Hi, I'm Michael.
And this episode of Lessons from the Screenplay has been brought to you by Squarespace.
It would be easy to think that a complex story like Game of Thrones is told in a complex way,
but in truth it’s exactly the opposite.
Because of the vast number of characters, locations, and storylines,
each scene must lean heavily on the basic fundamentals of storytelling.
But what are these fundamentals?
Why is it that an intimate dialogue scene can be built on the same rules
as one of the most epic battles ever created for television?
And how does occasionally breaking these rules keep the show gripping and unpredictable?
Today I want to look at how a scene is constructed.
To show why it's important that a narrative constantly transition between opposite emotions.
And examine how The Battle of the Bastards uses the audience's knowledge of how stories
are told against them.
Let’s take a look at Game of Thrones.
A scene can be a bit tricky to define.
Some scenes are a single, brief shot, others are tens of minutes long.
Some take place in a single location,
others weave together events across various times and places.
So rather than defining a scene by its externalities, it’s best to define it by its internal elements.
As Robert McKee writes in Story:
“A scene is a story in miniature…"
"No matter locations or length, a scene is unified around
desire, action, conflict, and change.”
So let’s look at how these four elements are used to create the structure of a scene.
In the fourth episode of season six, Jon Snow and Sansa Stark are finally reunited.
And their first dialogue scene together begins with what I like to call,
an "expositional prologue."
"Do you remember those kidney pies Old Nan used to make?"
"With the peas and onions."
"We never should have left Winterfell."
The writers use this section for Jon Snow and Sansa to reminisce and reconnect.
"I was awful, just admit it."
"You were occasionally awful."
Then, the desire that drives the scene comes in to play.
"There’s only one place we can go."
"Home."
Sansa wants Jon to help her reclaim Winterfell,
so she takes the action of directly trying to convince him.
"I don’t have an army."
"How many wildlings did you save?"
"They didn’t come here to serve me."
"They owe you their lives.
You think they’ll be safe here if Roose Bolton remains Warden of the North?"
"Sansa."
"Winterfell is our home."
This leads to conflict.
"It belongs to our family.
We have to fight for it."
"I’m tired of fighting."
Finally, the scene ends with Sansa's most powerful argument yet.
"I want you to help me."
"But I’ll do it myself if I have to."
With this statement, change has been brought to the story.
Sansa's intentions are clear and there is a new trajectory for the narrative.
But this change isn't just about creating a new direction for the plot.
For it to be compelling, a scene has to have a transition of emotional values.
In Story, Robert McKee writes…
"The understanding of how we create the audience’s emotional experience
begins with the realization that there are only two emotions—pleasure and pain.”
McKee assigns these emotions values: pleasure being positive and pain being negative.
And he goes on to say that...
“As audience, we experience an emotion when the telling takes us
through a transition of values.”
This is why some of the most memorable scenes in Game of Thrones
are when things go from hopeless to victorious...
...or from success to failure.
But while a single transition of values might be enough to sustain
a three-minute dialogue scene,
many more are needed for something as epic as The Battle of the Bastards.
Despite its scale, this scene is based on the same fundamentals as Jon and Sansa talking.
In fact, the director of the episode, Miguel Sapochnik,
describes the battle in very intimate terms.
"I always thought of this as a...it's a bar brawl."
"It's: two guys in a pub get into a fight and bring their mates."
Jon Snow’s desire is to defeat Ramsay and reclaim Winterfell.
The action he takes is going into battle.
The conflict is the clashing of the armies.
And the change comes when Jon—with critical help from Sansa—
has taken Winterfell and defeated Ramsay.
But because the scene is twenty-three minutes long,
it has to have multiple value transitions in order to remain exciting.
Jon falls into Ramsay's trap when he tries to save Rickon.
This forces his army to attack prematurely.
What's left of his army is surrounded and faces certain demise.
Until they're rescued at the last moment, freeing Jon to go defeat Ramsay.
But the filmmakers didn't stop there.
