Anatomy of a Film

1. Anatomy of a Film By Matthew Gardener

2. Key Film Elements • There are certain key elements that are present nearly every film usually in the following order (although not always) on the next slide • [[[However, there are numerous outliers to this formula, such as TheSocial Network, No Country for Old Men, Lord of the Rings, sequels in general, Quentin Tarantino movies, and others.]]]

3. The Formula Template • Opening • 1) Setting: introduction of setting • 2) Introduction: intro of characters- who they are, what their occupation is • 3) Character: introducing desire of character, or a problem that he/she wishes to resolve • Plot Kicks in • 4) Opportunity: An opportunity/challenge presents itself- Character is either offered a journey, or is thrown against his/her will into it (call to adventure). • 5) Task: Character must undertake a major hardship. This hardship either is introduced in the beginning, or comes after the call to adventure. • 6) World: Character learns more about this world. This can be a new physical reality such as travelling to Hawaii, or just a complete change of perception (changing the world solely for the character) such as being cursed with the inability to lie for an entire day. • 7) Montage: Montage usually plays in to track character’s agenda to accomplish goal • Main Conflict/ Crescendo • 8) Urgency: something brings about a sense of urgency (ticking clock, deadline) • 9) Showdown: Character faces antagonist, or comes to grips with his own fallacy • 10) Ending: Character is content with the outcome, even if he/she dies, and the audience receives some sort of closure.

4. V For Vendetta • Opening • 1) Setting: Evey Hammond is watching a television personality describe the dogma of the tyrannical government she lives under. We see the Orwellian streets of Britain and hear the government-regulated curfew when we see Evey walk through the city at night. • 2) Intro: We see Evey’s timid nature when she’s accosted by two “Fingermen.” We meet the verbose and poetic terrorist, V, when he shows up to save Evey from being raped. • 3) Character: We learn about V’s utmost intentions and personal crusade against the government when he breaks into a media building to air his home-made video to the nation (and his political philosophy). This launches the arc of revolution to happen in one year. • Plot kicks in • 4) Opportunity: The call to adventure occurs when Evey saves V, her protector, from a government official and is knocked unconscious. V, sees Evey on the ground, and makes a split decision to take Evey away and hide her in his underground base. • 5) Task: Evey must undertake a hardship/task. V explains that he must not let her go since she’s seen too much. If she’s released, then a government official might interrogate her and deduce the location of V’s home, something that V cannot allow. She must prepare to stay here a year, until V can launch his revolution. • 6) World: Evey learns more about this cavernous home of V. She goes through his records, learns of his past, etc. Meanwhile we, the audience, learn of the government’s various operations to track down dissenters, make arrests, and induce propaganda on the population. • 7) Montage: Montage ensues when Evey learns more of Valerie and her past through messages in her prison cell. • Main Conflict/Crescendo • 8) Urgency: The ticking clock comes into play in the beginning through V’s proclamation of revolution (to take place in exactly one year). This provides a timeframe for V to assassinate his personal enemies, and for Inspector Finch to track down clues of the tyrannical government’s past. • 9) Showdown: Evey faces her fear when she exclaims she would rather get shot out in the alley than reveal V’s location. V enters his main conflict when he kills the supreme chancellor and his conspiring second-in-command. • 10) Ending: A dying V gives Evey the command of an explosive train to run straight into the capital. V contently renounces his murderous attacks, and provides Evey with the choice of whether or not to launch the revolution.

5. Office Space • Opening • 1) Setting: The world of 9-5 shifts in the office of a software company. There’s endless traffic, numerous bosses to listen to, boring shifts, endless reports to draft up, and a doorknob that constantly shocks the enterer • 2) Intro: We meet the main character Peter, his co workers Michael and Samir, the love interest, Joanna, and of course the main antagonist, a boss that takes passive aggressive pleasure in giving people more work, Bill Lumberg (an evil Bill Gates). • 3) Character: Peter is beyond tired. He hates his job, his lifestyle, his girlfriend (whom he suspects of cheating on him), and can’t stand what his life has become. • Plot Kicks In • 4) Opportunity: Peter is lulled into hypnosis. The psychiatrist suffers a fatal heart attack before snapping Peter out of the trance, leaving Peter to go through his days in a completely different psychological state: one of calmness, happiness, and total erasure of fears and inhibitions • 5) Task: Peter initiates a plan to embezzle money from the company using • 6) World: Peter’s world becomes more relaxing- his cheating girlfriend leaves him, his status rises up as corporate downsizing-masters love his attitude. This “world” is more of a “psychological world.” • 7) Montage: Peter enjoys his days, skips workdays, gets close to Joana, relaxes, and begins breaking rules and changing the work office to make it more comfortable, all the while Bill Lumberg begins to feel marginalized. • Main Conflict/Cursciendo • 8) Urgency: Peter’s scheme of taking small amounts of money from company profits goes sour, and now he, Samir, and Michael face possibly legal charges, including jail time. • 9) Showdown: Peter admits to Joanna that it was wrong of him to try to embezzle money from the company. He drafts a letter admitting that it was all his fault, encloses a check for the amounts he took, and slips it under the door of his boss in the middle of the night. • 10) Ending: The building burns down along with all the incriminating evidence of Peter’s embezzlement, thanks to the actions of a particularly disgruntled employee.

