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action, balance, concept, design, development, energy, fight, filmmaker, goals, ideas, inspire, kinetic, making, Marvel, Michael Bay, movie, necessity, plot, potential, process, scenes, science, screenwriting, script, story, student, teach, writer
Hello readers! Thought I wouldn’t make it, didn’t you? Well, I almost didn’t. Internet issues are still cropping up every now and again so this post might come quicker than I’d like. I want to start off saying that next week I won’t be posting only because I will be out of town and without my computer. Hopefully I’ll be finding a job that better justifies the advice I give to you. Anywho, this week we’re going to study action.
Remember last week when I said story and action are interconnected? As we’ve seen before, action drives the story. So suffice it to say that the two are very closely related. But as you look at the films you like, you’ll notice there are two types of action, which I’ll refer to as kinetic and potential. Yes, science comes into this whole mix. Now, hopefully you know what these words mean. So how is action potential and how does it progress the story? If we consider kinetic action as all the big flashy stuff (explosions, jet fighter dogfights, good old-fashioned barfights), then potential action is all the stuff in between. It’s essentially buildup. But the key is that the characters are always doing something. It may not become immediately obvious, but every action they take builds up to the next big kinetic moment. Then the energy is taken up by the kinetic moment and we start over again building up potential.
Too much and too little of either action is bad, of course. But the trick is recognizing it in different films. That’s the whole point of studying, right? So here a few key things to keep in mind: In an action heavy movie (anything by Michael Bay, a Marvel movie, etc.), notice how much more kinetic action there is which is balanced by potential. For every explosion and fight sequence, there is a learning moment. A planning moment. A character development moment (character is our next point of study).
So what about movies that are more drama or comedy oriented? These are kinda inverted with more potential and less kinetic. However, they are usually split up in different ways (i.e. an action movie has several big fight scenes or whatnot and a few moments in between. A drama will have much slower scenes with sporadic action moments thrown in). A mystery story will have more kinetic scenes with suspects being confronted with a bunch more potential scenes about investigation. Get it?
So look at your favorite movies and see if you can tell what type of action fits into what scenes. Then, you can apply the same dynamics to your own script and hopefully create a well balanced piece of work! Like I said, next time we’ll talk about characters, but after I come back. See you then!