Character Arcs

"It is important to distinguish how a film makes the audience feel as against what characters have gone through; as against whether the characters have a dramatized shift in value change, and also how the world rewards or punishes them for that... There absolutely can be a difference between how an audience feels about an emotional experience that they've just been on and whether a character has made value decisions at the end of the film that they wouldn't have made at the beginning and that either us as a society impose value judgments on those or the film is doing it through operant conditioning like: is the world punishing or rewarding them? Are there relationships more intimate or more distant? All these tools that we've managed to deepen our understanding of in the past three episodes I think are all different levers, and including whether an arc is positive or negative and it's not necessarily negative arcs equals negative audience experience positive arcs equals positive audience experience."

"The question that I didn't ask of these films at the very end, but is worth thinking about, is what is the relationship question? We've talked about plot questions before, character questions, thematic questions, but there is something about what is the relationship question. And that may help us think about what arc we're meant to be focusing on."

"Clark's repeated beat is that he's trying. I don't know if he is actually trying, but he's going through the motions of trying to change. Right. He's going to therapy. He's listening to the self-help books. He's not changing. He's literally stuck in a loop. Right... in the climactic, where they re-enact the role play, and she is pushed to the point of screaming at him that he cannot change, she cannot fix him, she cannot help him, and then he feels relief that he can stop changing, stop trying to change."

"if you're going to do a negative arc, have you considered doing a symbolism and or a giant metaphor? Because all of these films do. Like, Backrooms has a giant pirate and rooms that go in circles and don't seem to lead anywhere. And Anatomy of a Fall has, like, literally a man falling and hitting his head and us not being sure why, but it being irretrievably broken, just like the relationship at the center of the film. And If I Had Legs I'd Kick You has a giant gaping sucking hole in the ceiling and a giant gaping sucking tube in her daughter and like it's so metaphorical and symbolic it's just going hey, here is the message and we're gonna keep returning to it."

"My key learning from the future is that for a film to feel negative the individual character arc being negative is only but one lever you can pull to trigger the emotional reaction."

"A relationship question is taking what we think is an internal question about a character and defining it in terms of the relationship. Will Moana grow closer to their village coming back or will they grow further apart? And it's just thinking about it in terms of relationships I think is quite a strong idea because it also means that you're posing the question and that's where you get the tension from. And I think it's important with these arcs that there's this, either it's a character question or it's a relationship question. And really what is a character question, but a relationship question with the character self."

"I think the big learning is like when we're talking about positive character arcs, that if you are going to if you can repeat events or beats from different angles, that helps demonstrate positive change. And that's like, again, we talked about it in All of Us Strangers, where you have a similar beat, but a different outcome with Harry. You have almost five of the same sort of beats where Adam completely rejects him. And then Adam's like, but he doesn't really mean it. And then I was like, actually, okay, if you want to touch me in the bath. And then he's like, actually, no, I want you to stay. And then at the end, he embraces him. Like, very similar beats or events from different angles."

"I think the key learning will be the relationship of the goal and the arc will have an impact on the emotional impact of the ending. That only came out through your revelation. I think Widows kind of hits really hard emotionally. I think it's more emotional than Barbie because that is aligned. All of Us Strangers is not a plot-driven film, but all the actual plotting, all the events that actually happen are absolutely connected to what Adam needs to do to understand."

"[What has] the biggest impact on this character journey thing [is] the additive and subtractive rewards, I think... And Widows it feels emotional throughout because they're doing this emotional handoff between the characters... My main thing [is to look] through these journeys, not just about the relationship questions, where the characters are going from and to, but also how the world is giving and taking away from them, both externally, right? Are they gaining money or not gaining money, but also the internal value changes that's seen as additive or subtractive."

"I think in terms of contrast and affinity, what we're talking about, there's a contrast in infinity with his relationship to physical touch that's expressed through the film. Like it literally goes through him being isolated to him, not just being cuddled, but him cuddling Harry. And the relationship between Harry, it's sex, but he talks about like, you know, we've talked about it. They fuck or whatever, but it's not as physically intimate as these kinds of little moments after."

"Their character arc is tied to them being able to achieve the goal. They want financial independence and by succeeding in financial independence, they will become independent people. And there's a theme running in there about what they're trying to do in this area of Chicago with the small businesses. And there's a bunch of really cool shit about crime and the relationship between crime and politics and business. But that is very clearly related and connected. And so they have to develop the skills, but the skills are related to them becoming more independent. Like this is tight."

"I really like David Mamet's definition of a character being habitual action. That's his interpretation of Aristotle, that all a character is is habitual action. And therefore, I think, when... talking about a character change, you're talking about a character's habits changing, right? And therefore, you know, and the other derivation of that is that that means the film has to do enough setup to understand what a character's habit is. And then it needs enough payoff to understand that it wasn't just a one-off thing that they did, but it's actually going to stick."

