Fairy Tale Exercise

Once upon a time in a land not so different to your own, there lived a woman who was incorruptible. She wanted to make things better in her kingdom, but there were bad people who kept making things worst. So one day it happened that a new king came to power and promised to change things. She went to work for a subject of this king, a prince. She wanted to help things change but she found it was all a farce. The new prince started asking her to do bad things again and threatened to fire her if she didn’t comply. Meanwhile, in the Principality of Health a greedy subject wanting to make a profit decided to start distributing bad quality potions. Unbeknownst to the prince, who had a hearth condition, the medication he was taking for it came from one of this deficient batches.  When suddenly the day he was about to fire the woman for refusing to be corrupt, he suffered a hearth attack and died. So it turned out that the death of a bad prince saved the woman and she realized that the only way to make things better was to bring death to the rest of bad subjects in the kingdom; and for ever after she became a vigilante who spent her days killing bad people all over the realm.

Casablanca

Casablanca's COP is: virtue demands sacrifice. The main character’s dilema is to choose between personal happiness or the greater good. He’s in love with a married woman, but pusuing this romance would mean the death of an important man who’s fighting against the nazis. In the end, he lets go of the chance to be with her and helps them escape.

Assignment 1/31/2012

1) State your (newly revised?) premise (the one sentence COP).

Corruption leads to rebellion

2) Explain how your protagonist and antagonist really fit your premise.

Romeo and Juliet have a great love that defies even death. Are your characters also the embodiment of your stated premise?

The protagonist of my story Comrade30s is a victim of corruption, while the antagonist Comrade 35s is a victimizer. Corruption is a central factor in both their lives. But while Comrade 30s chooses to rebel and fight against it, Comrade 35s chooses to embrace it. Comrade 35s first wants to change things and embrace rebellion, but in the end fears the consequences and instead decides to accept corruption.

3) Do your characters make their own decisions?

In providing the details to round out these characters have you provided sufficient physiological, sociological, and psychological justification so the protagonist and antagonist are acting on their own in the face of conflict? This is important: Your characters should be complex, but your characters must also act in ways that are consistent with traits and experiences. Please explain how Jeff Kitchen’s ideas about an “ethical dilemma” apply to your protagonist.

Comrade 30s and Comrade 35s paths are marked by their personal stories. Their background does justify why they chose different roads in the end. Comrade 30s comes from a family where corruption was always demeaned as inacceptable. Comrade 30s mother, who had a huge influence in his life used to work in the public system and always rejected corruption. Growing up he always heard stories related to her work and how people tried to bribe her, but she never complied despite the benefits it might have meant to her. Refusing corruption was engraved in his mind.

Also, Comrade 30s always had a relatively comfortable life. Although not rich, his parents managed to maintain a middle class lifestyle. Having a father who worked in the private sector and came from a wealthy family reduced his level of class resentment. This is what also allowed him in some way to distance himself from the desire of money and power.

The opposite can be said for Comrade 35s whose economic family life was more restricted. His father worked in the public legal system and job stability was always at the mercy of his political contacts and good standing with whatever current government was in charged. Sometimes they had good economic periods and sometimes they didn’t. He had to study hard and win scholarships to finance his studies. Plus, he comes from a family who used to have money and respect, but thanks to some old relative who made a bad financial decision lost it all. This induced a certain level of shame and resentment in the character. His deepest desire is put his family back on top, to get power and wealth to win respect for them.

In conclusion, both character’s decisions are marked by their parents approach to corruption. In Comrade 30s case his mother-rejected corruption so he too finds it unacceptable. Comrade30s ethical dilemma revolves around corruption: should he adapt to the system and embrace it knowing that by doing his career will prosper or should he fight against corruption and lose his job? In the end, he chooses to rebel despite the consequences. He decides to kill those who corrupt the system as a means to change it.

In Comrade 35s his father always embraced corruption, so he in the end when he must chose between losing his position or allowing corruption he chooses the latter.

4) Does your conflict and its resolution prove your premise?

I think that the conflict and the resolution of my film does probe the premise. The conflict of the story is whether to embrace corruption or rebel against it. In the end the main character choses the latter.

Comrade 35s - Character Description

Physiology

Sex: Male

Age: 30

Height and weight: 5 ft 9 in and 165 pounds

Color of hair: black

Color of eyes: dark brown

Color of skin: Mediterranean

Posture: Straight

Appearance: good looking

Comrade 30s - Character Description

Physiology

Sex: Male

Age: 29

Height and weight: a little below average height  (5 ft 6 in) and 150 pounds

Color of hair: dark brown

Color of eyes: light brown

Color of skin: white

Posture: a little hunch

Appearance: pleasant, a little untidy.

Heredity: a weak constitution. If he gets in contact with someone sick with the flu, he always gets it.

