What happens in the First Act?
This is the introductory act of the structure. It's probably the act which received more changes in the recent years. Not in the content but on the size.
The scripts become shorter in the last couple of decades. The economy determined the movies that used to have more than 2 hours, now they will be just under that. Some movies for children even went to just about one hour and 10 minutes.
The great epics from Hollywood are rare now. There is no place anymore for three hours of "The Ten Commandments" or "Ben Hur".
The production costs and the attention levels went down. People are not able anymore to follow an entire movie for more than 1 hour and 50 minutes. Publicity on TV cuts a movie in so many pieces that if you want to watch a movie on Sunday afternoon at some TV channels it can take 3 or 4 hours of bits! Everything is quick and flashy.
What did change on the scripts because of that?
Simple, what used to take 20 minutes to 30 minutes to happen in a script now it needs to happen in 10 minutes. And the ACT I is probably the one which received more cuts.
In the structure, the ACT I is the part of the story where you introduce the main characters and the locations in time and space. It's also in the end of this ACT I that you launch the journey of the protagonist. As normally is known as "THE CALL".
In the past the scriptwriters used to have plenty of time to do it. As I said they used to have about 20 to 30 pages. Now the producers want to see it on the first ten pages. Some are already trying to get information on the first five pages and in extreme on the first page. This is particularly important when you writing for TV as the episodes have just 50 minutes (or even just 30 minutes). At this stage, I may say you need to introduce your story in the first scene. Three or four lines of dialogue and the main story needs to be "on stage".
The introductory part of the main characters on the ACT I must give us an immediate image of who is he/she. We need to understand what kind of character it is. What is his world? What are his thoughts or morals, something that bring us back the three-dimensional characters that I wrote in older posts. The ACT I is the moment to put on table most of that information. The audience must understand what type of character is on.
Place it on time and in space is another important thing to introduce in the ACT I. When the action is starting? Where? Is it London 1845, United States 2009, The moon in 2150... The spectators need to understand where and when everything is happening. Even if you have flashbacks or prologues they will give a time and a space that will be important for the development of the story. It can be in a place that doesn't exist... A kind of desert like in MAD MAX or the infinite ocean in WATERWORLD. But we need to understand where and when it happens.
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I will continue in the ACT I on the next post.
CYA
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