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This is the fourth in a series of posts to prepare you for Sunday's Micro Short Filmmaking Meetup at Cubbon Park.

Here are the previous 3 posts:

• Le Menu
• Triangle of Knowledge
• The Sustained Two-Shot

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All stories are about change. A Story answers these 3 questions: 

1. Who wants what? 
2. What's in the way? 
3. What's at stake if they fail?

Plot vs Story vs Theme
Plot is physical events; Story is emotional events. Plot is what happens in a movie; story is how the characters feel about what happens.
Theme concerns the universal human condition. A theme is a truth about life that is embedded in and emerges from the experience of a film.

All stories (novels, short stories, movies) have these 4 elements, even if one or two tend to be the primary elements. 

1. Mileu - The Place. The story begins when the protagonist enters the place & ends when he leaves the place. e.g., Nishkarsha, Shawshank Redemption 
2. Ask/Answer - The question the protagonist (not the reader) is trying to find out an answer for. e.g., Sherlock trying to solve a mystery, can Vishnuvardhan rescue the people trapped inside the bank? 
3. Character - There is something the character wants to change about herself. It may be her sense of self-worth, correct a flaw, fulfil a need, or an external want. e.g., Coming of age, Redemption for his mistakes, Finding a Romantic Partner, Becoming Successful, etc
4. Event - An external event that changes the status quo of the characters. They likely can’t go back to the old status quo. They have to try to get to a new status quo. e.g., The protagonist gets fired from his job. (But that also affects his self-worth. So, it also becomes a character story)

Nesting Principle: 

Here’s how you can use the MACE Quotient to analyze stories or structure your own stories without using any rigid formulas. 

M( C( E )C )M - The Milieu thread opens → inside it, a Character thread opens → inside that, an Event thread opens and closes → the Character thread closes → the Milieu thread closes. The order can vary, but whatever thread you open first, you close last.

e.g.1,

Martian (An astronaut stranded on Mars must rely on his ingenuity to survive and arrange a potential rescue.)

Theme: Survival 

Mars is the Mileu, not being able to get back to earth is an external event, so he needs to adapt to this reality & survive, which is about the character. The Question is how does he survive & can he get back to Earth? Along with the help of other characters he manages to get back to Earth. 
→ M (E ( A (C) A) E) M

e.g.2,

Shawshank Redemption (A wrongfully convicted banker forms a close friendship with a hardened convict over a quarter century while retaining his humanity through simple acts of compassion.)

Theme: Hope

From Andy’s perspective, 
E - Wrongful Conviction (Outermost)
M - Shawshank Prison (Second)
A - How Does Andy Survive (and Escape)? (Third)
C - Andy's Relationships and Effect on Others (Innermost) 

E( M( A( C )A )M )E 

Thread	Opens	Closes
E	Andy convicted	Norton dead, Hadley arrested, system exposed
M	Andy enters Shawshank	Andy crawls out through the sewer
A	How does he survive and adapt to the prison life?	By connecting with Red & other inmates & being an accountant to the Warden.
C	Prison tries to erase his identity	Letter to Red - hope as final statement

The nesting is subjective. You may disagree with this & come up with your own nesting.

Also, if you do this from Red’s perspective, the nesting changes. 

Exercise:

Write the MACE Nesting for each of these movies, & also identify the theme in one or two words. This will help you get an intuitive sense of the structure & flow of the story. 

1. Lucia: A man suffering from insomnia is tricked into buying a drug, Lucia, that makes his desires come true in his dreams, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.
2. Ulidavaru Kandanthe: A journalist sets out to uncover the truth behind an incident, through the perspectives of different people, unraveling how they and their lives are intertwined with it.
3. Sarkari. Hi. Pra. Shale Kasaragodu: The happy and mischief-filled lives of the children of a Kannada medium school in Kerala are brought to a halt when the government decided to close the school.
4. KGF 1: In the 1970s, a gangster named Rocky goes undercover as a slave to assassinate the owner of a notorious gold mine known as the Kolar Gold Fields.
5. Gaalipata: Three best friends go to Thirthahalli for their vacation but there of them fall in love with three girls.

Finally, try to apply the MACE Nesting to one of your own story ideas to refine & deepen it.

This is the 3rd in a series of posts to prepare you for this Sunday's Micro Short Filmmaking Meetup at Cubbon Park.

https://preview.redd.it/b33ycdeqh9kh1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f82e93225771d3c60193fe13731445b73665d0b

This is the second in a series of posts to prepare you for the Micro Short Filmmaking Meetup on Sunday.

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The way we tell a story depends on where the knowledge sits between the Viewer & the Characters.    

We can write 3 Short Stories/Screenplays using the following premise, each time shifting who holds the knowledge.

Premise: A couple is in a long-distance relationship. The boy hears lots of noises during the last few phone calls with the girl. She tells him that it’s the preparations for a cousin's wedding. Turns out it's her own wedding.

(Feel free to flip the gender if you wish 😀)

The key questions are:

1. Why did the girl decide to get married without breaking up with her boyfriend? 
2. How & when does the boy find out? 
3. What happens when he confronts her? 
4. How will the answers to the above questions be revealed to the reader?

 

Scenario 1: Viewer & the girl have the knowledge. The boy doesn’t. 

Scenario 2: Neither the viewer nor the boy know it. So, we find out about the impending wedding along with the boy. 

Scenario 3: The viewer & even the boy know about the wedding. The girl doesn’t know that he already knows.

Be creative in the way you tell each of the 3 stories. You don’t need to take the easy route of villainising one of them. Give each of them compelling reasons for their actions. 

You can play with the timelines & entry points in each story. You can move the story forward (it starts when the boy turns up at the wedding or the boy finds out the reason several years later). Or move it back (figure out why they are in a long distance relationship. Maybe, the boy lost his job & moved back to his hometown). 

It all depends on how you want to reveal the information to the viewer & what kind of details & plot points you want to add to each story.  

You can also have a mix of happy & sad endings. 

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Writing Advice from Matt Stone & Trey Parker

This is the first of a series of posts to help you prepare for the Micro Short Filmmaking Meetup on Sunday.

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Le Menu - Connecting to Self by Claudia Hunter Johnson is a personal inventory of the themes, subjects, & emotional territories from which you are most qualified to draw. You can also use the same for writing well-etched out characters.

You write five to ten honest, specific answers to each of the following ten prompts:

• What I love
• What I hate
• What I fear
• What I believe
• What I value
• What I want
• What I know about
• People who made a difference in my life
• Discoveries that made a difference in my life
• Decisions that made a difference in my life

The more specific and honest your answers, the more useful the menu becomes. E.g., “I love my mother” is too vague. Dig deeper & be specific. Details are the key. 

Last Week's Megathread