"Making a Great Film that Connects with an Audience: Part I" How do I write my story?

INTRODUCTION

So in the last Blog series, we talked about suspense. This is the key emotion you need to get your audience hooked. But you can’t just have suspense. You also need deep connection with your audience. If the audience doesn’t care about your main character or their story, then you can forget about them watching your whole film.

So the next project is to make a film that connects with your audience.

THE SECRET TO CONNECTING TO AN AUDIENCE

One of the most successful movie studios in the history of cinema is Pixar Studios. If you look at the list of the best reviewed movies in the last 18 years according to Rotten Tomatoes, six of them belong to Pixar (Toy Story 3, Up, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc.)

That's more than any other studio. So Pixar is a great model for success for filmmakers and they can teach us a lot about connection.

In the movie "Wall-E," award winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton took on the challenge of trying to make a film whose first half was almost completely without dialogue, and yet connected to audience in a deep way. It was a huge box office and critical success and so it's safe to say he succeeded.

Let's take a look at this scene from Wall-E and ask ourselves: "Why did this film succeed to connect?"

There are four elements to this scene (and the whole film) that keep an audience connected to the main character:

1. Main Character's Objective:

The main character of the film is Wall-E. He's a lonely robot who falls in love with the technologically superior robot, Eve.

The scene establishes this by showing Wall-E gazing at Eve intensely. It also uses the flame to help enhance our understanding of his romantic intention and just in case you needed more hints, the romantic music playing in the background seals the deal.

Whenever a film establishes a character with a compelling objective, the audience almost magically connects to this objective. We all have things or people that we desire. Within our own families, we strive for love from our parents or our children. Within our work place, we strive for recognition or promotion. Within our society, we strive to fight oppressive forces or make change for the better.

Since we connect to objectives, if you make a film with a character with objective, you immediately grab your audience and put them in a heightened level of suspense. They immediately begin to wonder: Will the main character achieve their objective?

2. The Obstacles:

Once you connect the audience to the main character via the objective, then you can create even more emotion by introducing an obstacle.

In this scene, Wall-E faces Eve's lack of mutual feeling and his own nervousness. We see clearly that Eve is not thinking about Wall-E but more focused on the lighter and then later the TV.

On top of Eve's relative indifference to Wall-E, there is Wall-E's own nervousness as shown by his shaking "hand."

All of these obstacles create even more suspense because they put Wall-E's objective in real jeopardy. How will Wall-E be able to convince such a beautiful robot who doesn't have any feelings for him to fall in love with him?

We feel empathy for Wall-E's quest and it continues to pull us in.

3. The Tactics:

Now, Wall-E doesn't just sit there but he takes action. The middle of every scene and every film is about the main character using tactics to over come the obstacles.

At first, Wall-E tries to hold Eve's hand but that fails.

Then, Wall-E tries to find something to impress her with.

Finally, he brings out the plant and offers it to her as a token of his affection.

See how Wall-E's tactics escalate to address the obstacles. This escalation increases the tension in the scene and sucks the audience in further and further as we wonder if he will be successful.

Watching a great scene/film is like watching a great sports event. An underdog team uses various tactics against all odds to win a high stakes game. We are riveted by these events because we want the underdog team to win and we are fascinated as they struggle to make it happen.

4. The Resolution:

So a scene ends with the main character winning the objective or not. Or sometimes, something in between.

If you can surprise the audience by the resolution, even better.

In this scene, the resolution is surprising. Eve does accept the plant from Wall-E, but not in the way he intended it. In the movie, it turns out the plant is what Eve's been looking for all along, and so she takes it. But sadly, Wall-E does not win Eve's love in this scene.

Audiences yearn for their main characters to succeed just like we all want to succeed. But they also want to be surprised and given new insights. But whatever resolution you choose, it needs to have a few traits to make it great:

+It makes sense. If the ending doesn't make sense in regards the objective, obstacles and tactics, then, the audience will be dissatisfied and dismiss your film. Make sure that the resolution fits within the realm of human reality. (Even if they are robots.)

+It's unexpected. Audiences don't like to see the same thing over and over again typically. They like surprises and so if you can twist it in a way they didn't see it coming. They will definitely appreciate it.

+It's emotional. Audiences crave to feel something. So the resolution should clearly make the audience sad or happy or maybe both. If you do your objective, obstacles and tactics correctly, the resolution should do this.

The Project: Make Your Own Film that Connects

So now, it's your turn. Think about a story that has these four elements:

1. Who is your main character and what is their compelling objective?

2. What obstacle or obstacles do they face?

3. What tactic or tactics do they use to overcome these obstacles?

4. How is the story resolved in a surprising and emotional way?

Here's another short film to inspire you. It was made by my fellow filmmaker, Erin Gould, and required just two actors and a simple location. It's a great model for this project since it's not too difficult to make a film like this, but it still tells a compelling story.