Structuring a Social Realism screenplay
by Lukas Agelastos
In this article, I am looking at a concentration of the ideas and thoughts I drew from experts and professionals on screenplay structure. I am attempting to offset the lack of texts on Social Realism screenplay structure by discussing some concepts that seem to be relevant to the sub-genre.
by Lukas Agelastos
In this article, I am looking at a concentration of the ideas and thoughts I drew from experts and professionals on screenplay structure. I am attempting to offset the lack of texts on Social Realism screenplay structure by discussing some concepts that seem to be relevant to the sub-genre.
I will discuss how structure applies to "art cinema" and Social Realism.
“Structure is the prime element of a film or television script. But while the importance of structure is clear, the interpretation is often less so” (Miller 1984). According to McKee (2014), the purpose of structure is to yield progressively building pressures that compel characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking actions and choices, slowly revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self. "It is because narrative structures bend time to human will that we delight in them so. Rhythm is man's triumph over mere chronology, his way of making time dance to a human tune. This is nowhere more apparent than in the temporal structure of fiction, in which repetition, periodicity, and climax give shape and meaning to the course of events" (Scholes 1974).
According to most theorists, a script ought to have a three-act structure, with the first-act climax about a quarter of the way through, the second-act climax arising about three-quarters of the way into the film, and the climax of the closing act resolving the protagonist’s problem (Bordwell & Thompson 2010).
Whereas the classic three-act structure is used very often in mainstream cinema, which is geared towards escapism and entertainment, art films are more interested in developing ideas or exploring new narrative techniques or conventions of filmmaking (Wilinsky 2001).
Art cinema drives its narrative by two concepts: realism and authorial expressivity.
In a previous article, I had attempted to define Social Realism as:
The type of cinema that emerged in Britain in the 1950s exhibited “realistic, contemporary settings, and the concern with contemporary social issues mark these films out as social realist. However, their status as fiction films for mainstream exhibition required conventional narrative structure” (Lay 2002).
A typical Social Realism convention is the “‘loose’ episodic narrative structure with a cyclical resolution and ambiguity defying the closure demanded by mainstream cinema” (Lay 2002). For example in Ken Loach’s cinema-verite films “there is a loosening of the cause/ effect chain associated with classical narration so that what we are presented with gives the impression of following the everyday life of an ordinary working-class person” (Lay 2002).
For mainstream screenplay theorists like Truby (2008) an episodic structure is anathema, “a collection of pieces, like parts stored in a box. The result is a story that moves the audience sporadically [...] A great story is organic- not a machine, but a living body that develops” (Truby 2008).
But social issue films draw on existing schemata with which we make sense of social life.
“Structure is the prime element of a film or television script. But while the importance of structure is clear, the interpretation is often less so” (Miller 1984). According to McKee (2014), the purpose of structure is to yield progressively building pressures that compel characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking actions and choices, slowly revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self. "It is because narrative structures bend time to human will that we delight in them so. Rhythm is man's triumph over mere chronology, his way of making time dance to a human tune. This is nowhere more apparent than in the temporal structure of fiction, in which repetition, periodicity, and climax give shape and meaning to the course of events" (Scholes 1974).
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| Ned, plural neds: (Scotland, slang, derogatory, offensive) A person, usually a youth, of low social standing and education, a violent disposition and with a particular style of dress (typically sportswear or Burberry), speech and behaviour (Wiktionary, 2020). Martin Compston and William Ruane in Greenock in Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen (2002), one of the films that attracted me to Social Realism because I had been amazed how realistically life in the West of Scotland was portrayed |
The classic three-act structure and “art cinema”
Since Aristotle, and his idea of a “three-act structure”, the sequence of events in narratives are not simply linear but causative (Chatman 1980).According to most theorists, a script ought to have a three-act structure, with the first-act climax about a quarter of the way through, the second-act climax arising about three-quarters of the way into the film, and the climax of the closing act resolving the protagonist’s problem (Bordwell & Thompson 2010).