"If you never have any doubts ad you never sort of falter: you're a psychopath, you're not steadfast. If you have a character who is steadfast, obviously there's doubting and there's wobbling and that's part of what makes it interesting. But also that also tripping you up, that stubbornness, that determination, that steadfastness being the thing that trips you up, like the dramatic irony there is really juicy."

"To define how I think of steadfast, it's the person whose... resilience and stubbornness affects others, right? So, that's their steadfast in the belief... The most common example (and it's actually where I first heard of this terminology( is in the Hunger Games because Katniss' belief changes others. It's not that she changes her belief, her belief is able to change others."

"What makes this work story-wise and keeps compelled is that it has emotional events regardless. And I think Apollo 13 has emotional events between the characters. If anything, the only thing that changes is the relationship between characters. I don't think they change the world. They don't come back and be like, we found water on Mars. You know, it's kind of, and maybe that's true of all survival stories, or maybe they don't, they're just compelling because the external stakes are so high."

"I think you need internal and external challenges and I think the external challenges should be both friendly and non-friendly; which you get in Moana. Like you need a multitude of challenges to, not just prove the steadfastness but to show it in in a dynamic and interesting way and you get that in this you have the fact that her, right at the start her dad's like no you're not going to do this right and then she goes off and she finds a frenemy... who also challenges her ability to do that... and then she finds agiant crab that is like aha you know and then she finds a range of different friends, frenemies, and enemies who challenge it, and that keeps it interesting and shows the resilience and steadfastness while also keeping it dynamic."

"It is at that lowest point that the story world punishes her so dramatically that it reinforces and puts her back into the mental position that she was at the beginning of the film. Even though we're saying it's fairy tale and it's funny and there are, lots of those kind of elements to it, I just found it interesting that they had her steadfastness be the reason why the mission almost fails."

"There are two layers to the character's arc, or three really, which is what happens to the character: do they change? Or not change? For the better or worse? What is the character's experience of that or belief of that? Do they believe they've changed for better or for worse? And then the third is what is the audience perspective on that? So a character can change, that's the first kind of filter: have they changedm have they not? Then there's the judgment layer from the character which is: do I believe this is for the better or for the worse? And then there's our perception of that."

"I think one of the things I'm coming into with arcs is how are you creating contrast? Not just the contrast over time or forward from the character that they go from, they're hateful, now they're loving, which is, we'll go into the specifics of that, but how we even understand that as a thing. How do we understand that these characters' values exist is about contrast, that we, in that point of time, understanding that this person has underdog values, to use the Michael Hauge term, because he's talking about character arcs when he's talking about the philosophical stakes or the values. Oh, this is underdog value you have to have contrast around it."

"I think, very, very explicitly, and I can point to a couple of specific shows and movies and whatever, that when I was young, that film and television were my way out of a very bad situation. And it wasn't a conscious thing, but it was very much that through learning about these outside experiences, these experiences completely outside of my own even conception, you know, as a child and a teenager, I was able then to finally manage to A, see that the situation I was in was sub-ideal, and B, see an alternative and see characters that I didn't. Idealized or even aspects of them, if not specific, oh, I want to be like them. Oh, but I want that stubbornness or I want that, you know, zest for the truth, or I want that fight or I want that whatever specific aspect of this character to follow."

"Character arcs whether you have them or not can reveal the value system of the characters and whether that's punished or rewarded can reveal the value system of the world that they're in. And by extension, what it is that you as the filmmaker is trying to say one way or another."

"When or how did the film (and I'm using film shorthand for film and television) teach us as the audience to expect whether characters will change or not? Because... I think it's so important I think the story will set us up in a way, to expect characters to change or not and then either subvert that expectation or not. But I think it's an important tool for us to look at these stories that we're going to be diving into and go, how have they set us up to what are the expectations? That the film, that the story is setting up for us in the beginning?"

"He refuses the call."

"he has realized that okay well the system is it doesn't just not serve me it is out to get me and therefore all i could do is survive and and that's what his decisions are based on his decisions to continue to cover up for mouse his decisions to like you said not do anything with those photos"

"I think the two main things that I find really need fixing when I hit the end of my first drafts is that I've updated the character sheet, but now I realize the whole first half, everything they're doing makes no sense. The other thing is that if you have an ensemble piece, all of the characters sound quite the same."

"For me, as I start writing the pilot, I'm figuring out a little bit about the world, about how the character, not just the characters, but how their relationships work."

"What I call this is, I think there's a subplot and both Eve and Rayon are part of this, is it's the battle for Ron's soul. They're his antagonists for being a good person."