6. Star Trek (2009) • Opening • 1) Setting: We see vast reaches of space, the alien Vulcan world, and the Federation base on the United States. • 2) Intro: We meet Spock as an abnormally angry half human/ half Vulcan child and later as an elite student. Likewise, we see Kirk as a mischievous kid who steals his mother’s boyfriend’s motorbike and later as a poor, embittered, cynical, cocky farm boy • 3) Character: We see Spock forsake his Vulcan heritage (and a snobby patronizing Vulcan council) to head to Earth. On Earth, we see Kirk accept candidacy into the Federation Academy. He shows persistence in attempting an examination over and over again, and begins fraternizing with other students. • Plot kicks in • 4) Opportunity: The Federation Academy hears word of a Romulan attack, Kirk sneaks onto a ship to get in on the action and help with the rescue. • 5) Task: The crew needs to rescue their initial captain from the vengeful Romulans and defeat the instigators. Kirk must not only find a way back on the ship, but also prove to Spock why he must relinquish the captaincy to himself, Kirk, in order to lead the assault on the Romulans and rescue their captain. • 6) World: Kirk must not only get familiar with a Federation ship, but must also command it as captain. In addition, he must survive the icy environment of a nearby planet. • 7) Montage: As Planet Vulcan implodes into a black hole, acting-captain Spock must witness his race die, visit the refugees on his ship, and assume control of the last remaining Federation ship in the area. • Main Conflict/Crescendo • 8) Urgency: The Romulans are on their way to Earth, with the captain held hostage. As soon as the captain reveals the security protocols, the Romans will attack with unrelenting force. The Enterprise must intercept before that happens • 9) Showdown: Spock must accept his feelings, cooperate with his former rival, Kirk, and bring about the Romulans’ defeat. They sneak onto the Romulan shift, free their captain, steal the Romulans’ Red-matter filled ship, and sends the Romulan ship into a black hole. • 10) Ending: Kirk gains command of the Enterprise, Spock becomes his second in command.

7. The Godfather • Opening • 1) Setting: New York 1940’s. The Sicilian mob has major control of a vast amount of operations ranging from murder, prostitution, theft, etc. • 2) Intro: We meet the Godfather, Vito Corleone as he deals with an undertaker who requests his services in revenge. We also meet his four sons, Sonny, Tom, Fredo, and Michael (the last of whom is returning from war to introduce his girlfriend, Kay). • 3) Characters: We learn that Vito Corleone, despite being a criminal figurehead, has personal standards- he feels insulted when asked for a favor and then offered money to execute the operation, when all the Godfather wanted was mutual respect. Vito Corleone is no hitman. Similarly, we learn his cunning and resolve when he refuses to enter the drug trafficking business since it will harm too many people and it will lose him his political contacts. The other main character we meet is his son, Michael, who has no intention of entering his father’s (criminal) business, but nevertheless feels the need to defend it (initially against Kay’s haranguing). • Plot kicks in • 4) Opportunity: An antagonist, who desperately wants the Corleone backing of his drug trafficking business, makes an order to assassinate the Godfather. This incapacitates the head of the Corleone family and forces Michael and his brothers to pick up the pieces and defend their family against the rest of the mobs. • 5) Task: First Michael must venture off on his own to defend his father’s medical bed from other gang members who want to finish the job. Next, he must go into a dinner meeting, on his own, and shoot down the drug trafficker as well as a police captain in cold blood. Then he must flee to Sicily, to avoid his own assassination. • 6) World: First Michael must adjust to the criminal world- one of subtle hints, manipulations, and careful planning (something that the outright brutality and clear polarizing sides of war did not teach him). In essence, he must stare down his enemies, and either trick them into thinking he has a gun, or hide the fact that he’s there to kill them. Second, Michael must travel to the rural countryside of Italy, and gain the favor of the country people as well as his future (however brief) father in law. • 7) Montage: Michael falls in love with an Italian national, and marries her. • Main Conflict/ Crescendo • 8) Urgency: When an assignation attempt is made on his life, and his oldest brother is executed at a toll booth, Michael must take the reins and become the Godfather himself. He must not only take control, but also wipe out the Corleones’ enemies. • 9) Showdown: Michael organizes a series of simultaneous executions: a gangster who bullied his brother Fredo around, rival family heads, the Corleone insides who betrayed his father to a rival organization, and of course, the man who intentionally provoked Sonny to leave the compound so that a rival gang could execute him: Connie’s husband. In the last scene, Michael sits one on one with Connie’s husband, and quietly (but definitively) demands that he admit his betrayal. • 10) Ending: There is no happy ending here. While the Corleone’s enemies are all gone, Michael’s job forces him to compromise a loving trust with his wife and lie about his operations.

