence approach, which personally I am using to outline my screenplays. So, you'll learn about this two different tools of screenwriting, which is kind of 2 versions of one and the same tool: The way of structuring your story. So, the first one and the broader one, the more well-known one is the three-act structure by Aristotle. So, his idea is that every story has a beginning, the middle part, and then an end. Obvious things, but these chapters, as you will, they all have different functions. And the first act is just to begin the story, which means that you're going to introduce your character. You're going to introduce the theme: What is the story about? And you're going to get the story going. So, these are the three main functions of the beginning. So now we can dive into the graph of the 'Arrival' that I prepared. It's here in front of me. You also have it in your guidebook. So, don't forget to download this from the resources. But if you don't want to do it, it's okay, because I'll be showing it on the screen as well. So you may as well be just watching the lecture. So this is the graph of 'Arrival'. The first line here is the acts by Aristotle. So, here we have the first act, the beginning. Then the middle part, second act. And the third act, the end is here. And then the other line is Frank Daniel's sequence approach, which is the method I usually use. I would say that 8 sequences of Frank Daniel's sequence approach is basically the same thing that Aristotle's three-act structure, but it's more detailed. These sequences let you compartmentalize your script and divide it to smaller chunks so they are more manageable when you're writing. So, today we're going to be working with the first act. Let me zoom on that in the graph. So, as you can see below the timeline of the movie, you have a visual representations of the most important scenes, so you can see them in the structure. While I will be talking about those scenes, I will be showing you the clips from those scenes as well. When we begin to talk about the first act, we need to establish where are we going with this story. And you don't have to know it from the beginning as an author, but then later on when you will be rewriting your script, it's something to discover. There is many times I begin my writing process with one idea in mind, and then subconsciously maybe I discovered that the story is about something else. So you don't have to have your 'meaning of the story' already crystallized or crystal clear. Here we have the convenience of analyzing the film that has already been made. So we already know what this meaning is. And this is this sentence. 'Life is worth experiencing fully'. Even if the pain is going to be involved. As you can see here, first act has two sequences. So, all of these sequences are roughly 15 minutes in 'Arrival' the first act ends at 30 minutes, which is perfect, but you don't have to be as precise. So let's go through the scenes. So first sequence is where we're going to meet our main character, who is Louise. Scenes that we are going to see is a montage of the character's past. So knowing the story, we know that this is actually the future, but when we're watching this film for the first time, we will be experiencing those scenes as flashbacks from the past. This is what the author of the script intended us to feel about those sequences. So we meet Louise as a mother of a deceased daughter who died on some kind of cancer as disease. So right after we learn about Louis tragic past, we learn that she is a language scholar who is teaching at one of the American universities. But what is the feeling that we have when we're watching her daily routine just after the flashbacks? We feel that she is detached from the reality even when she's walking through the hallway and she sees the excitement over the TV screen that she sees students that are watching some news. She barely notices it. She just goes to do her job. So, right in the first sequence, we see Louise not experiencing life fully. Being a smart audience we kind of expect her to because we think that she just lost her daughter. So this is an example of screenwriting tricking us in good cause. Because what he's trying to do is: he's trying to build a Louise as an empathetic character, because who wouldn't empathize with the mother who just lost her baby. It would be much harder to empathize with a woman who just doesn't like life. Whose apathetic and depressed. Apart from that, there is no one in Louse's life. We see her experiencing this arrival of aliens all by herself and seeing it in media. Also a huge theme in the film. Which by the way, if you remember me talking about starting your story in plot-driven film really fast, then you have to acknowledge how fast really we get to the landing of the aliens on Earth. It's just this few minutes of Louise, of the flashback of Louise. And then you have the scene where she's at the university and the students are asking her to stop the lesson, to watch the news with the landing of the aliens on Earth. And this landing of aliens on earth is going to be the first thing that's going to draw your audience into the story. Because immediately we're going to ask ourselves, 'How is this woman relevant to what's happening?' 'How is she as a character, are going to take part this landing on Earth, or communicating with the aliens?' So this was the first sequence. And the tipping point between the first and the second sequence is the visit from the Herold, which in this case is Forest Whitaker character Colonel Weber. And he asks our main character Louise, 'can you be involved with us in trying to understand the aliens?' So Louise says 'yes', but she has her reservations. She has to do it in her own way. So this is a very common thing in the middle of the first act. The Herold comes, and the character is not ready to start his journey. It's here to raise the stakes. The character is thinking that he's going to somehow manage to live through the pain that he is feeling, right? So this is in the character-driven films. In the plot-driven films, you don't have to do that. You can have your character begin the journey right away. You may say that in 'Arrival', our character actually really refused to go at first. But then I will say that she didn't refuse to go. She accepted to go, but she had her own terms. In this case, in the 'Arrival', you have Colonel Weber approaching our character and playing her a sound clip of aliens speaking and asking her to translate this into English. And our character says: "No, I cannot do it. I have to be there on the spot and communicate with them because this is not the language that I know." And the Colonel Weber is the one that is leaving. So they have their little back and forth about on which terms our character is going to be involved