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[NT] The movie-watching experience...

Grungemouse

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The Harry Potter films (and books) in general.

In modern day society, there is a problem with obesity because of advanced technology replacing the requirement of manual labour, physical exertion, etc. We don't need to walk to get to anywhere; we use the car, train, bus, what have you. We don't wash the dishes by hand, we use the dishwasher. You get the point. We're getting fatter and lazier as as culture because of this.

So, in the "Wizarding world" in Harry Potter, how come the minority of characters have weight problems when the physical exertion of our "muggle" technology is significantly reduced by the flick of a wand? Surely they would have greater problems with an unfit society? Okay, so in our world we take the train. But at least there is some walking involved. In the Wizarding world, all you do is mutter an incantation and you're at your destination!

I want my portly Ron, dammit!

I couldn't get my head around the use of magic, so I'm not even going to bother going there.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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For Shakespeare, even his minor characters had an amazing amount of depth. Of course I guess that is why he's considered a genius.

Overall I find too much Ti in a movie is more likely to ruin it than lack of Ti. Events in real life often do not make sense, and that goes the same for people. When a movie makes too much sense it interferes with my suspension of disbelief.
 

Katsuni

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:D Yay! Explanation :)

That's really cool Katsuni. How are plots/sub-plots produced? It seems like there would be a similar necessity for internal consistency.

:coffee:

Probably alot more ways than I'm aware of. I know of a few key ways though.


One way is to just write it as yeu go along, making up stuff. If yeu have a strong cast of fleshed out characters, this can actually work very well in the right hands, as the characters pretty much write themselves. The downside is that this rarely leads to complex or interesting plotlines. If yeu just want to see something amusing as a character study, it works well enough though as an excuse to see the characters DO stuff, but rarely anything super interesting.

The more common way would be to do a loose structured concept; come up with some basic plot points, key details that need to occur, ideas and such that yeu want to impliment, and make a bare bones skeletal model of whot yeu want to have happen and in whot order. Dump the characters into it and watch them do their thing. Nudge them where yeu want them to go as neccesary. I tried this on the last thing I wrote though and I found it to be very difficult to get them to do whot they were supposed to. Some people may have alot better luck at this than I have had, probably those with more practice and skill at it XD

There's also the more extreeme ways, like for the puppetters, yeu can just have them write a short point form script and then follow it to the letter, adding in details to the characters (convenient backstory flashback) as needed to explain why they're doing actions that make no sense to them.

And then yeu get freaks like J.R.R. Tolkein and J. Michael Straczynski. These people... yeah they do things just a Tiiiiiiiiiny bit differently than sane people do. They basically design the worlds they create from the ground up, starting with the history, evolutionary paths, archetecture, languages, etc, and don't even get to the story part until they've made an entire world for it to happen in. Most people will make up elements as they go along, these people create WORLDS, living breathing ones. The plot is designed after this has already been created, and from that point, they tend to plan out everything far in advance, which allows them to interconnect many details simultaniously, and set 'plot bombs'... where like yeu may read something at the start, but it doesn't make total sense until quite some time later. For example, on Babylon 5, the tv show, Straczynski made an episode in the first season which involved time travel, and a second episode which mirrored it two years later which was the 'other half of the episode' which showed things from the other side of whot was occuring. Then yeu're forced to go back and watch the first episode for it to all make sense again XD This style of writing is something that's near impossible to pull off, but if done right, can lead to beautifully magnificient works of art. Babylon 5's arguably got the single most involved plotline and characters of any tv show so far, and lord of the rings is just creepy in the detail poured into it. Downside, is that this also has a habit of the designers wanting to 'show off' their stuff... with perhaps a bit too much emphasis on 'all the neat things we made!' that generally don't hold any relevance to the plot, but they want to show them off anyway. Like tom bombadil. 50 pages of pointless trite which could've been skipped. Some people may love him and his storyline, but he's completely unrelated to the rest of the book except for vague shreds of plot, but not enough to justify his existance.



And then we get the "show off a character". This's often used in action movies and very bad fanfic writing with self placement. A very poorly made 'character' who is nothing more than an avatar of the writer (basically the writer dressed up as superman but more powerful because they like to do that kind of crap), and the "plot" is meaningless, except for as excuses for the character to show how badass they are all the time. Enemies exist only for the sake of being slapped around, and it's treated more like a poorly done video game than anything else. Chronicles of riddick is a good example of this; the whole movie is designed to show off the character and nothing more. There's some really good background concepts but they never really are allowed to get put to good use because the character dominates everything to the point of just overshadowing plot in a total eclipse. This CAN work at times (riddick), but the vast majority of the time it's just total crap (fanfics). This almost always involves a main character who's just a puppet, they have no real character on their own, they exist only to have their strings pulled, and they usually prefer having their strings pulled in such a way to make it look really flashy, and take up all the screen time showing off how flashy they really are. The plotline's generally about on par with a porno due to this.
 

Fife

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Cheers :) That makes sense. Is there particular methods particularly suited to different plots/genres?
 

Totenkindly

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Inconsistencies can totally ruin a movie for me (there are many movies I can't watch much of, they're just too vapid or incomprehensible).

