Too much story? Not enough?

Sometimes I think people spend too much time on their amazing world, explain everything around the actors and don't spend enough time with the human drama side of it (me included sometimes).
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That much is certainly true, but human drama has to be rooted in some sense of reality for anyone to care.
 
Yes, but it can be pretty wild if you have a character you can relate to within it. Charli makes a good point, realistic dialogue makes the the characters relatable and likeable... which causes you to have feeling for them and you do that, they can be any any setting... IMHO.
 
dougspice said:
That much is certainly true, but human drama has to be rooted in some sense of reality for anyone to care.
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Yeah but how we create that reality is a tricky proposition. And we often go too far or not in the right direction.
 
Sometimes a movie works even when the story fails ("Night Watch" anyone?). Usually the story has to work, but there are so many bad scripts that make for very popular movies (Spider-Man 1, 2...please 3, be better), I just think that a "good" movie might have very little to do with story. It just depends on what the audience expects to get out of the experience. Some of us love overly complicated, ambiguous films. Some don't. I certainly don't believe dialogue is the answer to a film. It might help some films. But Children of Men had very little dialogue. Almost nothing I would consider "distinctive." It did have a couple of minor distinctive characters. But it was the story--the choices that characters made--and it was the concept (man's ability to cope with an apocalyptic world) that drove the movie for me. I can't remember a single line of dialogue from it. Mamet, he can have it.
 
Absolutely. It's easy to make the mistake of telling too much. In defense of the original conversation/film that caused all this, I think it's a worse sin to tell too much than to tell too little.
 
I feel that in order to care for a character, we need to understand their situation well enough to sympathize or connect with what they're feeling. Whether it's a ton of story, or 'little but very important' moments, it needs to be enough to make the characters exist beyond what we're seeing on the screen. I think if it's overdone, it's too dramatic and it will result in a story that feels fake, forced; if not done enough, we just don't care about the characters... and every once in a while, someone nails it and it's just what the story needs, nothing more, nothing less.
 
dougspice said:
Absolutely. It's easy to make the mistake of telling too much. In defense of the original conversation/film that caused all this, I think it's a worse sin to tell too much than to tell too little.
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I'll second that... and uh... I'm working on that in my writing.

Also, your right, it's not just dialogue, but their actions which makes they relatable and makes you care for them. If you don't care for the characters in a movie, that movie will get boring after the third fourth watch.
 
sean90291 said:
Sometimes a movie works even when the story fails ("Night Watch" anyone?). Usually the story has to work, but there are so many bad scripts that make for very popular movies (Spider-Man 1, 2...please 3, be better), I just think that a "good" movie might have very little to do with story. It just depends on what the audience expects to get out of the experience. Some of us love overly complicated, ambiguous films. Some don't. I certainly don't believe dialogue is the answer to a film. It might help some films. But Children of Men had very little dialogue. Almost nothing I would consider "distinctive." It did have a couple of minor distinctive characters. But it was the story--the choices that characters made--and it was the concept (man's ability to cope with an apocalyptic world) that drove the movie for me. I can't remember a single line of dialogue from it. Mamet, he can have it.
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Your post is so contradictive that it made my eye hurt.

I just think that a "good" movie might have very little to do with story.

That threw it all off.
 
Kholi said:
Your post is so contradictive that it made my eye hurt.

I just think that a "good" movie might have very little to do with story.

That threw it all off.
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Sorry but it's true.

There are many movies that are considered "good" but which from a writer's or a very critical "story" perspective don't really hold much water.

And the nature of filmmaking and story is rather contradictory. If it was a science we'd all be making hits. Few of the pros nail it every time either. Guess what? That's cuz it's hard to understand and quantify. I've seen too many "bad stories" still succeed, and that proved it to me beyond any doubt. I prefer a great story mind you. But I've enjoyed many films that lacked it.

Hey, the genesis of this thread was a really cool short film that has a rather ambiguous, and perhaps incomplete story. We love it anyway because it's so damn cool.
 
sean90291 said:
Sorry but it's true.

There are many movies that are considered "good" but which from a writer's or a very critical "story" perspective don't really hold much water.

And the nature of filmmaking and story is rather contradictory. If it was a science we'd all be making hits. Few of the pros nail it every time either. Guess what? That's cuz it's hard to understand and quantify. I've seen too many "bad stories" still succeed, and that proved it to me beyond any doubt. I prefer a great story mind you. But I've enjoyed many films that lacked it.

