Blake Snyder Beat sheet for Roxanne

Beat Sheet index.

Okay, I’ll try to make this a good one. I’ve also decided that I’m not going to push myself into theme analysis the Blake Snyder way unless something clear occurs to me.

Opening image: Charlie heading over to his friend’s house, singing to himself, but he’s alone – and for a few minutes we don’t really get a good look at his nose.

Setup: The sports gear fencing scene with the two jerks, drops in on Dixie at the Cafe, and goes to the fire hall.

Catalyst: Roxanne gets locked out of her house, Charlie goes to help her, and he is drawn to her when she starts talking about the stars. The next day, Chris moves to town and starts working with the firefighters.

Debate: Roxanne meets Chris, and likes him, Chris thinks that she’s pretty and gets too worked up to talk to her. Roxanne comes to Charlie to talk about the guy that she likes, and he misunderstands at first. Roxanne asks him to talk to Chris for her.

Break into two: Charlie decides to help Chris and Roxanne.

B story: I’m not sure what this is, unless it’s the plot arc with Charlie and the incompetent firemen.

Fun and games: Fireman scenes, some of the bit with Charlie playing Cyrano – and the scene in the bar when he’s coming up with 20 good nose jokes.

Midpoint: Chris asks Charlie to help him write a letter to Roxanne, but he’s hopeless at romance, and Charlie gets inspired and writes it himself.

Bad guys close in: Roxanne is falling for Chris, but keeps quoting the letter from Charlie. Chris screws up the first date with Roxanne.

All is lost: Charlie seduces Roxanne from the darkness, she still thinks it’s Chris and invites him up.

Dark night of the soul: Roxanne finds out the truth and fights with Charlie, both of them saying bad things about the other and about his nose.

Break into three: Charlie smells the fire and leads the fire truck to it.

Finale: The firefighters competently save the town, Charlie’s a hero. He becomes less sensitive about his nose, and Roxanne tells him that she loves him for it, not in spite of it.

Final image: Roxanne manages to figure out a way to kiss Charlie without getting poked in the face, they go to her house but are locked out again. Charlie has the key this time, though – and a comet streaks by overhead.

Shaun of the Dead: a Blake Snyder beat sheet.

Opening image: Liz confronting Shaun in the Winchester, about how he always brings Ed around when she wants to be spending time alone, and that he never takes her anyplace new.

Theme stated: Does “It’s not the end of the world” count as a theme?

Setup: Shaun spends the day at work, bumps into Yvonne, realizes that he forgot to book the table for his fancy dinner out with Liz.

Catalyst: Liz dumps Shaun.

Debate: Shaun and Ed go out drinking, come back, Shaun resolves to sort his life out, goes around to the store next morning, Ed spots the ‘drunk girl’ in their garden, and they realize that she’s a zombie. Shaun calls around, and realizes that Liz and his mum are both in danger.

Break into Two: Shaun comes up with a plan – and then makes a few revisions in it as Ed points out problems.

B story: Is this Shaun’s friendship with Ed?

Fun and games: Fighting zombies, duh.

Midpoint: Philip dies and becomes a zombie in the car – everybody else escapes, but they now have no blunt objects and no transportation, and they’re far from safety.

Bad guys close in: The zombies are crowding thick around the Winchester, and Shaun volunteers to lead them astray to get everybody else in.

All is lost: Ed gives them away to the vampires, Shaun has to shoot his mother, the zombies get David and Di, Pete bites Ed and the Winchester goes up in flames.

Dark night of the soul: Sitting in the cellar, Shaun and Liz really talk as they wait for the zombies to come in and get them. Shaun volunteers to shoot Liz and then himself, when it comes to it, rather than see her be eaten alive.

Break into three: Shaun realizes that they’re on a lift, and he and Liz decide to go back up to street level to take their chances.

Finale: Yvonne arrives with the army, rescuing them.

Final image: Liz has moved in, she and Shaun both seem happy – and Shaun slips out back to play video games with zombie Ed.

‘Save the cat’ Beat sheet for Die Hard.

Yet another movie I just watched because it’s homework for my Storywonk revision class.

Opening image: John’s plane lands in LA, with John gripping both the armrests, and the guy in the next seat tells him to take off his shoes and socks when he gets somewhere with a rug and make fists with his toes.

Theme stated: Again, I’m having a hard time with this – when John talks about how he didn’t come out to LA with Holly because he’s a New York Cop?

Setup: John’s trip in the limo with Argyle, arriving at the party, everything up to the bad guys showing up at the party.

Catalyst: The bad guys crash the party.