Whereas the classic three-act structure is used very often in mainstream cinema, which is geared towards escapism and entertainment, art films are more interested in developing ideas or exploring new narrative techniques or conventions of filmmaking (Wilinsky 2001).
Art cinema drives its narrative by two concepts: realism and authorial expressivity.
Art films deviate from the conventional norms of filmmaking in that they typically deal with more episodic narrative structures with a loosening of the succession of cause and effect
(Bordwell 2013).
This is not to say necessarily that episodic storytelling involves “dangling causes” or “plot holes” (Thompson 1999) or that it has to involve paratactic storytelling (i.e events one after another rather than one because of another, with little or no “subordination” between them to show relations of cause and effect (Bourbouhakis & Nilsson 2010)), in favour of a causal presentation of events. But an episodic narrative can encourage someone to imagine different possibilities and implications of the relationship between events, as Karl Kroeber (2008) asserts. Some types of narrative depend on more active imaginative participation in the story than typical Western stories, which “encourage us to be passive, to let someone else imagine for us” (Kroeber 2008).
Although Kroeber writes about Native Indian storytelling, his ideas are applicable also to episodic narrative vis-a-vis the classic cause-and-effect storytelling of Hollywood.
Realism, in any case, “helps motivate the theme of unpredictability, by appealing to the notion that real life is less predictable than most movie plots” (Thompson 1999).
This is not to say necessarily that episodic storytelling involves “dangling causes” or “plot holes” (Thompson 1999) or that it has to involve paratactic storytelling (i.e events one after another rather than one because of another, with little or no “subordination” between them to show relations of cause and effect (Bourbouhakis & Nilsson 2010)), in favour of a causal presentation of events. But an episodic narrative can encourage someone to imagine different possibilities and implications of the relationship between events, as Karl Kroeber (2008) asserts. Some types of narrative depend on more active imaginative participation in the story than typical Western stories, which “encourage us to be passive, to let someone else imagine for us” (Kroeber 2008).
Although Kroeber writes about Native Indian storytelling, his ideas are applicable also to episodic narrative vis-a-vis the classic cause-and-effect storytelling of Hollywood.
Realism, in any case, “helps motivate the theme of unpredictability, by appealing to the notion that real life is less predictable than most movie plots” (Thompson 1999).
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| Leila Hatami and Payman Maadi in Ashgar Farhadi's Separation (2011) |
Social Realism Film Structure
In a previous article, I had attempted to define Social Realism as:- showing the effects of environmental factors (Hallam and Marshment 2000).
- exploring controversial issues in a society (Lowenstein in Lay 2002).
- being secular texts, illustrating human and not divine truths.
- being grounded in contemporary scene,
- providing social extension to include marginalised characters
- being focused on the political intent of the artist (Williams in Lay 2002) and that
- their themes often associate the negative effects of capitalism, the death of the traditional working class, changing gender roles, and anti-consumerism (Lay 2002).
The type of cinema that emerged in Britain in the 1950s exhibited “realistic, contemporary settings, and the concern with contemporary social issues mark these films out as social realist. However, their status as fiction films for mainstream exhibition required conventional narrative structure” (Lay 2002).
A typical Social Realism convention is the “‘loose’ episodic narrative structure with a cyclical resolution and ambiguity defying the closure demanded by mainstream cinema” (Lay 2002). For example in Ken Loach’s cinema-verite films “there is a loosening of the cause/ effect chain associated with classical narration so that what we are presented with gives the impression of following the everyday life of an ordinary working-class person” (Lay 2002).
For mainstream screenplay theorists like Truby (2008) an episodic structure is anathema, “a collection of pieces, like parts stored in a box. The result is a story that moves the audience sporadically [...] A great story is organic- not a machine, but a living body that develops” (Truby 2008).
But social issue films draw on existing schemata with which we make sense of social life.
In this sense, realism in popular narrative films is a template of the familiar drawn from experiences of social life as well as a template of narrative form drawn from cultural knowledge of story structures
(Hallam & Marshment 2000).
