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I'm not sure, but he seems to believe that all lives and events are subject to a kind of predetermined fate. He sees himself as merely a tool of that fate, an enforcer of fate's rules.
I like his reaction later on in the scene when the clerk tells him this was his father-in-law's place and that he married into it. It's as if he thinks there is a certain order to this world, perhaps he believes a man shouldn't be marrying into anything and instead make his own way. He seems to be hung up on that anyways because he cuts off the clerk's life story with " You married into it" and soon afterwards does the coin toss with everything that man has at stake.
Hmm, yeah, maybe. Certainly it serves the purpose of raising the tension as it's like he's accusing the owner of something, puts him on the defensive.
As for the fractured scene, I just watched the whole movie. Good film. In that scene, I'm not sure if there was one specific turning point, but Hopkins has a clear goal: he wants to make Gosling overconfident. That's his weakness. He wants to provoke him so he'll be hasty and he wants him to think Hopkins has no possible defense.
I like to think he was attempting to recruit Willy over to his side and if he can't ( like you said) make him overconfident. Could Willy refusing to become his lawyer be the turning point? He sends all the evidence Willy has made against him back to Willy's desk waving them off as nothing but a "box of papers", he has Willy investigated, knows about his 97% conviction rate, and even tells Willy face-to-face that he has nothing to prove he killed his wife. Seems like he is telling Willy that he is on a path to failure then offers him an exit by becoming his lawyer. When Willy refuses this offer that's when he tells Willy he knows his flaw. I believe this was meant to get Willy to start questioning his chances of winning this case ....
Quoted from SPOILER
In this entire scene he was toying with Willy, Hopkins knows there is no evidence that Willy could find to prove he is guilty, his confession is invalid due to the detective's affair with his wife and the gun that Willy is hunting for is with the detective.
I don't think he wanted Beachum to question things at that point, although it's understandable to think that because of the dialog. I was actually going to mention this. I think the dialog got away from the writer. They lost sight of Hopkins goal and they slipped in stuff meant to show us...the audience...Beachum's flaw. To be consistent, Hopkins should have kept that quiet.
Remember early in the trial? Hopkins pretends he doesn't know what he's doing. Later when that no longer matters he shows how well he knows the law. See, Hopkins wanted a lawyer who was cocky and eager to move on to his new job. He wanted a lawyer who would not ask questions. Beachum didn't. He knew Beachum wouldn't accept the job offer.
It's a good movie because there's a good twist/mystery and two very compelling actors. I think, what do I know.
I'm just an amateur, I have no idea what film school people or pro writers do. But on youtube you can find all kinds of examples of QT and other directors discussing scenes. So I would guess that they do this kind of stuff all the time. Writers, actors, directors...they dissect scenes. I really don't think professional people in any field take a casual approach. They look at what other pros are doing, they try to understand.
Can someone who doesn't do this stuff write a good scene? Sure. But it's less likely. And it's hard to be able to do it consistently, which is really what pro means.
As far as the overall message of a film or story, I actually think that's less important. Much less important. Not that finding a theme or a message isn't interesting, it is, but it's much more important to make film that grabs and holds our attention.
Frank is pissed about the deal Tony made with Soza. Worried how they can come up with the cash. Tony says if they have trouble, he can make some moves and come up with it. Frank learns from this Tony is making moves on the side, which borders on treason.
I always look for turning points in a scene, and as I've said, there's often a double hinge of them. This is the first turning point. Frank now doesn't trust Tony.
When Frank finally expresses that to Tony, Tony steps forward and demands to know if Frank is calling him a liar. This is the second turning point. Tony confronts him, and Frank seemingly backs down, but he's really decided to cut ties with Tony. It's possibly the moment he starts to think he'll have to kill Tony, but his style is not to do it right there. His style, because he lacks balls, is to pay for an assassination.
The scene has great tension because up to this point Frank has been a friendly mentor to Tony. So it's their first confrontation. Frank believes Tony has betrayed him. Tony believes he has been loyal, but he also believes Frank's lack of balls stands in the way of what he wants: going big time.
The double hinged scene has two turning points. The second is a reversal of the first. It comes near the end of is the end of the scene.
For example, Bobby, a high school student, has a crush on Jane, but is afraid to talk to her. But then by luck of fate they get stuck sitting together on the bus. At first Bobby can't say anything. We know how Bobby feels, so tension builds. Finally he speaks, but it's clumsy, not going well. Shit! But then she notices his tattoo. She admires it, has always wanted a tattoo. They begin speaking on friendly terms. We feel his hope and excitment grow! That tattoo discovery is the first turning point.
But then she asks why he got that particular tattoo. He explains he had a silly crush on some girl freshman year. He's all over it now. She asks him which girl. He doesn't want to say. We don't want him to say, we feel something bad will happen if he does. But he feels he has to keep her trust, so finally he comes clean. but it turns out this girl used to be Jane's best friend. She's horrified by the fact he got the tattoo for that reason and won't talk to him anymore.
That's a reversal. A second turning point.
The Scarface scenes is not quite a reversal, but close. The first turn causes Frank to mistrust Tony. The second turn comes with the confrontation when Tony asks if he's calling him a liar. Frank does not reverse his conclusion, he still doesn't trust Tony, but he keeps it to himself. He backs off, but inside he's planning Tony's demise. So it only appears to be a reversal as Frank backs down.