Debate: John stays out of sight as long as he can, he tries to call the LA police, he uses every trick he can think of to alert the authorities instead of being a hero himself.

Break into two: When the first bad guy comes after him, John fights back, not trying to kill him – but when the guy ends up dead he takes his gun and sends his body back down the elevator as a warning.

B story: I think this is actually the friendship that develops over the CB radio between John and Al.

Fun and games: Oh, just what in this movie isn’t fun and games? Well, any scene where nobody’s being shot at, nothing’s crashing, and nothing’s exploding I guess.

Blake Snyder Beat Sheet for Dodgeball

“Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.”

I was assigned watching this movie as homework for the Storywonk novel revision workshop, and we’re probably going to be talking about the plot in terms of Lucy’s own structure diagram tomorrow, but I thought that I’d do a Blake Snyder outline for it. It’s really very well written.

Opening image – Peter asleep, the dog nuzzling at his crotch, while the Globo-Gym ad plays on the TV.

Theme stated – I think that it’s stated in the negative, in the Globo-gym ad: “We’re better than you, and we know it!”

Setup – Peter goes to work at Average Joe’s, and we meet all the regulars and hear a bit of their story as Peter talks with them.

Catalyst – Kate is waiting for Peter in his office, and tells him that the gym is in foreclosure. which sends him over to Globo-gym to talk to White and find out that White is looking forward to putting up a new parking garage.

Debate – Can the Average Joes find a way to save their gym? With a car wash? Of course not! But there’s this ad about the dodgeball tournament in Vegas…

Break into two – In the qualifiers with the girl scouts, when Peter actually starts to play it hard. They don’t actually win, but they qualify anyway.

B story – the complex plotline involving Peter, Kate, and White.

Fun and games – The training sequence with Patches, and the first few tournament games.

Midpoint – I’m not sure, but I think the scene where Kate signs on with the Average Joe’s team is a midpoint beat. Nothing is going to be the same from there on, better or worse.

Bad guys close in – The Globo-gym team has made it to the finals before Average Joe’s.

All is lost – Patches dies, crushed by an ironic ‘Luck of the Irish’ sign, and Peter loses his confidence and lets White get to him. White offers to buy Peter out for 100 grand, and we don’t know what he decided. But Peter tells the team that they’re probably going to lose and that they should be ready for it. He even tells Steve that he’s not a pirate.

Dark night of the soul – The team is one player short. Peter ends up in a casino bar. And Lance Armstrong shows up, just to rub it in a little about being a quitter.

Break into three – Peter gets there just as the Joes have officially forfeited, but Gordon finds the appeals rule, and Chuck Norris casts the deciding vote to let them play in the finals!

Finale – Sudden death with blindfolds! Not only that, but Peter took White’s 100 grand, used it to bet on the Joes, and has 5 million to buy out a controlling share of Globo-gym! And Steve is a Pirate again.

Final image – White watching Peter’s big ad for Average Joe’s gym – ‘You’re great just the way you are.’

1 year of Kelworth Files

Well, looks like I was so busy with rewrites and starting off the ‘Harry Potter’ review series that I missed a milestone – this blog turned one year old on June 10th. Happy Belated Anniversary to me!

So, to commemorate the occasion, I’ll link back to three of my favorite memories for each month, June 2010 to May 2011.

June

The very beginnings of my blogging journey.

1. My very first (and most popular) Beat Sheet – Serenity!
2. My trip home from Toronto CSTS 2010 and the G20 riots.
3. The prologue debate.

July

1. Who could forget JulNoWriMo?
2. The Polaris convention!
3. Sharing a rejection letter.

August

1. Travelling up to Hunstville.
2. Fan Expo!
3. CritMo on Stringing Words.

September

1. I got awards!
2. Another beat sheet – The Simpsons Movie!
3. How to take criticism.

Update to my ‘Serenity’ Beat sheet.

Breaking news – there’s more to the Blake Snyder beat sheet for ‘Serenity’ than I first thought.

Or maybe there is. I was watching the movie for the first time in months, at the screening today, and something occurred to me about that big long stretch of the film before River goes kung-fu fighting in the bar. At first, I couldn’t put that into any other slot than ‘setup, and a bit of fun and games’ – because the hovercraft chase sequence definitely made the trailer, and Joss even said on the audio commentary that if he didn’t get to play with a hovercraft he was ready to take his Firefly and go home – if that isn’t fun and games, I don’t know what is.

