American Beauty - Notes

American Beauty - Overview

• Movie involves nudity, drug use, and swearing.
• The tagline is "Look again," emphasizing perception vs. reality.
• Nobody is as they appear to be.
• The movie is about a man having a midlife crisis.
• He falls for his daughter's best friend, who is far too young.
• Explores bad behaviors as people age and complex characters and suspenseful elements.

Narrative Structure

• Narrative is a fictional story, even if based on truth.
• Stories have a cause-and-effect structure.
• Everything in a movie is usually there for a reason.
• The camera is the primary narrator, providing the audience's eyes and ears into the world (the diegesis, from the Latin word).
• Voice-over narration is a "cheat" that relies on telling rather than showing.
• Films should use dialogue and action to tell the story.
• Example of filmic storytelling: flashback sequences with action and dialogue.
• Omniscient narration: the camera acts as a voyeur.
• Unreliable narration: the story is told through an unreliable source, causing discomfort and requiring critical thinking.

Character Types

• Round characters: complex, lifelike, with changing personalities.
• Flat characters: simple, easily recognizable stereotypes used for shorthand.
• Stereotypes should be used carefully and not be offensive.
• Protagonists should be round characters.
• Imperfect characters are more interesting to watch.
• Audiences can see bits of themselves in imperfect characters.

Story Structure

• Inciting incident: The event that sets the story in motion.
• Without an inciting incident, there is no story.
• Act Two: Obstacles that the protagonist must overcome; often the hardest to write.
• Climax should resolve the tension, but not necessarily happily.
• Avoid anticlimactic endings.
• Endings can be open-ended, leaving the audience to ponder the character's future or make choices.

Example Story Breakdown

• Character dreams of opening her own cafe (exposition).
• Inciting incident: She's fired from her job after a customer finds something in their food.
• She gets a job at a farmer's market.
• Rising Stakes: She got kicked out of her place
• Obstacle 3: returns to the cafe to try and get her job back, but the boss is super rude to her this time.
• Crisis: Returns back together

Screenplay Formatting

• Very important for industry acceptance.
• Ensures that readers can quickly assess the writer's professionalism and the script's potential.
• Format: Courier 12 font, specific margins.
• One page of screenplay equals approximately one minute of screen time.

Screenplay Elements

• Title Page:
  • No page number.
  • Title, author, and contact information.
  • No images or fancy graphics.
• Margins:
  • Left, right, and bottom: 1 inch (2.5 cm).
  • Top: 1.5 inches (3.75 cm) to accommodate coil binding.
• First Page:
  • FADE IN: (flush left, all caps).
• Scene Heading (Slug Line):
  • INT. or EXT. (Interior or Exterior), location, and time of day.
• Example: EXT. VANCOUVER SIDE STREET - NIGHT
• Action:
  • Descriptive text in the present tense.
  • Describes what the audience sees and hears.
  • When introducing a new character, put their name in ALL CAPS, followed by a brief description.
• Dialogue:
  • Character name centered (using tab).
  • Dialogue flush left, with specific margins.
• Parenthetical:
  • (O.S.) - Off Screen: indicates the character is speaking from elsewhere.
• Extensions:
  • Direct the camera; use sparingly (e.g., (Terrified)).
• Transitions:
  • DISSOLVE TO: Used to indicate a passage of time.
  • CUT TO: is the default and not usually written.
• Props, Sound Effects, Costumes:
  • Can be written in ALL CAPS.
• Mores and Cont'd:
  • Used when dialogue is split across pages.

Diegetic vs. Nondiegetic

• Diegetic: Elements that exist within the world of the film and are heard or seen by the characters.
  • Example: music coming from a car radio.
• Nondiegetic: Elements that the audience hears or sees, but the characters do not.
  • Example: film score, voice-over narration, or subtitles.
• Using diegetic sound such as the earphones in baby driver is more interesting.
• Time lapses are diegetic ways of showing time passing.
• Nondiegetic sounds such as tonal ambience are used to create suspense.
• Laugh tracks are annoying examples of nondiegetic sound.

Story vs. Plot

• Plot: Explicitly presented events in the film.
• Story: The larger implied narrative, including events that occur outside of the plot.
• Plot points are the key events that drive the story.
• It's good to allow the audience to understand the implied events and don't spoon feed them everything.

Surprise vs. Suspense

• Surprise: A sudden, unexpected event.
• Suspense: Building tension and anticipation in the audience.
• Suspense is harder to achieve and requires craft.

Repetition and Patterns

• Motif: A recurring element (image, sound, phrase) that carries symbolic meaning.
• Patterns: Meeting audience expectations and then subverting them to create interest.

Setting

• The time and place in which the story occurs.
• Can be specific (e.g., SFU Burnaby campus, Spring 2025) or broad (e.g., an epic scope spanning many years).

Recurring Visuals

• Images that become motifs (e.g., flying cars and video advertising in Blade Runner).

The Importance of Film Treatment and Other Aspects

• Doing a film treatment will make the screenplay easier.
• Doing your screenplay well will make the storyboards easier.
• Each of these exercises build on each other.

Format for screenplay:

• The margins are 1 inch or 2.5 centimeters.
• Here, this is one and a half inch or 3.75 centimeters.