ROMEO and AMADEUS?

Tom Hulce in  Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984)

 

Romeo and Amadeus?

 

Once, I was a cinema student. When I applied for the place I had to attend an interview and answer lots of questions. One of them was something like this: "Tell us about a movie that made a change in your life and why?" I answered "Milos Forman's "Amadeus" and I explained because of "Amadeus" I did choose my favourite piece of music of all the time: "The Requiem" (It still is my favourite!). The director who was interviewing me looked to me with a smile and returned; "that was the music I was listening when I drove here". I had a splendid 19 over 20 on my interview, and I get my place.

 

Just some weeks after we start, "Amadeus" crossed in front of me again in one of the lessons. One of the teachers/directors mentioned the movie. I realized that many of my colleagues didn't know the movie. Very easily the director also understood that and eventually asked how many of us have seen "Amadeus". Surprise, surprise... only 8 cinema students in 35 heard about it before! A film which won 8 Oscars and was nominated for 11. More than 75% of the students of cinema in that class never watched it or even heard about it before. And I'm not talking about any lost movie from the 40's or the 50's. Shocking.

 

After that first year I accumulated with my cinema studies, another course. During the day I kept studying cinema and at the evening I start to study acting and drama. I wanted the full pack! Well... If I was shocked about Amadeus, the worse happened next.

 

I had to do an exercise over Romeo and Juliet. I was Romeo of course... And a girl was picked to be Juliet. If my memory is not failing, I believe it was the secret marriage scene.

 

I was doing my "first year's student" effort trying to be romantic with someone that I didn't know at all and was picked just 2 minutes before.

 

Unfortunately, the girl was just saying lines.... Not a single effort to do Juliet so I start to stress thinking to me "what the hell she's doing?" No emotions, no feelings... absolutely nothing. Zero. Potato. Kaput.

 

The teacher was just following her philosophic dreams somewhere in the limbo and didn't stop the exercise. Well I did! I not only stopped but I also asked the girl what she was doing. No answer. Then I asked "do you have any idea what's happening in the scene? No answer. I finally asked her "Do you know Romeo and Juliet?" Finally an answer "Erm... No".

Great. I was doing a scene of Romeo and Juliet with someone that never heard about it before. (Lately I realised that she also didn't know anything about Shakespeare... in an acting course!!! Yes, they exist! "Who the hell is that Peare guy?").

 

These are two true stories. Unfortunately, two real stories.

 

Why I mentioned here? Because it's something that we see every day in our careers. People who are looking to get results without even trying to get any background. People who follow these hard careers just thinking on the glamour, maybe a cover magazine. It's cute!

 

For the ones who spend their lives working and studying to achieve a place in this hard area is revolting. Especially because some of these "Romeos and Amadeus" will get positions and you wonder why and how.

 

Just like a person who went to do a web design course and asked how to minimize a window. (Ok, I don't need to tell this one)

 

I'm just asking now, do you know the roots of your industry? Run and read about them or at least have an idea why you are doing what you are doing.

 

The other ones will thank you for that.

THE STRUCTURE - Introduction.



Today I'm introducing the theme for the next posts. I'm going to start to write about the structure.

Based on the ancient Greek setting, the structure is how the story is organized. Standing on the different acts and following the idea that every story needs to have a beginning, a development and an end.

The most common structure is the three acts but you can find structures of one act (very common in short films) and structures of five or even more acts. As the exigencies of some new scriptwriting demands are getting higher,  is not unusual to find again structures of five acts or even seven acts. That could increase the interest in the story but will also inevitably upsurge the complexity and must be taken by experienced scriptwriters as the mix of the primary plots with many other sub-plots can become a truly nightmare if the scriptwriter doesn't have had a good preparation and a good treatment for his story. I may add: A big whiteboard and a huge pack of post-its!

This complexity of acts are useful when you write a TV series with  a plot that crosses all the episodes, and a different bunch of secondary plots in every episode.

Let me open here a small parenthesis, just to quickly tell you about some different structures in TV series and serials. You notice that I wrote series and serials? Right, that is a first big division on TV stories. A series, as the name says, it's a series of episodes. A short group of them. A serial is a long term programme like the soaps. You never know when it's going to finish. In the UK a soap last for thousands of episodes, years and years in a row like Eastenders or Coronation Street. In Brazil, Venezuela, Portugal and other Latin countries, they last from some six or seven months to one or even two years, about 150 to 350 episodes. If the audiences are following (that means, if the rates are great) they extend it as much is possible. In both cases, UK and Latin countries these TV programmes are considered SERIALS. A long term running TV drama/comedy. In these serials, normally we have one main plot for the main characters and then several other sub-plots for the different family groups. Usually we have about six or seven different plots running at the same time.

Then we have the SERIES. In this case we can have different options too. Let's take as example a 13 episodes Series. We can have a main plot crossing the 13 episodes with a different sub-plot in every episode or we can have 13 different main plots in every different episode. This could be the case of the SITCOMs, which can also have one slightly different version: A (weak) main plot for every episode and a bunch of small sketches (or jokes) that not necessarily need to be linked between them, but help to fill the episode. This structure is a kind of mix between a Series and a sketches programme and it's popularity is being increasing.

Let's think about structure.

As you see in these days the number of acts and the kind of structure can change a lot depending on what you are writing for and something that also depends on this structure is the number of characters you have. In a soap you easily reach 40 to 45 characters at the same time (in different plots), in a drama series about 15 (plus some extras in every episode) and in a sitcom, normally you have a small group, five or six (plus eventual extras).

We have lot's to talk about it in the next posts.

CYA