Moviewise | Storytelling's Most Useful Type of Scene @Moviewise | Uploaded June 2023 | Updated October 2024, 9 minutes ago.
A video essay on the most narratively powerful type of sequence or scene that you will find in a movie, book, play or what you will... the Celebration.
Weddings, funerals, birthdays, parties and balls (and orgies?). They are the stuff of great writing because they give a story the chance to gather every important character and let them interact for a while under the auspice of important themes such as love and death.
Through their behavior and reactions we get glimpses of their different personalities. Characters who would normally never meet have long awaited encounters. Celebrations can set the world of the movie or establish a particular time of happiness (or lack thereof...).
Leon Tolstoy (War and Peace), Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), William Shakespeare (Hamlet), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice) and that highly productive scribe Anonymous (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) all knew it. As did screenwriting couple Frances Goodrich and Albert Hacket and the other screenwriting couple Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan.
Through several examples you'll learn why celebration sequences are so ubiquitous and infinitely useful. Seven out of ten episodes in Succession's final season were centered on some kind of event after all.
00:00 The Bad Sleep Well
00:29 The Godfather
01:01 Celebration Sequences
01:44 All About Eve
02:05 The Deer Hunter
03:03 Fanny and Alexander
03:51 Literature
05:28 Visconti's The Damned & The Leopard
06:28 The Thin Man
07:34 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
08:13 Advantages & Opportunities
#videoessay #thegodfather #kurosawa #ingmarbergman #thedeerhunter #thegreatgatsby #screenwriting #screenwritingtips
Danse Macabre by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?collection=005
Artist: incompetech.com
Bushwick Tarantella by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1300002
Artist: incompetech.com
Consort for Brass - Classical Rousing by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN110068
Artist: incompetech.com
A video essay on the most narratively powerful type of sequence or scene that you will find in a movie, book, play or what you will... the Celebration.
Weddings, funerals, birthdays, parties and balls (and orgies?). They are the stuff of great writing because they give a story the chance to gather every important character and let them interact for a while under the auspice of important themes such as love and death.
Through their behavior and reactions we get glimpses of their different personalities. Characters who would normally never meet have long awaited encounters. Celebrations can set the world of the movie or establish a particular time of happiness (or lack thereof...).
Leon Tolstoy (War and Peace), Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), William Shakespeare (Hamlet), Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice) and that highly productive scribe Anonymous (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) all knew it. As did screenwriting couple Frances Goodrich and Albert Hacket and the other screenwriting couple Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan.
Through several examples you'll learn why celebration sequences are so ubiquitous and infinitely useful. Seven out of ten episodes in Succession's final season were centered on some kind of event after all.
00:00 The Bad Sleep Well
00:29 The Godfather
01:01 Celebration Sequences
01:44 All About Eve
02:05 The Deer Hunter
03:03 Fanny and Alexander
03:51 Literature
05:28 Visconti's The Damned & The Leopard
06:28 The Thin Man
07:34 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
08:13 Advantages & Opportunities
#videoessay #thegodfather #kurosawa #ingmarbergman #thedeerhunter #thegreatgatsby #screenwriting #screenwritingtips
Danse Macabre by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?collection=005
Artist: incompetech.com
Bushwick Tarantella by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1300002
Artist: incompetech.com
Consort for Brass - Classical Rousing by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN110068
Artist: incompetech.com
