1. Notes from Voice & Vision By Mick Hurbis-Cherrier
Chapter 1 From Idea To Cinematic Story
Mary Walbridge

2. Ideas
First step – initial idea
Turn idea into story

3. Fictional Narrative Basics: Essential Story Elements
After getting ideas
A central character
A dramatic situation ( The premise)
Action and stakes
Resolution and what it all means

4. The central character Things happen to the character
Things character does
Ways characters change
Sympathetic character
Antipathetic character

5. A dramatic narrative film involves a character in a situation.
The situation that has a clear effect on them and provokes action.
The character responds to that situation, tells us who they are, and moves the story forward.
In the early stages of crafting a story, while we search for a character, we are also imagining the situation that will get them moving( reacting, making decisions, taking action)If central character is not moving – we don’t have movie.

6. The Dramatic Situation
What is at stake for character
What the character will win or loose
How the character changes.
These details form the dramatic situation or premise

7. The premise
The premise of a screenplay is the fundamental statement that drives the plot. ….. Marilyn Horowitz (screenplay writing blogger)
The premise of a film or screenplay is the fundamental concept that drives the plot. Most premises can be expressed very simply, and many films can be identified simply from a short sentence describing the premise. For example A lonely boy is befriended by an alien; A small town is terrorized by a shark; A small boy sees dead people.

8. Task of a filmmaker Develop dramatic situations that
Change the character through
Discovery
An accomplishment
An experience
An epiphany
An ordeal
What emerges from this is

9. Central Dramatic Question
What does this character stand to loose?
To win?
To discover?
How might this character change?
Through discovery
Accomplishment, experience
Epiphany, ordeal
Answers to these questions will form the dramatic situation or premise

10. Cinematic storytelling
Works when:
A compelling character is placed in a situation that provokes a reaction or action
What the character does or doesn’t do more about who that character is
Results in a new situation requiring new actions

11. Resolution – What it all means
The dramatic situation you’ve established is resolved
The Central dramatic question is answered
Resolution can be : ironic, victorious, unexpected, a humorous twist, an epiphany

12. To find the best resolution: Ask yourself:
What the point of all this narrative activity ( character/situation/action) was and what does it all add up to?

13. Fictional Narrative Basics: Conflict driven stories
One way to get a story and character moving is to create a situation of direct conflict.
Traditionally, a story in which a character, who needs to accomplish something, encounters obstacles and must struggle to get what they need.
The story’s forward momentum is generated by conflicts that keep your central character from achieving their goal

14. Opposing force or obstacles
Can be a character that stands in the way
External forces: weather, government bureaucracy, traffic jam, inhospitable landscapes, physical injury
Internal forces: from the character -insecurity, ambivalence, lethargy

15. Antagonist
An opposing force can be a another character who stands in the way.

16. Plot
Order of events in your film, unfolding of story in scenes and the scene order
David Mamet calls it an” essential progression of incidents”
The moments, actions, reactions, and interactions
When a goal oriented character encounters an obstacle, something that hinders him from getting his goal, he is compelled to do something in order to find a way over, around, or through that obstacle

17. Mamet’s question
What is the hero willing and able to do to achieve their goal
What they are not willing to do is revealing
As the plot continues the obstacles and actions usually increase in intensity because each action has consequences which cause tension until protagonist brings the film to resolution

18. Fictional Narrative Basics: There are no rules
Replace a conflict driven plot with something equally compelling.

19. Story types that work w/o direct obstacles
Mysterious or ambiguous activity that is explained at end
A discovery that changes the perceptions of character or viewer
An experience or series of events that change a character or reveal their true nature
A story that constitutes a puzzle to be solved
Slice of life: detailed perceptive, revealing
Allegorical journey
A set up / payoff plot structure

20. Ideas with limitations
Filmmaker real world limitation
Resources and experience
Story scale and film length- simple elements vivid imagery, characters and situation easily recognizable, streamlined conflict, revealing actions
Production time – underestimating how long it takes, availability with actors, limitations of semester, availability of actor, weather,
Overestimating how much can be done ( filmed ) in prescribed period
Financial resources – number of characters, locations, props
Time with crew and equipment. Size of crew