According to Forrest (2013), the social problem film’s conflation of thriller, melodrama and noir elements, develops into a social examination that is set out concurrently with the evolution of a plot structure that exists on the premise of its capacity to contain, restore, and conclude the essential elements of the narrative. “This has the effect of emblematising the social problem within a single narrative entity or character, causing the ‘problem’ to be concluded within the closed structure of the film, eliciting an identically narrow social judgement from the audience, and restoring order within the bounds of the diegesis” (Forrest 2013).
To illustrate, Ken Loach, in his critical naturalist approach uses narrative as a facilitating framework for his social and political messages. According to Knight (1997 in Forrest 2013), critical naturalism is a form of social representation at once genuine in its deliberation and passionately interventionist in its exposition; its narration has an identifiable dramatic form and the inevitable plot design is from bad to worse. “Whatever we might hope for naturalist characters, and whatever they might hope for themselves, the audience realises that the aesthetic conventions of naturalism are such that these hopes will likely go unrealised” (Knight 1997 in Forrest 2013). These characters have a very circumscribed range of possible actions. “While viewing a naturalist film, an audience does not just experience frustration empathetically through projective engagement with the character- an engagement which might nevertheless allow them to remain optimistic that, in the end, things will turn out right after all. Rather, an audience experiences frustration directly as a consequence of the dramatic structure of naturalist films” (Knight 1997 in Forrest 2013).
Most Social Realist cinematic works are classical narratives with a three-act structure. For example, a Dardenne Brothers film is “[never] a rarified arthouse offering with no discernible narrative” (Billson 2012).
The Dardenne Brothers admit that with the suspense in their films they could easily become thrillers — even though they negotiate social subjects and are dramas. They acknowledge doing this very consciously in order for the audience to be in a state of waiting for something — of expecting and not knowing. “We try to surprise the audience with something that they may not have imagined. So, we’re constantly thinking about that element. The suspense that’s intrinsic to all our characters is, how are they going to get out of the spot that they’re in? Whether it’s their solitude, or their illness, or where they’re stuck socially” (Ebiri 2015).
According to Forrest (2013), the social problem film’s conflation of thriller, melodrama and noir elements, develops into a social examination that is set out concurrently with the evolution of a plot structure that exists on the premise of its capacity to contain, restore, and conclude the essential elements of the narrative. “This has the effect of emblematising the social problem within a single narrative entity or character, causing the ‘problem’ to be concluded within the closed structure of the film, eliciting an identically narrow social judgement from the audience, and restoring order within the bounds of the diegesis” (Forrest 2013).
To illustrate, Ken Loach, in his critical naturalist approach uses narrative as a facilitating framework for his social and political messages. According to Knight (1997 in Forrest 2013), critical naturalism is a form of social representation at once genuine in its deliberation and passionately interventionist in its exposition; its narration has an identifiable dramatic form and the inevitable plot design is from bad to worse. “Whatever we might hope for naturalist characters, and whatever they might hope for themselves, the audience realises that the aesthetic conventions of naturalism are such that these hopes will likely go unrealised” (Knight 1997 in Forrest 2013). These characters have a very circumscribed range of possible actions. “While viewing a naturalist film, an audience does not just experience frustration empathetically through projective engagement with the character- an engagement which might nevertheless allow them to remain optimistic that, in the end, things will turn out right after all. Rather, an audience experiences frustration directly as a consequence of the dramatic structure of naturalist films” (Knight 1997 in Forrest 2013).
Most Social Realist cinematic works are classical narratives with a three-act structure. For example, a Dardenne Brothers film is “[never] a rarified arthouse offering with no discernible narrative” (Billson 2012).
The Dardenne Brothers admit that with the suspense in their films they could easily become thrillers — even though they negotiate social subjects and are dramas. They acknowledge doing this very consciously in order for the audience to be in a state of waiting for something — of expecting and not knowing. “We try to surprise the audience with something that they may not have imagined. So, we’re constantly thinking about that element. The suspense that’s intrinsic to all our characters is, how are they going to get out of the spot that they’re in? Whether it’s their solitude, or their illness, or where they’re stuck socially” (Ebiri 2015).