8. Inception • Opening • 1) Setting: The conniving world of corporate espionage in the (very near) future. Dom Cobb and his team are hired by a company to steal information and secrets from a corporate rival, in his dreams. We learn of how there can be multiple levels of the dream, and that Dom Cobb and his team are constantly on the run and must flee authorities. • 2) Intro: Dom Cobb is the leader of the team, and very dynamic at stealing secrets. Arthur is his enforcing right-hand man. Mr. Saito, at one time the target for Cobb’s operations, hires the team for one last job. Mal, who we only see in Cobb’s dreams, is/was Cobb’s wife. Ariadne, the character who learns about the world of the dream, learns about the rules/possibilities of dreams. • 3) Character: Dom Cobb is a forsaken father who longs to reunite with his family, who he cannot see since the authorities are on the lookout for him. • Plot kicks in • 4) Opportunity: Mr. Saito provides Don Cobb with an opportunity. If Cobb successfully plants an idea into Saito’s rival’s mind through his dreams (Inception), then Saito will make Cobb’s legal problems go away so he can go back to his family. • 5) Task: Cobb must hire a team for this massive operation, including hiring a new architect to construct the world in which Cobb and his team will trick their target. • 6) World: Cobb shows Ariadne the world of the dream. He teaches her about the possibilities of the dream, as well as the rules (including not doing too much too fast, learning how to avoid “projections” or to base levels on reality), and how to make sure one differentiates between reality and the dream. • 7) Montage: Arthur shows Ariadne various ways to construct a dream world (e.g. the Penrose Staircase), Cobbs’s associate Eames learns to mimic and pose as the target’s trusted advisor, and Cobb repeatedly retreats to his memories when his wife was still alive. • Main Conflict/ Crescendo • 8) Urgency: Saito gets shot which means that Cobb must complete his operation before Saito’s consciousness retreats into limbo and loses his mind. Multiple dream levels aside, Cobb’s elaborate scheme must convince the target, Robert Fischer, to resolve to destroy his father’s corporate empire all before the plane lands. • 9) Showdown: Fischer comes to the bedside of his (delusion) dying father and learn that his father was not ashamed of how his son turned about, but that his son aspired to be like himself-this confrontation was fictitious since his father did not exist anymore, but just another part of Cobb’s scheme. Now enter the real showdown: Cobb must face his demons and confront the memory of his sabotaging wife, Mal. He must come to terms with how he convinced his wife that the world wasn’t real, and let go of his guilt. • 10) Ending: Cobb’s plan seems to have worked. Robert Fischer wakes up with the idea to dissolve his father’s empire, and Cobb gets passed through customs without getting arrested. However, when he returns home to his darling children, he spins his top on the table which continues to spin until the credits begin to roll.

9. Knocked Up • Opening • 1) Setting: Modern Day Sunny California. • 2) Intro: Ben Stone lives with his friends in a crummy dirty house-his priorities include goofing around, smoking weed, going to amusement parts, and occasionally working on their website which chronicles nude scenes in movies. Hardworking Alison Scott works as an assistant at the Entertainment channel “E” and lives with his sister and brother in law. • 3) Characters: Ben Stone seems to have no long term goals and enjoys his life with his lazy roommates who encourage his lifestyle. Alison Scott, due to her work ethic and accommodating nature, is promoted to an on-camera position. Meanwhile she does not seem to work well with children, referencing her struggle with having her two nieces get along in the car. Her sister Debbie and husband Pete have problems getting along in their marriage-Debbie can be sharp and sniping while Pete seems not to care about things as much as Debbie would like. • Plot Kicks In • 4) Opportunity: Ben and Allison hook up in a drunken one-night stand that Alison does not plan on repeating again. Alison misses her period and gives Ben a call when she suspects he got her pregnant. The doctor informs them both that she’s pregnant. • 5) Task: For the sake of the baby, Ben and Alison must learn to get along before the birth and see if perhaps they are more compatible for each other than they thought. • 6) World: Ben starts to enter a more refined world (refined used loosely). Alison asks his to stop using terminology like “BJ”, and Alison….Ben joins her family for breakfast while she takes the effort to meet his creepy vulgar roommates. • 7) Montage: Ben and Alison begin to get along, go on dates, spend time with Alison’s nieces, etc. Things seem to be going well. (another montage comes much later, when Ben moves out into his own place, gets an internet job, and decorates a room for the baby in an effort to win Alison back and prove himself). • Main Conflict Crescendo • 8) Urgency: Alison and Ben’s stark differences are manifested when they both have a heated argument over Debbie and Pete, and temporarily break up. When Alison enters labor in her pregnancy, Ben must rush over to her house, and get in touch with a viable doctor to perform the birth (the doctor that Alison was banking on is currently MIA, much to her dismay). • 9) Showdown: Ben finally manages to get a doctor to perform the birth in the middle of the night. When Alison and the doctor butt heads, Ben must reason with the doctor and convince him to cooperate. • 10) Ending: The birth goes through well and the baby is healthy. Alison, impressed with Ben’s performance with his knowledge on pregnancy and ability to get in touch with and negotiate with a doctor, takes Ben back and they both drive happily to his home with their new baby.