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![[F]](../_images/site.gif) New York Times on the Web Forums  Science
Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans
for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be
limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI
all over again?
    (8036 previous messages)
lunarchick
- 09:45am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8037
of 8047)
lunarchick@www.com
On endings: from The Australian 22Aug a few points:
Aussie author Ms Aronson has won literary prize for
'Scriptwriting Updated: New and Conventional Ways of Writing for
the screen' putting her in demand on the international film
school lecture circuit.
She says film audiences reared on interactive computer games are
much more demanding than those who were capitvated by classics such
as Casablanca.
(Showalter -- She's surely missing something re this
comment?)
"Scriptwriting is like being an architect and a
builder. My book sets out some tricks of the trade for creating a
good structure, but that is only half the the story." said
Aronson.
"The three-act structure is not dead. Parallel
narrative stories take the three-act structure, chop it up and put
it back together. But you need to know the three-act structure
before getting into the tricky stuff."
Her theories about plot structures have been
praised in the US.*
After repeated viewings of films which
successfully used complex narratives and dissection of serveral
that flopped. Aronson identified four plot structures and the
components that made them effective.
"I have pinpointed some very practical guidelines
as to how you write complex plots. It all seems terribly obvious
but a lot of films fall short becasue they miss one element."
Trained as a classical musician. she likens her
thories to the mathematical structure of the symphony.
---------
Raises a question re getting to an ending in The Cold War. The
script has been complex. The ending has to be 'take down the weapons
- before they take us down'. So how will the script be written, the
ending play out. Has everyone been reading from the same page ...
with comparable levels of understanding - weapons are dangerous -
with a mind of their own, plus subjected to the minds and whims of
power brokers.
Australian readers had to be reassured that she'd made it in the
USA. (Hits NY Goldsmiths College October+)
lunarchick
- 09:50am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8038
of 8047)
lunarchick@www.com
3act structure:
While the prolific, practical and innovative Lope
de Vega was meeting the need for changing techniques necessitated
by changing times and audience interests; he also was combating a
barrage of criticism from the traditionalists. His 1609 Arte nuevo
de hacer comedias is addressed to the Academy of Madrid, that
bastion of Aristotilian authority that had chastised him for
failing to observe the unities, for reducing the five classical
acts to three and for shamelessly mixing comedy and tragedy in the
same play. He retorted that of course, he knew the rules, that he
put them under a lock and six keys and shut Plautus and Terence
out of his study when he started to write. He was writing for
today's public, a public with its own language and its own tastes.
The mixture of comedy and tragedy, he claimed, was true to life;
his dual plot lines kept the public in suspense until the very end
and the three act structure allowed him to introduce the
characters and their situations, tie the knot and build the action
to the denouement. Echoing Horace and eschewing Aristotle, the
father of the Spanish Golden Age comedia explicated his views of
plot, character, diction, thought, song and spectacle as he had
practiced them in all but six of his 483 plays. That number--483--
he added, included the play he finished that very week (11-19). http://www.msstate.edu/dept/cas/wiltrout.html
lunarchick
- 09:54am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8039
of 8047)
lunarchick@www.com
The cold war hasn't finished its 3rd Act. It has peaked
(Bay of Pigs), and now reached the "take down" point .. the end is
almost in sight!
lunarchick
- 09:58am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8040
of 8047)
lunarchick@www.com
Casablanca was a wwii film .. and that war was visual and more
interactive than Nintendo - surely! And scarey too!
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