PERMA MODEL

In his book called “Flourish”, psychologist Martin Seligman listed a series of conditions that need to be fulfilled for a person to experience true happiness.  These conditions are: positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning and accomplishment/achievement. This is known as the PERMA model.

Film producer Lindsay Doran who came across this model is now proposing scriptwriters to apply it to the stories. She says audiences respond better to mood elevating films. This doesn’t really mean that the stories need to have a typical happy ending. It could either end with the lead character developing a positive relationship with another character or finding some meaning in life. You could also present a character that experiences a loss but instead of being defeated by it, writers can make this tragedy help him connect deeply with someone else.

In addition to this, Doran puts emphasis too in the fact that even if we make a character succeed in the end, we must always have him share this success with someone else. No success has meaning without the recognition of the “Other”.

I think this is something that microbudget filmmaker should keep in mind if they want to have successful productions. When you are a microbudget filmmaker you must overcome many difficulties. First, when a film is made independently without the sponsor of a big production company, then it’s a film that won’t count right away with a distribution contract. The success of a micro budget film depends usually on positive mouth-to-mouth promotion. When a film is made by a big studio then the quality of the film is not a decisive factor on whether it will get distributed or not. When you make a microbudget film you don’t get an instantaneous and direct exposure to the audience. This is why if you chose to make a film that leaves the audience displeased then your chances of getting them to help you promote the film and have it picked up for distribution are slim. If your story is engaging and the audience leaves the screening room feeling happy then your chance of success increase.

As a way to understand why keeping in mind the PERMA model may work for scriptwriters, let’s analyze the reasons behind the decline of the TV show House MD in his eight season. Gregory House, the main character of this TV series is supposed to be a genius but misanthropic doctor. His personal motto is that “people never change”. Sadly this is a statement that the writers of the series seem to have taken too much into heart. The result is a TV show with a character, which also never changes despite the multiple tragedies that seem to happen to him. For the past 7 seasons, the audience of this show had waited patiently for the moment when the PERMA model would finally apply to the character. Because, every audience as Lindsay Doran states, wants to see that lead character they cheer after achieve some level of happiness. The last season of the show, the writers had established a relationship for the character, which seemed to be finally moving the story towards the PERMA model. But, by the end of the season they decided to have the character crash his car in his ex girlfriends house and destroy any chance of the character of achieving happiness. This dramatic decision has driven the audience away and dropped the series ratings.

The only exception that I could point out in Doran’s argument is that the PERMA model might not apply to all types of stories. Horror films, for example, don’t usually have a happy ending. In the case of The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, which were both successful independent films, we have stories that end in despair. No character ends up alive or achieving any level of happiness. Maybe then the PERMA model could apply to other moments of the story. Maybe in horror films it works in a reverse mode. Characters start happy and have some form of positive relationship and the secret for the success of the film is seeing how the characters happiness is ruined. 

Vision, Scope and Financing Assignment for Jan. 17th, 2012

The philosopher Blaise Pascal proposed that since God’s existence can neither be proved nor disproved, we should just wager that he does exist. Pascal sustains his position by arguing that there are more benefits from believing in God’s existence than from denying it and seeing as either proposition has an equal possibility of being true, we should just bet that he does.

Pascal’s wager can apply to the theory of the central organizing principle. When a writer works on a story, he must construct a character that will probe or live up to the central organizing principal of his story. The character’s actions or decisions at some point of the story will have to communicate the COP, otherwise the story has been badly crafted. This is why the writer must create first a history for his character, a background and a set of circumstances that will lead him or her to make a certain choice at some point in the story thus acting out the COP. But, even when a writer constructs the perfect background and psychological setting for his character in order to have him behave in a certain way, he is making a gamble. He is taking a chance believing that his construction will be felt as coherent in the audience’s mind.

In Lajos Egri’s book “ The Art of Dramatic Writing”, the author gives an example about a girl who comes from a conservative home and turns to prostitution.  The girl wants to be a dancer, but her mother wants to make her marry. She runs away from home and turns to prostitution after she’s unable to fulfill her dreams. For this story, the author creates a psychological profile and composes a family environment where turning to prostitution seems like a realistic choice for the character. But, even under those circumstances where everything seems to come together one could always argue that the character might have made another decision. This is where I think scriptwriters can relate the COP to Pascal’s wager, because in the end every writer is making a bet with their characters. Plus, there’s also a benefit from believing that your character would act in a certain way, just like Pascal’s wager is based on the fact that one belief poses more benefits than the other. In this case, the benefit is the fact that believing that our character will act a certain way allows us to accomplish the central organizing principal of the story.

The central organizing principal of my film called “Decorruption” is: injustice breeds hate. I plan to create a world filled with corruption where a character that is affected by it, will turn against the corrupt and kill. It’s an extreme action, but I plan to create a world where it seems as the only action possible for the character. My character is unable to be corrupt which makes him envy those who benefit from corruption. This is what will motive him to kill them as a form of revenge.