"I was looking for the thread."
"The thing that's going to take me through the battle."
"And what worked in Hardhome, and what I think works in any battle, is following the characters."
By following Jon Snow, the scene is made even more compelling
because within such a battle, a single soldier can experience a ton of value transitions.
This is partially why the "oner" shot is so gripping.
The camera follows Jon as he encounters constant and unpredictable value changes.
All of this demonstrates how critical it is for a story to have an emotional ebb and flow.
When the plot takes the audience through a change in emotional values,
we become engaged in the story and experience emotion.
But the filmmakers didn't just rely on the plot to create these emotional transitions.
They managed to squeeze in even more by toying with the audience's expectations.
First, it helps to understand that film is a language.
Close-ups, Wide shots, rapid editing, long-takes, push-ins, pre-laps, subjective sound design...
...this is all vocabulary that has evolved over time.
And whether or not we're aware of it, we are all fluent in this language.
We can read a close-up of a lingering glance and get that it suggests romantic feelings.
We know that when the sound effects become muffled during a battle scene,
it doesn't mean all the soldiers have suddenly gotten really quiet,
it means we're in a heightened version of a character's perspective.
And when the right music cue plays over the right edit,
we know exactly what it means without a word being spoken.
There are three ways The Battle of the Bastards takes this knowledge of film language
and turns it against us.
The first is how it uses its musical score.
There is a particular kind of score that has become associated with the tragic,
yet heroic death of a beloved character.
So this same kind of score is used during moments when Jon Snow is in danger,
as a way of almost tricking us into thinking that he may actually die.
Like when he's about to be overrun by Ramsay's charging army...
And when he's being trampled by his own men.
Another example of toying with our expectations involves what I call a "farewell scene."
Game of Thrones is not shy about killing its characters,
but first they're usually given a scene with a sense of closure
that ends on an abnormally positive note.
"Don't you want to teach little Ned Stark how to ride horses?"
"I do."
The night before the battle, Tormund and Davos have a conversation with a sense of closure
that ends on an abnormally positive note.
"Maybe that was our mistake, believing in kings."
"Jon Snow’s not a king."
"No, he’s not."
This could easily be the farewell scene for these characters,
especially since their exchange doesn't contain any relevant plot information.
And by including this scene, it signals to the audience on a meta level
that it's possible for them to die,
making us more worried when they're in danger...
...and more relieved when they survive.
But my favorite example of the episode toying with our expectations
happens just before the battle starts.
"Let's play a game."
This sequence breaks “the rule of three.”
Three is the smallest number required to create a pattern,
so it shows up frequently in both storytelling and in our everyday lives.
Many popular sayings have three parts,
our stories have a beginning, middle, and end,
and even lists of examples feel more balanced when delivered in threes.
So if your villain is about to kill someone and you want to build suspense,
he can’t kill him with the first shot.
Or the second…
To break the pattern, he must kill him with third.
But he doesn’t.
The director even has the music build in anticipation of this moment,
preparing the audience for the third shot to strike its target.
And when it doesn’t, we're left unsettled.
What does this mean?
Maybe there is hope that Jon Snow can actually save him?
Maybe Rickon will actually surv—
Rickon's death would have been emotional even if it was the third arrow that struck him.
But by breaking conventions,
and using the audience's knowledge of film language against them,
the filmmakers provide an extra moment of false hope.
One last transition of values.
The Battle of the Bastards has all the fundamental elements of a good scene.
It is jam-packed with transitions of values
that ensure it's not simply a monotonous war scene.
And it goes even further,
toying with our expectations of how a scene should play out
so that we feel as hopeful, devasted, or worried as Jon Snow.
This demonstrates, once again,
that how you tell your story is as important as the content within it.
That mastering the basic rules can allow you to then break them with powerful results,
furthering the evolution of film language in the process.
And it shows how six seasons later,
the audience can still be on the edge of their seat knowing that anything can happen
in a game of thrones.
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