in the story. But it doesn't serve the purpose of raising the stakes. I would say that this is here to show Louise as a rebellious character and build some tension between her and her superiors. This is another thing that you need in plot-driven films, because in character-driven films, the tension that the audience is feeling is from empathizing with the character. So, the character in character-driven films has the struggle inside him or her. In plot-driven films, there is a problem to be solved, but you have to find different ways of building the tension or building a conflict. So you have a way of raising the stakes during your story, and we'll see a lot more of that. So the primal refusal of Louise is here to actually build tension between her and Colonel Weber, who is in this case her superior. So what we did in the first sequence was signing a contract with the audience to ensure them that "if you keep watching, we're going to show you if humanity is able to communicate with the aliens and how this particular mother who lost her child is going to participate in this event." So the second sequence is a transition from our character saying "yes" to Colone Weber proposition to the actual meeting with the aliens. And in between those two points, we are going to establish every subplot and bringing every character that we are going to use later on in the movie. Therefore, in the second sequence, we see the spaceship, we see the compound, we see the CIA guys. We get to know Ian, the love interest of our main character, her future husband, and so on and so forth. So basically the second sequence is here to raise the stakes and generate even more tension. Because now you identified that she has a little conflict with her superiors, which is Colonel Weber. More importantly, the confrontations with the aliens is also very demanding, is a also a frightening experience for our character. That's why we see her trembling and terrified during the preparation before she goes on the journey to the spaceship. So there you go. This is the first act. It ends when Louis is in front of aliens with the sole mission of translating their weird language to English, and finding out why have they arrived on Earth. In the next lecture, we are going to talk about how the story develops in the second act. See you there. 7. Second act: In this lecture, we're going to talk about the second act. Second act contains four of the sequences, which means it lasts about an hour. It's longer than the first, and the third act. Obviously is two times longer than the first, and the third act. In the second act, the character is on the journey in the world that he or she doesn't know. In this particular case, it's literally the alien world because we are visiting the Spaceship of aliens, right? So let's get back to the graph and I'll show you exactly what I mean. So we are at that point: 30 minutes in. Louise is standing in front of the aliens. We know about her mission. We know about the time pressure. We know the pressure from her superiors. We know the pressure from the outside world. So this second act, the whole thing is going to be about Louis understanding heptapots. She's going to be the only human who understand Heptapod's language. And this four sequences are going to take us there. The third sequence is where she establishes first contact. So we know almost from the beginning that she did a better job than her predecessors in speaking to Heptapods Now bear in mind that this is the timeline of the movie. And each of those is a turning point, right? So the first turning point is Colonel Weber offer, right? So it's not an event that was induced by Louis. The same thing is with the first confrontation with heptapods. She was literally put there by other people. And this is what I mean by turning point that comes from the outside. So generally speaking, in the second act, the main mission of our character is to understand heptapods, the aliens. And we know that it's going to happen, right? We kind of feel it. And the screenwriters of this film knew that as well. Because we have to show the progress, otherwise you will have your audience frustrated. But at the same time, you have to find a way to generate more tension. And the way that Eric, Heisserer, the screenwriter of 'Arrival', dealt with this particular problem, is that he added a lot of time pressure and pressurefrom the outside, because of the unstable political situation on the world. So the main question in the second act is not "if she's going to understand the language of Heptapods" is more "if she's going to understand it in time." And this is crucial to the second act. So in the third sequence, we see her progressing and at the same time being rebellious again. In the character-driven film, the rebellious behavior of main character would be a way of conveying meaning. Here, you don't need that. In this particular case, you don't need to convey meaning by... because it's not a character-driven film. So the rebellious behavior of Louise is just there to generate more tension. Make the scenes more interesting. So here we have her taking off, her hazmat suit, for example, and touching the glass in front of the aliens, which hasn't been consulted before with her superiors, of course. So the first turning point of the second act is when the visions of the daughter begin. So after coming out of the encounter with the aliens where Luis would take off the hazmat suit and touch the class in front of the aliens. She begins to see this child. We see her again, but we still see it as flashbacks. And in fourth sequence, we see Louis struggling with these visions and with being tired. So the way the screenwriter generated tension in the first sequence was that we started to ask ourself if Loise is going to endure the stress of interactions with the aliens, and he really didn't solve the problem. The visions just end. In this particular case, you have the culmination of the visions in a dream that Louise has. And when she's woken up, Colonel Weber just comes in and presents her with another challenge. So as you can see, you have another external way of pushing the story forward. So exactly at the middle of the film, character of Colonel Weber coming to our main character Luise and tells her: "Listen, you have to ask the aliens the main question. Or if not, this Chinese rogue general may blow up the world. At the beginning of the sequence. We're back on the track with the main story. We had our little tangent with the visions and Louise's personal life. But now we're back at the main dramatic question. And lo and behold, at one hour and 15 minutes mark, soldiers rebel, and raise the stakes even more. At this point, Louis has acquired a gift even more. In the second act, there is a steady progression of her learning the language of Heptapods. And the fourth sequence with the visions is of course a part of that. So now we're at the point where Louise has acquired a gift enough so she can see the future. And she knows that this is a actual ability. So in the six sequence when the stakes are risen super high, the world is in a brink of nuclear war. And luis has the gift. She knows that her visions had something to do with the Heptapods and the way that she understands this alien language now. And she confronts the one remaining alien to ask him what is the gift about. And she gets the information from that alien, which is that she's supposed to use the language that she just understood, to solve the crisis in the world. So this was the second act. This is how Louise learned the Heptapod language and got unstuck in time, can now see the future. And in the third act, we are going to see whether she's going to be successful in using this gift to avoid World War 3. So, see you in the next lecture. 