First Time Director. Gil Bettman

as a first time director, you are hired to make an edgy film about a character like Retten or Teena, then allow your main character to be as much of an outsider, as weird, as flawed as possible. Do not pull your punches. Go for the limit. The films of Pedro Almodóvar have proved that, in the new millennium, educated urban audiences will gladly identify with characters whose lifestyles are totally divorced from all societal norms. And, it could be argued, that the more bizarre, the more sexually deviant and morally ambiguous they are, the better. It would seem that, for an educated urban audience, there is a certain radical chic in embracing films like Almodóvar's that feature societal outcasts in the main roles. It takes guts to live as they do, in defiance of societal norms. In almost all Almodóvar films, these outcasts/heroes invariably undertake a daunting quest early on — a quest which is made that much more difficult, because, in trying to reach their goals, Almodóvar's heroes must overcome the additional obstacles thrown in their way by those who are prejudiced against them and intent on denying their fundamental humanity. Rebels always make good heroes and Almodóvar's rebels are usually rebels burning with a cause.

The Heroic Quest

      Yet a main character of truly heroic proportions alone does not a great script make. If the audience is going to enter the action of the film, they have to have an intense admiration for the main character and an equally intense desire for him to achieve his objective. What the main character wants has to be something they see as worth wanting very much.

      A good rule of thumb to make sure that the audience will very much want the main character to achieve his objective is to simply require that the objective is either one of two things: (1) love, because we never get enough love or the right kind of love and so we see love as supremely desirable, or (2) a matter of life and death — something the hero is willing to give up his life to get. It can be a matter of life and death even if it isn't an action movie. The hero's life doesn't have to actually be on the line. If it is clear that he will die either physically or spiritually if he doesn't achieve his objective at the climax of the film, like Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) in American Beauty, then the audience, given that they admire the hero, will find reason enough to root for him with enough passion to transport themselves into the action of the film.

      Though the scripts of almost all successful films conform to this rule of thumb, many bad movies have been made from scripts that fulfilled the basic requirements of having a main character of heroic proportions who launched himself on a quest for love or something which was a matter of life and death — because the devil is in the details. Once the (admirable) main character has launched himself on his (worthwhile) quest, what keeps the audience plugged into the film and transported into the action is suspense. And suspense is created when the hero comes up against obstacles that prevent him from attaining his objective. When the hero encounters an obstacle, the audience find themselves going back and forth between hoping that the hero can overcome the obstacle and fearing that he cannot. This vacillation between hope and fear creates suspense. To create great suspense, the audience must alternately fear with great dread that the hero will fail, or perhaps even be killed, and then hope passionately, with an intensity bordering on elation, that he will succeed. The more intensely the audience hopes, the more intensely they fear, the greater the suspense will be. The more powerful the suspense, the more complete the hold of the transportational effect on the audience. Suspense is what sucks them into the story and makes them forget about themselves. Suspense is ultimately what makes all great films great. This is true not just of action films, but love stories and art films as well. No matter if they are watching Romeo and Juliet or Casablanca or Chasing Amy, the audience is constantly being driven back and forth between passionately hoping that the boy will get the girl and not merely fearing, but dreading, that he will not. No matter if it is The Rules of the Game or Citizen Kane or The Piano, throughout the film the audience vacillates between elation and despair as, one moment, it seems as if the main character will attain his noble objective and fulfill his humanity, and then, at the next moment, it seems certain that he will fail, in which case, he might as well be dead.

      Suspense is where most scripts fall down — because in order for the transportational effect to keep its hold on the audience, the film has to become increasingly more suspenseful. One pivotal moment has to be followed by another of greater consequence. If not, the audience's interest will flag. To do this the scriptwriter must constantly top himself. Each obstacle the hero encounters has to be increasingly daunting. And if he fails to overcome that obstacle, the consequences have to become increasingly more disastrous. Otherwise, even though the hero may be confronting great obstacles and performing heroic acts to overcome them, the audience, in the back of their minds, is going to start to think, “Okay, that's pretty cool. But what else can you show me?”

      And I am not just referring to Gen-X and Gen-Y audiences who, because they have grown up on video games and MTV demand that their thrills be spiked right into the vein and amped to the max. Any audience of any age can become jaded very quickly. This is simply a function of the laws of perception and human nature. The more frequently we repeat an experience, the less impact it has on us. If you go down the same street every day, eventually the buildings on the street become the visual equivalent of white noise. They are there, but habit has conditioned your brain to the fact of their existence, so you don't notice them. In the same fashion, if the stakes do not go up throughout the middle of a film, the audience starts to become habituated to the level of suspense and, accordingly, the all-important transportational effect starts to weaken.

      Rare is the moviegoer who has not sat through more films that suffer from this weakness than he would like to recall. It is so common, screenwriters have coined a term to describe it: second-act sag. A film with second-act sag invariably starts out well. It has a hero we care about and some sort of hook that captures our interest. (Very few films get made without a good hook because the hook is what the studios rely on to sell the picture.) But about halfway through the film, our interest starts to wane because, even though the hero is getting closer to his objective, in doing so, he seems to be going over old ground. We start to tune out.

      One of the most important duties of the first time director during the preproduction period is to read and reread his script to make sure that throughout the second act the stakes continually go up. If they do not, then his film will suffer from second act sag, and all of the Herculean labors he performs during the actual production of the film will be for naught. To make sure that the script of his breakthrough film does not suffer from second act sag, the first time director must hold each scene up to this acid test: He must ask himself if in each scene, as the hero approaches his objective, (1) do the obstacles become more daunting, and (2) does the hero have more and more to lose if he fails?

      One of the most significant factors contributing to the success of the film Crimson Tide was the consummate skill with which the writer, Michael Schiffer, continually jacked up the stakes and made the obstacles more formidable as the film progressed. At the outset of the movie, the main character, Commander Hunter (Denzel Washington), wants only to have a successful cruise on the nuclear sub, SS Arizona, so that he will get promoted to captain and be rewarded with a nuclear submarine of his own to command. His fate is in the hands of the commanding officer of the Arizona, Captain Ramsey (Gene Hackman). As the sub sets out on a dangerous mission, Ramsey flat out tells Hunter that all the wannabe captain has to do is make him happy and then Hunter will be virtually guaranteed of being promoted and getting his own sub. This moment comes about 15 minutes into the film. From this point on, disaster strikes about every 15 or 20 minutes. Things get worse and worse for Hunter. He seems to be driven further and further from his objective, while the forces arrayed against him become more and more awesome. Ramsey instantly distrusts Hunter and casts him in an adversarial role, humiliating him in front of the crew. (So much for Hunter's hope of getting his own sub on the strength of Ramsey's recommendation.) Next, they are attacked by a Russian sub. The Arizona is severely damaged and starts to sink. Now on top of his personal battle with his mistrustful, bull-headed captain, Hunter has to battle the Russians in order to save his own skin and the lives of all his crew. Hunter (granted, with Ramsey's help) saves the sub. But then the Arizona gets a message to launch their nukes at the Russians. Right after the first message, it gets a second launch message, but, by accident, the second message