Hey, the genesis of this thread was a really cool short film that has a rather ambiguous, and perhaps incomplete story. We love it anyway because it's so damn cool.
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Name three movies with a bad story or no story that succeeded.

And YOU love it because it looked so damned cool. Which proves the point here: You fell for the looks, and didn't care about anything that was going on.
 
As for Silent City: I did care. A lot. I was riveted by the situation. By the possibilities. I was left to think, what is their life like, and how did they get there, and what the hell is on its way to destroy them. It was short enough and evocative enough that it blew me away, and apparently it blew an agent at CAA away too because the filmmaker is now represented and being sent feature screenplays, largely based on this film.

A movie that succeeded despite a bad story? It's so subjective. I think that "Night Watch" has such a bad story it's laughable. And yet it's just so incredibly creative and the characters are so original, I just couldn't stop watching. The movie was a hit and they've made a sequel as a result. I think Signs was a great concept and a bad story/script, but it made gajillions. Pirates of the Carribean was loved enough to make like half a billion dollars. Awful script, but there were a lot of other great things about it. Come on. Fact is, sometimes bad scripts are still fun movies.
 
SCRIPT and STORY are two totally separate things. Mixing them up is only going to confuse this argument.

Yes, you can take a non-traditional or weak story and make a brilliant film out of it. But it's an uphill battle; it's tough. There IS, in fact, more or less a science to story. But we're fickle creatures, we get bored easily. So we have to place a layer of abstraction between the bare bones of STORY and the much more diverse world of STORYTELLING. The Silent City (and I swear I'm going to stop picking on this film now) had excellent storytelling. It had a lousy story. The majority of directors can succeed based on those skills. Get them a good script, they'll make a good movie, probably. The problem is that most people seem to think they are also good story creators, which is less often the case.
 
dougspice said:
SCRIPT and STORY are two totally separate things. Mixing them up is only going to confuse this argument.

Yes, you can take a non-traditional or weak story and make a brilliant film out of it. But it's an uphill battle; it's tough. There IS, in fact, more or less a science to story. But we're fickle creatures, we get bored easily. So we have to place a layer of abstraction between the bare bones of STORY and the much more diverse world of STORYTELLING. The Silent City (and I swear I'm going to stop picking on this film now) had excellent storytelling. It had a lousy story. The majority of directors can succeed based on those skills. Get them a good script, they'll make a good movie, probably. The problem is that most people seem to think they are also good story creators, which is less often the case.
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That's actually a really interesting take on the discussion, I think.
 
i just watched it....there was no point but look it pretty and i got actors... he really coul have made something and he had ****ing cillan murphy. but the acting was great and the fx were top notch just there wasnt a point... and thats a story issue.
 
Directors aren't necessarily writers anyhow. They usually are not. For good reason. But as dougspice says: the problem is that most people seem to think they are also good story creators...
 
sean90291 said:
...the problem is that most people seem to think they are also good story creators...
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tellers...storytellers, not story creators (save for Billy Wilder, Orson Welles and precious few others)
 
Storytellers vs. Story creators: I think dougspice is making a distinction between story telling as filmmaking technique and the way a story is told versus story creator being the one who originates and crafts the actual story in written form. But hey, I've never actually heard the term "story creator" either.
 
Kholi said:
Name three movies with a bad story or no story that succeeded.
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Not sure what the actual debate is with this point, but the story in "Clerks" appeared to be nothing more than a character and dialogue vehicle. Monty Python's "Holy Grail" had a terrible story according to some. I've never laughed so hard. I think it was successful. There are probably a number of comedies that succeeded with no real story. Horror films too. "Blair Witch"? And how do you define "bad" or "successful"? Where are the lines?

This is a highly subjective topic, as are most things in art....er, film. Our experience and preferences are coloured by many factors. The beauty is there are no strict rules for acheiving success.

"Triumph of the Will" apparently was the most successful propanga film of all time. It was a rallying cry and a glorification of Nazism which spoke to many Germans.

"Limbo" by John Sayles ended abruptly. It was disconcerting. Certainly not a traditional story in the normal understanding. But at the festival screening I was at the audience cheered. We had been told beforehand that it had been panned by critics.


On the point of too much story, Magnolia had a whole lot of it. Some would argue too much. After watching a couple of times I found myself wanting more of the Jim (cop) and Claudia (addict) story. It moved me. But the first time I watched I was more interested in seeing more of The Cruiser - he was dynomite. Both times I enjoyed it thoroughly. A critical success too I think.
 
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