Here are some thoughts I have on story flow. There are 2 types of stories, the ones that flow and the ones that don't ;) Now that was very deep, obviously...
American filmmakers tend to build their stories from separate scenes, that in a comedy would be gags, but then... everything is a little bit comedy in Hollywood, and most movies are built like this: as a collection of gags. Nothing wrong with this, except that it doesn't flow well by default, so you go to extreme lengths to make the thing flow... well, this is a method, and it has its strengths and weaknesses (not that I know so much about this method, this is just a thought I'm having here...). Its strong point is diversity and ease of handling, and flexibility, making it especilly suitable for animation, where it's a nightmare to sustain huge scenes, to find "business" for the characters for long periods of time. The weak point though is huge: it's the fact that you tend to add artificiality in the story, you add elements "just because" - you alter for example the end of section A to make it fit the beginning of section B, so they flow. But hey, they were not built to flow one into the other in the first place!! So now you have 2 sections that are artificially altered to match, AND an illusion of a-little-bit-of-flow, but there's a high possibility that the flow, being artificial, doesn't hold... The patchwork is sometimes obvious and cheap. Of course, at its best, the patchwork can be great (Disney movies always follow this method).
The other way around is to have a story, not a collection of gags, but a continuous story. Of course, that's really difficult to sustain in animation. Spielberg movies are usually like this, continuous, he builds huge scenes (10-20-30 minutes, sometimes more). Let me detail this a bit. In Jurassic Park 2 for example there are just a few scenes, and that's the whole 2-hour-and-something movie. I once made an analysis of this movie... but it remained as chalk on a blackboard somewhere in the BG campus :D. I used to go to University Hall and spend the whole night browsing (I was using the university's net, fabulously fast, with my laptop connected to it), and one night I did this analysis and realized... wow, man, but this is amazing, he only has a few scenes, and that's the whole movie... and it has such a simple and solid structure, it's crazy! I remember there were 4 sections - before the island, on the island small crew, on the island large crew, back to 'mainland'. And it's sort of a mirror, an ABBA. And then there are these scenes, which is what I wanted to talk about actually - there is the first scene as they reach the island for example, and then they meet the girl and the dinosaurs, and go to the camp-thingy, all this is continuous (before reaching the camp there is a little jump in time, but the action doesn't jump to something else, it continues), and then there is that characters-arguing moment, and then the helicopters come and we move to the next scene (maybe you could consider the little jump in time before arriving to the camp a new scene, that's OK). The helicopters' arrival leads very organically to the hunting scene. The evening comes and all that releasing the dinosaurs and bringing the ill TRex offspring to the camp and the angry parents destroying the camp and pushing the characters off the edge of the cliff, and ending with the arrival of the large crew, this is all continuous, like in theater, one huge scene of over 30 minutes. Characters come in and go out, but the action continues organically by necessity, and we follow only ONE storyline. The scenes continue one another with very little jump in time and space, like following a trail. This is not a chain of events, but a path of events. Huge difference, I think.
Now you could say "...but there is a path in Jungle Book, what are you talking about??? How can you say Jungle Book is a collection of gags?" Well, it's not, and then again, it is, I think, and I can be wrong, of course. I think a film like Jungle Book for example has a solid story structure, and it follows a path... but at the core of Jungle Book I see the chain. Jungle Book is built around gag-sequences, even though they flow really well and we follow ONE storyline. Pick another example, Jungle Book is really well done. Pick a bad Disney movie, like the clone of Jungle Book: Robin Hood. Now in Robin Hood you can clearly see the chain of separated events, and things do not flow. Let's pick a good Disney movie that flows, but you can also see the chain clearly... Mulan! Mulan revolves around the main character, so we have a focus, but the story is a chain (again, I didn't say the chain is a bad thing). Same with Snow White, same with Cinderella, same with tons of movies revolving around a hero type.
So, yeah, a chain is a chain, and a path is a path, but I think a path has more power, I don't know why, maybe because it's organic? Maybe because it's more logical?
Comments
|
About me
I'm a character animator, visual artist, game dev, and music composer. I like to doodle, write, experiment, and plan my next big thing. I love tech that inspires and enables art. I have a formal background in music composition. And I like to walk around the world and see things up close. Archives
February 2022
|