But my new theory is that Joss is being a lot more clever than he seems. At the point when Simon and River leave the ship on Beaumonde, it looks like that might be the break into Act 2. And then, River starts beating up people, and we realize that that’s only the catalyst. So, we have a false break into two, and that would mean:

• Simon confronting Mal before they land is a false catalyst.
• All the stuff in between is a false debate – will they or won’t they actually leave the ship?
• This almost creates ‘Act one and a half’ out of the true catalyst, debate, and break into two.

I think I like this way of analyzing the movie, especially because it shows that a gifted writer can do more than just play with the timing of the beats, he can actually repeat beats and still end up with an entertaining film. Just because you know the structure, doesn’t mean that you have to follow it too closely.

The next installment of the ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’ series will hopefully be done by Monday evening. I’ll have a special Father’s day post for tomorrow.

Beat Sheets: the Forgotten Introduction.

B is for Beat Sheet (A-Z Challenge Listing)

Well, I’ve talked about Beat Sheets a lot on this blog already, but when I got a PM from somebody over at Script Frenzy, I realized that I had never really described the concept in detail, so I figured I’d do that today.

Beat sheets are a way of structuring a screenplay script that Blake Snyder described in chapter 4 of his great book “Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need.” It’s a recipe for planning a screenplay, determining which scenes are needed, which scene goes where, and what the characters will need to do at different parts of the story.

And, as a minor point, I’m not going to go into any details for this post regarding Blake’s prescriptions for WHERE in a screenplay you should place the different beats, or why. You can find some of that out different places on the web, and I want to keep myself focused on WHAT the different beats are.

There are fifteen elements to Blake Snyder’s Beat Sheet:

Opening image: In the first few pages of your script, you should set the mood of your movie, and show where your hero starts out. This beat isn’t about action, it’s not the first thing that happens in the movie, it’s about where the movie is before it starts happening. But you can show style, tone, what type of story you’re telling and what scope it is, from the very start.

Theme stated: This is the part of the beat sheet that I always have the most trouble with. Basically, the theme is the answer to ‘what is this movie about?’ It should be a question that you’re exploring and giving an answer to, or a statement that you will ultimately demonstrate to be true or false, not just a general topic like ‘true love’ or ‘man versus nature.’ (It could be ‘should man conquer nature?’, though.)

One week until Script Frenzy starts. How’s my Board?

Well, here I am. It’s less than 7 days until the start of April starts. In one week, I’ll have started my screenplay.

The original plan was that I’d have my ‘board’ of forty scene beats nearly worked out by now. So, what does that board look like so far?

Yeah, it’s not even

2 weeks until the Frenzy – and my new Beat Sheet!

So, the next step on the plan for Script Frenzy was to have my Beat Sheet ready. I’m not entirely convinced about this, but it should give me a place to start:

Opening image – the main character’s little junker starship, working amidst an alien space garbage dump. Bryan is outside in a space-suit, while Walter keeps an eye on things in the cabin.

Theme stated – this space intentionally left blank.

Setup – They jump into hyperspace, noticing that something is wrong only too late, try to figure out where they are with no luck, approach the nearest yellow star and have a conversation with some of the natives. Bryan lands, and they have a brief court appearance clarifying their status as ‘hyperspace refugees’ and rights relating to it.

Catalyst – In a spaceport bar, Bryan hears about the Space Mafia and learns a bit about the extensive galactic charts that they have access to, dwarfing any maps made by local planetary government.

Three Weeks to Script Frenzy!

Okay, so I’ve been thinking about what I want to do for Script Frenzy for a little while now, and here’s what I’ve got so far:

My Logline: A naive salvage pilot and engineer from Earth get lost in a distant part of the galaxy on their way home, and involved with a charming Alien Mafia Lady who has the star charts that can get them back home.

I actually worked backwards to this, thinking that I wanted to write something science fiction and going through some of the story genres, before settling on a Golden Fleece, and wondering what would make a compelling ‘Road trip through Space’ kind of movie.

Let’s give it the Blake Snyder chapter 1 logline tests:

* An ironic hook? Well, yeah. The irony doesn’t have anything to do with the science-fiction aspects, just that my poor working schlub heroes are getting in bed with the crime lord, as it were.
* Compelling mental picture? It works that way for me. I’ll try to get some more feedback on it from other people over at the Script Frenzy forums.
* Audience and cost? I think it gives a pretty good notion of the cost to start with – it’ll be a bit on the high-side, because science fiction space effects don’t come cheap, but will be closer to the range of a typical crime thriller than a really big sci-fi action-adventure blockbuster. And you’ve got science fiction nuts in the audience, and crime thriller types, and anybody who really appreciates fish-out-of-water comedies.
* A Killer Title? Okay, I admit I’m coming up blank on this one so far… how to sum up all of that, especially the irony, in a title??