This famous Matrix scene has one turning point. In effect the scene itself is a turning point. But the turn is not sharp. there's no reversal. Neo chooses truth, as we expect him to, and as Morpheaus expects him to. So there is no conflict. The driving force here is intrigue, mystery. We want to know what is behind the matrix.
I think every scene has an engine. Usually either it's a question we want answered, such as mystery or whether a character achieves his goal.
Or it's driven by conflict. Two or more characters that want contradictory things and we watch to see how it resolves.
In this scene, Kramer is planning to leave for California and he tries to enlist George to go with him. He fails, so there is no essential change as the result of the scene(thus proving Robert McKee's thesis in Story is highly flawed. He insists that every scene must involved a change from positive to negative or negative to positive. I always cringe whenever I hear "Every...". Like "Every story involves the changing of the protagonist".)
Anyways, there are no turning points in this scene, so there is no structure to it. It's a simple scene, one character wants to convince another character to do something, and he never makes any progress in that regard.
However, what drives the scene is comedic tension, a form of conflict. Conflict is usually the result of two characters wanting opposing things, as is the case here. Kramer tries to convince George by making him see the emptiness of his own life. And though he never gets close to convincing George to go with him, he does make George miserable in seeing his own empty life. The comedy comes from that tension.
He fails, so there is no essential change as the result of the scene(thus proving Robert McKee's thesis in Story is highly flawed. He insists that every scene must involved a change from positive to negative or negative to positive. I always cringe whenever I hear "Every...". Like "Every story involves the changing of the protagonist".)
I had the same thoughts, I know from memory i have read scripts and watched movies that had scenes which didn't have the negative/positive change. I think in key scenes this should happen, but not every scene in the script.
This is a great idea doing these scene dissections, almost should have it's own section on the site.
Magic is a form of storytelling. The key element, as in most storytelling, is to build anticipation, and in this case, the put the audience squirming on the edge of their seat. That creates tension, compels our interest.
Note how Penn begins to build anticipation by "reassuring" us that though this is the first time he's done the trick on TV, they've practiced it many times. This creates an anticipation of danger. Maybe something could go wrong. He has our attention now.
Around 4:28, a twist! He seemingly makes a mistake! This ups the danger! Very smart.
He then proceeds to use the trick on Teller in what seems to be very dangerous.
The whole thing is so simple, yet so effective. Not even close to the greatest magic you've ever seen, but that's not the point. The point is to show the key ingredients to holding an audience's attention. Anticipation(in this case of danger) and an unexpected turn(here it's when something seemingly goes wrong, upping the stakes.)
How does this help in scene construction? We look at our scene. Have we SET IT UP properly with enough ANTICIPATION? And do we have a point where something UNEXPECTED happens which UPS THE STAKES?
I love this thread. It's my favorite one on this site. If I wasn't so focused on finishing my current script I would be a lot more responsive. But..
Do GOOD writers disect each of their scenes like this? Or
Do they just write a cool story and let the audiance take what they want away from it.
I understand writers (most of the time) are trying to put a message across as a movie in a whole, but in every scene?
Do i need to start doing this?
To me, the key words are - "disect each of their scenes". Replace "each" with "major" or "key" and okay. Whenever there is an absolute (e.g., never, always), to me it screams script guru rather than story teller.
I know it will sound anal, but I kind of view a script like a ladder. There are scenes that represent the individual steps of the ladder and scenes that form the sides of the ladder (something that logically holds the steps together). I dissect each steps but not some much the sides.
By way of example, let's say I am a Spy. I'm in my home waiting for a package.
So the first scene is a step. I'll build tension there - talk about a mysterious package that is coming. I don't want something pedestrian like Dave waits for a package. I'll want tension - describe or at least hint at some mysterious importance of the package.
Now it has to get in my house - it's just not going to be inside. SO maybe the next scene is a UPS truck pulling up to the curb outside my house. - That's part of the ladder tail and I'm not going to dissect the shit out of that one - it's only purpose was to forecast the delivery. Now, I am going to make sure it is well written - efficient, concise, no typos, proper format blah blah blah - but I am not going to dissect it per se. It only serves as a logical anchor to move the story forward and allow me to add the next step.
Yeah, I don't think we need to dissect each of our own scenes. I think from dissecting scenes from other movies the process becomes ingrained in our own writing. Not in a one size fits all kind of way, of course. That's why we need to analyze as many types of scenes as we can. It's a process that should never end.
Any scene, any scene, that is not grabbing your reader by the throat and making her want to read on to the end of the scene, and on to the next scene, puts your story at risk of failure. Any single scene. Of course, not all of our scenes will be that successful, but that doesn't change the fact...any scene not grabbing the reader is giving the reader an excuse to stop reading.
In the package scene example...taken in isolation, the shot of the UPS truck coming up the street is boring, but viewed in context it is not, because we're building towards answering a question about the package,
But let's say the writer didn't set that up effectively. Let's say we get a glimpse of Dave the Spy making breakfast, and then of the truck. That could lose the reader.
And I've seen amateur scripts do this! All the time! No anticipation is built. Stuff is just happening. I've seen bad movies do it too. Set ups and pay offs. I think any scene or point in one's story where no anticipation has been properly set up, there is a risk.
I'd like to add something to that: often amateurs set up the anticipation but they do it weakly. And sometimes this is the result of a fear that the scene will not feel "real".
Fuock real! Make us feel!
Make the stakes high, even if it means asking the reader to buy into it a little. These are movies, there isn't much time to build stakes, so make them sharp. The paid readers will complain. But those guys are making $3 an hour reading scripts, they don't know anything about making movies.
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