Film Courage: You say that once streaming hit it changed everything?
Pamela Douglas, Author/Professor of Screenwriting: Streaming changed everything because it allowed
people to make more choices. It also allowed more production, it also broadened the idea of
the structure of Television because way back in the earlier 2000s and before that everything was
in a four-act structure on television because it had to allow for advertising every 13 minutes or
so. You would divide your 60-minutes into roughly four acts, roughly four 15-minute segments. They
weren't really exactly 15 minutes but something like that it so that there could be a commercial
break at the end of each one and then there was a teaser generally this traditional traditional
structure which I'll tell you is a teaser well let me start that again the traditional structure was
the Show's title with even a theme song then sometimes there was a small commercial even
right away and then there's the teaser anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes which literally
teases the action or sometimes in a procedural would give you the crime or the case to be solved
then they'd be a commercial then you'd go into act one which would go to roughly 18 20 minutes
18 20 Pages then they'd be a commercial act two would go to roughly 30-ish pages
this is traditional at break act three which is the worst case the climactic
encounter would go to roughly page 45 ish and then at four would go to the end and would be
slightly shorter would probably be 57 58 or 55 minutes and then there'd be another act break
and another commercial then it got longer and in 2006 ABC decided that they wanted to go to Six
acts in order to stick stick in more commercials and so you ended up with a very long act one
so the people wouldn't lose you and then they break X6 into at four into four and five and
then there would be a tag after the final Act which sometimes led into the next week
and they would get more commercials in and this just got worse and worse and worse and worse where
there were some shows on traditional networks that had almost more commercial material than dramatic
material and people got fed up one of the things about streaming is that there were no commercials
the minute there were no commercials you no longer had not only did you no longer have that structure
but you had actually more air time you had more flexibility of telling stories now HBO always had
no commercials and the same was true of Showtime now you can get AMC with or without commercials
but I watched Better Call Saul the other day as it's as it ran on television as opposed to
seeing it streaming and I was appalled that this wonderful storytelling kept being interrupted by
trying to sell me something and I the same thing's true of Hulu where you could buy it
with or without commercials you just pay more if you don't have the commercials I can't imagine
watching handmaid's tale Disturbed every several minutes by telling me something and I just don't
I just won't watch anything that way if I can avoid it so that's part of the big change it
changed structurally but it also changed the kind of material and it changed the way people watched
and the and the number of choices people could make and I'm sure that encourages binge viewing
if there's no commercials because you're so set in the story well you can also continue because
and they know they they the purveyors of these absolutely know that I think Amazon does this
that after you finish an episode there's a little ticker thing that says next episode
starts in five four three two one like no I'm not I don't want to watch I sat here long enough
but it's very easy to be glued for a very long time and by the way this disabuses the notion that
young audiences have shut such short times such short attention spans that they will only watch
something that's three minutes or 10 minutes long it was discovered because it was tried on YouTube
what would happen if we gave people the option of watching 10-minute acts that is 10-minute segments
or and have 12 of them to make a 120 minute movie or to let them look at old 10 one after another
after another after another everybody watched all 10. so it's just not true it has to do
with interest and attention it doesn't have to do with something's wrong with the brain of of young
people who can't pay attention for more than a few minutes if they're interested enough they're there
sure and if you have your morning coffee I'm speaking more for myself I'm going to be more
add and switch around than if it's later in the day and I'm tired and now I don't have anything
more on my plate my attention is going to be there so yeah well one of the things about
streaming is you can watch it at any time if if you're a morning viewer you could see something
that would normally have been an evening show at any time in the day years ago when West Wing and
er were on and they always started at 10 pm I knew I was going to be watching from 10 to 11 at night
I would rather not watch from 10 to 11 at night and I would rather see those same shows at nine
or any other time and now I can one last thing you'd set the tag forgive me what is the tag oh
a a in terms of structure after you get to your final Act in some shows not all of them there's
a form where there's an act break or a break of some sort and then there's more dramatic material
and that extra dramatic material is usually quite short it might be one scene or two scenes maybe
