Hacker CinemaSave the CAT!
Save the CAT!
Film · short · 21 min
Directed by Carlo Benedek Kocsár
In a not so distant future, household Androids can be acquired to live together with certain people to rehabilitate them into society. Unit C.A.T 2538 (Also known as CAT) lives together with Will, a recovering alcoholic and addict, a self-proclaimed "trash of society." Tensions rise high as the line between goals, emotions, and who is actually trying to become a better version of themselves blurs to a thin, dangerous line.
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4 comments on Hacker News
> But can AI create original characters that people feel an emotional connection to and create new stories? Would an AI get people to see the love that's been put into some characters? That's what I'm not so sure about.
I don’t think this would be as hard as you think. In the screenwriting world there’s a very famous book called “Save the cat” which is named after the authors assertion that in the first 5 minutes of the movie the protagonist has got to “save a cat” or some other altruistic act to make the audience like them. To make likeable characters you’d just have to feed in a few prompts for some scenes where they put the needs of others above themselves and one where they vulnerably discuss a tragic event that’s left them psychologically wounded with another character. Boom, one likeable character served on a plate.
Bonus points if the character makes bad decisions throughout the first half of the movie based on this psychological wound (called “the lie they’re telling themselves”) and then in the second half of the movie they make a change culminating in a showdown with the antagonist (who represents what the character would have turned into if they hadn’t changed). Classic hero’s journey.
Yes. Movie screenplays are already quite formulaic, eg: https://slate.com/culture/2013/07/hollywood-and-blake-snyders-screenwriting-book-save-the-cat.html
Hollywood is mostly a system of aggregating tropes into stories. The minority sidekick, token minorities, the plucky Southern Women (Steel Magnolias? Really?), the imminint danger down to the second, etc. There is a book on movie plot writing called, "Save The Cat" that is the most insightful book I've read on that subject.
The plot of "Avatar" was depressingly cliche; a standard retelling of the standard action movie plot, done once again. The special effects made it worth seeing, twice for me. Rarely does a movie rise above such things.
http://www.amazon.com/Save-Last-Book-Screenwriting-Youll/dp/1932907009
As others have pointed out the concept of a more detailed screenplay structure has been around for a very long time, and typically pretty well understood by working screenwritters.
I remember reading about the 9 act structure in the 90s (can't remember if this is the guy who started it, but I think so): Edit corrected link (thanks to hncommenter13 below): http://web.archive.org/web/19961103105817/http://dsiegel.com
The problem with modern blockbuster films as described in the article is for the most part not because of a better understanding of structure but because of less understanding. Perhaps poor writers are using tools like Save the Cat to believe they understand writing better then they do. Or perhaps studio executives (who are notoriously near pathologically risk averse to new ideas) reading new screenplays use a poor understanding of Save the Cat to validate perspective scripts.
I can say for sure that many modern movies, particularly summer movies, are absolutely not following these structures, good or bad. Mainstream narrative filmmaking always follows the hero's journey, whether your hero is a neurotic writer in new york, a young black girl in New Orleans, or a genetically modified super hero.
Summer blockbusters these days are focused on something different. Visceral response. Well structured storytelling (whether you think that's "Save the Cat" or something else), is about stories and human relatable emotions and characters. Recent films have started focusing more on the roller coster ride of the visuals, and will do any distortion of the story necessary to motivate a visceral impact on the audience. Good storytelling takes a second seat to putting the audience into the most intense situations possible.
This has been helping get people into the theaters because the trailers for these types of films make them seam very exciting. But I would argue that Hollywood is struggling right now - the visual effects industry in particular - due to the audience getting wise to these ploys. A bad film is still a bad film, formalized story telling structure won't save you. Even less so if you ignore it so that you can have a bigger explosion.
Want to be a good screenwriter? First learn how to write a story. And then guess what? You can still have explosions too.