In the previous blog entry I was talking about the three act structure. Let’s take a little look at what should happen in the first act.
Act 1: SET UP
If our film is 90 minutes long then our first act is going to be about 20 -25 minutes long. In those 20 – 25 minutes we’re going to have to set the scene for the audience. Act 1 is where we introduce the characters and place them in their enviroment. So whether it’s a sci-fi adventure, a wall street thriller or an office rom-com starring Sandra Bullock we need to introduce the main character and learn something about the world in which they inhabit. We’re also going to introduce a situation that our characters will be spending the rest of the movie dealing with; this is called a dramatic premise. The dramatic premise of your film is a problem your central character is going to spend the duration of the movie trying to resolve. I’m going to pick a film at random now to illustrate… Drum Roll…
I’m going to pick ‘An American Werewolf In London’.
Within the first act we are introduced to Jack and David who are American students backpacking across Europe. Unfortunatly they have started their tour in Britain and are on the Yorkshire moors as it’s getting dark. After being asked to leave a pub (The Slaughtered Lamb) by the weird locals they are attacked by a creature on the moors. Jack is killed and David is injured. The locals arrive just in time to save David, shooting the beast. Just before David passes out he notices that the beast is now a man. David awakes in a London hospital and struggles with what happened on the moors…
The point David and Jack are killed on the moor is an ‘inciting incident’ and comes half way through the first act.
An inciting incident is an event that will set the plot of the film in motion. We’ll talk more about that and plot points in the next entry.
[...] Act 1 is the Set up [...]