8. Third act: So in this lecture we are going to talk about the third act. And two final sequences of 'Arrival'. We're going to get to know whether it was a happy ending or a tragedy. It was a happy ending. So we're going to begin where we left off at the second act, which is the moment where Louise is coming back to the real world with the gift. She has changed. Because it's a plot-driven film, we have a number of external events that resulted in the change of Louise, and therefore acquiring the gift. So she now sees the future and the past. And at the seventh sequence, which is in a Frank Daniel's sequence approach called: 'False Ending' she is going to use this gift that she has to get us a world peace, which is nice. So what she does is by exercising her rebellious behavior, she is able to call this general and practically call off the World War 3 with this single act. And this is how the seventh sequence ends. The eighth sequence in a plot-driven film is usually very short. And this is the case for 'Arrival' as well. It's just five minutes. The eighth sequence is the epilogue. What happened next. What was the result of the character's actions. And this is where we're going to learn whether it was a tragedy or a happy ending. In the case of 'Arrival', it's obviously a happy ending because we see that conflict has been resolved. And then we kind of see what we saw on the beginning where the character is experiencing her life with her daughter. And we see it in a completely new light because we know that these are the events that are going to happen. That beforehand we haven't been watching flashbacks. We actually would see the future. When I was watching 'Arrival' for the first time, I thought that it's an ingenious way of using the language of cinema to convey such a deterministic meaning. Because in cinema, you actually can mix future, past and present at the same time. Therefore, the language of cinema is a great tool to express this kind of meaning, even more so than the literature. And it comes down to Louise accepting her life and embracing it, even though she knows that her relationship with her daughter is going to end prematurely. So the 'Arrival' is not the actual arrival of the aliens, but it's the arrival of her daughter in a way, which was expressed in short story that was the basis for this screenplay. So there you go. This is the breakdown of the sequences of 'Arrival'. Now you know how to write a plot-driven movie like this. In the next lecture, I'm going to share with you my personal feelings on this particular topic, this particular meaning, and hopefully see you there. 9. Meaning of 'Arrival' in other works of art: I have to admit that when I saw 'Arrival' for the first time, I felt deeply moved by it. Because we all have our good and bad days in our life. We have our joy and sorrow. And life is worth experiencing fully, even if the pain is going to be a part of it. This is how I interpret the meaning of 'Arrival', and I feel that this film really lets us experience this meaning very emotionally. I want to read a quote from a book that came to my mind is from Gulag Archipelago, from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It goes like this: "Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for a happiness; It is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.'' So you have this quote also in the guidebook in a broader context, if you want to read more. Anyway, I felt that, quote fits the meaning of 'Arrival' very nicely. If you're interested in seeing other films with the same meaning but different perspective, you can see a character-driven film which is 'Blue' by Krzysztof Kieslowski. And the script was written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. And another perspective on the same meaning is 'Mirror' by Andrei Tarkovsky, which is an absolute masterpiece. If you haven't seen it, see 'The Mirror'. 10. Class project: Your class project is going to be breaking down a plot-driven film, just like I did, but you don't have to do it graphically. You don't have to make screenshots are any of these sorts of things. It's enough, if you just take a piece of paper, make seven points, which are the turning points. You're going to have seven turning points in plot-driven movie, because there are eight sequences, obviously. And my suggestions of the movies, so you have the certainty that you're analyzing a plot-driven film, are: the first and the easiest one is 'Die Hard 3', you have seen a little clip of it, so you already know what is the first turning point. Then another movie, which is plot-driven, is a Robert Zemeckis movie from the nineties, and it's a movie that is similar to 'Arrival'. The title is 'Contact'. It's a Jodie Foster movie. She is playing the main character, who is a scientist that made a radio contact with a foreign civilization outside our solar system. You'll see many similarities to 'Arrival' in this movie, and it's also plot-driven. And then the third movie, which is an absolute masterpiece, but it's also the hardest one to break down, and is the 'Network'. I'm the director of this movie is Sydney Lumet, and it was written by Paddy Chayefsky. So I wouldn't recommend beginning from the 'Network'. But if you don't want to watch 'Die Hard 3', 'Contact' is a good movie, because it's on the level of complexity of the 'Arrival'. So good luck with that. I hope that you're going to post what you have prepared in the project section. See you and good luck. 11. Best of luck in your screenwriting: Thank you so much for taking my class. I hope I was successful in giving you all this knowledge and I hope it was inspiring. If you like this course, please consider leaving a review. I can also tell you that I made a course about character-driven films where I analyze the "Joker". Hopefully, see you there. Bye-bye.