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| Émilie Dequenne in Rosetta (1999) by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne |
There is a fine line between having a comprehensible structure in a film and making it overly simplistic. Mitry (1997) argues that there is an assumption that “if they are to be comprehensible, the ideas suggested by a film must be simplistic (whereas they must be merely simple and direct, i.e. true to the truths presented to us and, as it were, guaranteeing them beyond themselves) or that in order to be original, they must be confused and overelaborate” (Mitry 1997). Thus, he asserts that mediocre films use a language gained from a conventionalised way of thinking, using signs with universal appeal stemming from archetypes and accepted myths. Films of merit, on the other hand, create metaphors rooted in unanticipated associations, and to acknowledge these subtleties, one must be equally subtle.
With Social Realism, one is often divided between following the simplicities of the three-act structure while also creating subtle metaphors.
“The framework of the apparative and dispositive structure guarantees the spectators a sense of security [...] It is the ongoing task of the formal and dramaturgical tools to call this security into question by stimulating the spectators’ emotional and cognitive activities” (Mikos 2013).
Summary
The purpose of structure is to create pressures that compel the protagonists into difficult dilemmas, slowly revealing their real selves.
According to theorists, a script ought to have a three-act structure. Social Realism narrative forms are drawn from familiar story structures.
But whereas classic storytelling is causative, Social Realism film employs a more episodic structure in which there is a loosening of the cause/ effect chain and gives the impression of following the everyday life of an ordinary person. In naturalist films the plot design is from bad to worse. This makes it less predictable and demands a more active imagination on part of the audience. Understanding this might clarify whether some of the loose ends need tying up in your own screenplay.
References
- Anne Billson. 2012. Dardenne brothers: 'We don't argue in front of the actors'. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/mar/15/dardenne-brothers-dont-argue-actors. Retrieved 20 August 2017.
- Julia Boll. 2016. Harry Potter’s Archetypal Journey. In: Katrin Berndt & Lena Steveker (ed.). 2016. Heroism in the Harry Potter Series. London: Routledge.
- David Bordwell. 2013. Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge.
- David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson. 2010. Film Art. An Introduction (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill
- Emmanouel C. Bourbouhakis & Inga Nilsson. 2010. Byzantine Narrative: The Form of Storytelling in Byzantium. In: Liz James (ed.). 2010. A Companion to Byzantium. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
- Seymour Benjamin Chatman. 1980. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
- David Forrest. 2013. Social Realism: Art, Nationhood and Politics. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
- Bilge Ebiri. 2005. The Dardenne Brothers on Two Days, One Night and How They Work Together. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/dardenne-brothers-two-days-one-night-interview.html. Retrieved 20 August 2017.
- Julia Hallam & Margaret Marshment. 2000. Realism and Popular Cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press
- Karl Kroeber (ed). 2008. Native American Storytelling: A Reader of Myths and Legends. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
- Samantha Lay. 2002. British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit-grit. New York: Wallflower Press.
- Robert McKee. 2014. Story; Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen
- Lothar Mikos. 2013. The Experience of Suspense: Between Fear and Pleasure. In: Peter Vorderer, Hans Jürgen Wulff, Mike Friedrichsen (ed.). 2013. Suspense: Conceptualizations, Theoretical Analyses, and Empirical Explorations. London: Routledge.
- William Miller. 1984. The Matter Of Screenplay Structure. Journal of Film and Video (ARCHIVE), 36(3), 35-41.
- Jean Mitry. 1997. The Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
- Robert Scholes. 1974. Structuralism in Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press
- Kristin Thompson. 1999. Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
- John Truby. 2008. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- Christopher Vogler. 1999. The Writer’s Journey. London: Pan Books.
- Barbara Wilinsky. 2001. Sure Seaters: The Emergence of Art House Cinema. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
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