three scenes but not really much longer and either it does something as a commentary on what that
episode was about and twists it or it just simply starts introducing what's going to be on the next
episode every show is different you don't find this sort of thing very much on on streaming and
so this we're really when we talk about act breaks and the four or five or six Acts or the number of
Acts plus the teaser and a tag we're really we're really dealing with traditional Legacy television
can you tell us about the four act Grid in my book here there is an extensive conversation
about maybe I could find a page here somewhere yeah here's a picture of it and I it says using
the grid and I find and here is the non-grid analyzing structure from a different point of view
all right there's some other things that you can find it in the book um
I found that even after the traditional Forex structure was abandoned by Networks that as I
talk to people who are writing for Netflix or HBO or any other form at all Amazon when I talk
to seasoned writers they were all still using it and just dropping out the ACT break and the reason
they were using it is that it works it works as a storytelling mechanism even if it does not need
to be something that accommodates advertising and that was very interesting that given the option to
not use it plenty of people figured out gee I need a form anyway and you don't just start on page one
and go to page 60 or whatever in a row without having any idea where the where the changes are
where the emphasis are where the energy goes this way or that way what about Cliffhangers and it was
discovered by a number of of seasoned writers that what I can go back to the tools that I always used
without ever having calling it a break or having an ad and what it has to do with the rhythm of
experience that there is a something by I think there may be something biological in the roughly
15-minute span if you go to a movie movie in a theater of which there aren't very many anymore
but if you were to go in a movie in a successful movie in a theater and You observe you'd note you
might notice that roughly every 13 or to 15 minutes a little around the audience squirms
and I've observed this several times and I think it is actually biological I think people are
looking for a change of pace they're looking for a cliffhanger they're looking for something that
turns the action in another Direction in what some people have called the plot point though
you don't need to use that terminology and I think there is something to rid the rhythm of writing
in fact if you look at the traditional three-act structure the the old Sid feels three extractor
which wasn't invented by Sid Fields it predates him by a long time but anyway that structure
said that act 1 act 1 was one quarter of the time at two is two quarters of the time half
and act three is one quarter of the time and that's how the three acts work they're not three
even acts the second act is double but if you draw a median line down the middle of that second act
which is often where the mid Story character comes in and or there's a big change you're
back to you've got four acts and so you're still back to the same thing now it plays
out differently in a hundred minutes than it would in 60 minutes but not that differently
and so people experiment with what Netflix will tell you and what HBO will tell you
is don't talk to me about act breaks write what the story needs write it whatever length
the story needs to be and we'll deal with it and I think that's wonderful as a very
generous way of approaching writers the writer still has to go home and structure the story
so what the story needs to be still needs turns still needs anticipation still needs what used to
be called plot points still needs a motor that drives to certain kinds of flips and and still
needs some sort of resolution so you find yourself back with some of the most traditional lessons
in how to write as you write for even the most advanced television so for the outlining process
if we were to tell someone don't worry about plot structure that could throw it off it sounds like
this is very necessary no I I make my students write very very structured outlines they can
I never say don't don't worry about plot structure I ask them what is your story and where are the
turns and twists and when do they occur and they'd better know that before they start washing around
in a script that's an unknown length going in unknown directions so no that doesn't happen I
I believe in a in what I was taught which was that you get a locked out line that you get a
really good outline and if you are outlined tells the story well as driven by the characters and has
enough Cliffhangers and twists and surprises and anticipation your script will be easy to write
if you're if you're sweating your script it's because there was something wrong with the outline
that'll get a lot of comments because there's two of course there's people very resistant to it
no nobody likes to write outlines outlines are
I with my students I tell them when the outlines are done you're out of outline
jail because they're no fun they don't give you a chance to show off your ability as dialogue
or description they're not beautiful they're engineering and creative people might want
to resist oh no you're going to make it too rigid actually it's freeing it's freeing if where you're
going you can go there very well if you're lost you have a hard time making anything work out.