The Mission

I have many hopes for this page, both personal and professional. To understand who the person behind the screen is, I recommend you check out my About page which I think, will help you understand why I am doing this. 

In part, I’m doing this because I’m done feeling insecure about the films I haven’t seen, and hiding my ignorance. Instead, I’m going to wear my ignorance proudly on my sleeve. Here is a list of every movie I have never seen. Seriously. Okay not actually. But it’s a list of many movies that I have yet to see that have been made by filmmakers lauded as some of the greatest. You may be shocked by some of the gaps in my consumption of the medium’s greatest moments.

I’m not ashamed. I’m excited. You know how much I wish I could watch Before Sunrise for the first time again? Or the Lord of the Rings? Goodfellas? I’m excited to see it ALL for the very first time… and then write about it.

So after all that, you still might be asking what my mission in this endeavour really is? I’ll tell you now its not to throw Rashomon to trump my friend’s A Few Good Men at the next party. Rather, I’m here to learn.

I am not in the pursuit of criticism. I’m not here to rip apart or applaud the movies I watch, although there will naturally be a healthy amount of that. The core goal of this blog is to understand the work of some of the greatest story tellers of our time. I’m after the learning of what makes these stories stick, what made them stand the test of time, why they’ve been cemented in history. I am, in fact, in pursuit of story. 

The Framework

I’m going to be analyzing these stories in an attempt to learn something about how to tell compelling narratives. What criteria am I using to create these analysis? Where does this criteria come from? Is it credible?

These are all great inquiries (even if you didn’t actually have them). I’ll start by saying that this analysis is very much self prescribed. I didn’t read this in a textbook or hear about it in a class. I’ve learned about these frameworks through different mediums, and decided on my own to mould them in a way that can apply them to stories as to provide me with enough information to create an engaging argument on the movie. So with that in mind, let’s jump in.

Hero’s Journey- Jesus to Jeff Winger

If you can tell what’s coming by the title of this portion, feel free to jump ahead. This idea must be credited to two very intelligent individuals. The first being Joseph Campbell. Ring a bell? Probably not. Campbell is a 20th century theologian, philosopher and thinker who’s work largely centred around mythology, narrative and something called the “Hero’s Journey.” His book “A Hero with a Thousand Faces,” argues that every story from the beginning of time has essentially the same structure. From Jesus to Jeff Winger. Which is where our second intelligent person comes in

Dan Harmon (you’ve probably heard of him) has saved me and you the late fees at the library by adapting Campbell’s hero’s journey into an accessible framework that can essentially be applied to any story, ever. Best known for creating the cult shows “Community,” and “Rick and Morty,” Harmon an admirer of Campbell’s work created his own version of the “Hero’s Journey”. Now I could break it down for you, but why fix something that isn’t broken. You can find Harmon’s explanation of this framework here and a quick youtube summary of the framework here. 

This idea is extremely accessible and easy to digest. I highly recommend that you take a look at it. It will act as a foundation for much of the arguments I will present in my posts.

The Core Question

For this one I have to thank Stillmotion, a filmmaking agency based out of Portland, Oregon that specializes in documentary style films. They’ve made compelling TV spots, heartwarming full-length documentaries and wedding videos. In addition to being an agency, they offer storytelling courses through something called Muse University. Now as a graduate of 1/3 of their storytelling course (that’s right, it’s okay to be impressed), I’ve learned a few things about storytelling. 

Now some of these things are going to seem really obvious to you, but they are deeper concepts than what they seem like on the surface. In my experience, the simplest learnings are generally the ones that carry me the furthest, and this is definitely one of those cases. Stillmotion breaks story down into four components: people, plot, place and purpose. They delve deeply in each of these components to establish understanding in their students. Now there’s quite a lot to unpack, and I’ll tap on a multiple concepts in my analyses, but the piece that stuck with me the most was in relation to plot. 

The Core Question. What the idea proposes is that, like many other narrative structures, there are 3 parts, 3 acts, a beginning, middle and end. However, Stillmotion frames this structure in the form of a question. Every story, at its core, is asking a question. And there are three parts to that question: the ask, the acceptance and the answer. What stuck with me about this idea was that everything in a story rides on a core question. The inherent conflict of a story should be able to be concentrated into a single question, and the strength of this question affects the strength of the story. A burning question results in a more relieving answer and a complex question complicates the acceptance, making for a more interesting story. 

When speaking about film, the core question is extremely handy. It’s an easy first step to understand the thinking process of the storytellers. A core question can also be too simple, not interesting enough or far too complicated to address within the parameters of a film. For these reasons, it’ll be a tool I will refer to often in my analysis of these films.

The Rest

So there’s a ton more at my disposal to analyze stories, each of which doesn’t necessarily deserve it’s own explanation. Mostly stuff I’ve picked from writing classes like “show, don’t tell,” or “Don’t use 10 words when 5 will do,” which are simple concepts that have driven my perception of good storytelling for quite sometime. 

And the truth of the matter is really that there is still a ton more for me explore and learn. There are books, courses and key concepts that I try to consume as much as possible to expand my understanding of good storytelling. In fact if you know some, I’d love to hear about it (let’s build fam).

So now what

What does this all mean? Well these are the building blocks for what comes next: the argument. My goal isn’t to retell a Jaws through Dan Harmon’s framework or simplify the plot of  Inherent Vice into a single question. Rather, I want to learn from the storytelling techniques from theses films (or lack there of) in order to broaden my understanding of what makes an effective narrative. These tools are simply a way for me to get at the core of each learning.