It all depends on whether the movie (1) has an internal structure carrying it and (2) if the structure is coherent and consistent.

I'll bring up an example of a non-rational movie -- "Face/Off" -- that I really like. From a Thinking point of view, the science is horrible and thus some of the foundational structure of the movie sounds unbelievable. The key to my enjoying it (besides the acting of the two leads playing each other) was to realize the structure is not based on T rationality, the structure of the story is emotional in nature, an explorati0on and resolution of internal emotional issues for Archer. Along with that, the visuals were extremely coherent and evocative, even if they were entirely implausible (e.g., the whole face swap... no sense whatsoever scientifically, but perfect for the emotional and visual aspects). Most movies that try this can't pull it off at all, this is one of the few I've managed to enjoy like this.

I also need consistency in the psychology of the characters. If the characters seem to be interchangeable throughout the plot, or just that they take action at the contrivance of what the plotter needs to happen regardless of what's happened to them so far in the movie, then I can't stomach it.

Coherency/Consistency. I must be able to believe the story to be "real" and dynamic and show deterministic cause/effect regardless of what the "rules" of the universe are. (I really liked Pan's Labyrinth and Dark City and Being John Malkovich, etc.)
 

substitute

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I hate when movies have been made from books, and they have things happen that you need to have read the book to properly understand or get them or enjoy them. That feels really arrogant to me. If you make a movie it should stand in its own right, whether it's of a book or not. And I hate when a movie's plugged and aimed at the entire international English speaking audience, yet it relies on viewers having American values and stuff to be able to sympathise with the good guys or you know, care about the cause etc (cos of this I tend to roll my eyes and switch off as soon as I hear the word "freedom" these days, knowing it really means Freedom(TM)...).

And yeah, I hate it when they have glaring inconsistencies and continuity errors. It does spoil my enjoyment of it. I just get annoyed, I think come on, it wouldn't have been so hard to just iron those things out, it makes me angry that they just didn't bother and cynical about them just not really caring about making a good product, just a good enough trailer to get us into the theatres and once we've paid, they don't care what happens afterwards.
 

Valuable_Money

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I hate stupid characters more than anything.

I remember a movie called cabin fever which was an AWSOME... concept.
But the characters where stupid even by horror movie standards.
Ok so everyones dying and one guy goes out for help. He finds a house and he looks in the window to see if anyones home, he sees a woman naked for aproximatly .5 seconds when her husband comes around with a shotgun to question his motives. Instead of explaining "Im sorry I didnt know your wife was in there, if my freinds dont get medical attention soon they will DIE. May I please use your phone?" HE RUNS AWAY.


In regards to the post about puppets versus creatures. Twilight has to be the ultimate puppet book. Why doe ANYONE do ANYTHING in that book/movie? Because they have to to keep the plot moving. Ive never seen anythign like it, the characters arent even stereotypes there just, non-existent. How lazy is that, you cant even take the effort to copy and paste some generic characters you just leave them all blank.

My favorite bit of logic in that book. Vampires go after bella because she apparently shampoos with A-1 sauce or somthing. So edward protects bella from the vampires. Then he decides that the best way to protect bella is to leave her alone and defenseless. WHY ON EARTH WOULD HE DO THIS!? Because the author wanted to introduce some hot werewolf for teenage girls to shlick to.
 

ilovetrannies

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Twilight is shit, full stop. I can't believe anyone who would want to read such a ridiculous and stupid book. Don't even get me started on imprinting! :steam: (See someone you want to mate with forever, no matter WHAT AGE THEY ARE!!!! A two year old kid!):steam:


I enjoyed The Time Travelers Wife and The Lord of the Rings, the whole trilogy. I can go with a movie if it doesn't make a whole lotta sense. You gotta go with it. Like the tv show LOST, awesome show and constant inconsistencies. It is worth it, to just go with it.:yes:
 

Katsuni

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Cheers :) That makes sense. Is there particular methods particularly suited to different plots/genres?

Hrm in terms of particular genres? Not sure, there are some genre differences in basic ideas of HOW the plot works, but that depends on the writer too.

For example, there's a distinctive difference between sci-fi and fantasy, they're often mistaken for two forms of the same thing but there's one major difference: In sci-fi, yeu explain HOW things work and WHY stuff happens, with additional emphasis on the reasoning behind it. Fantasy just goes "oh that? Uhm... it's magic", and then doesn't bother to define magic.

While one can state that the primary difference is 'just' the method by which the writer attempts to sustain the suspension of disbelief (just go along with it and pretend yeu don't understand, vs trying to make people understand), these each have their flaws (sci-fi tends to rely on theory, which can often prove false, even at the time of writing if the writer isn't a physicist which makes people the book's often targeted at just groan at how many errors there are, while fantasy can often play the "zomg it's magic!" card waaaay too often sometimes). They also have a distinctive difference in how they run with the plotline.

For example, fantasy usually is centered wholly upon the characters, 'magic' is used often as an excuse to force the environment to change to suit the character's story, or to guide them in their path. Everything centers on the characters itself, not on the magical aspect; the times yeu see otherwise, this tends to be a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid such as ShadowRun which melds both togeather.

Sci-fi, on the other hand, generally tends to have the plot driven by logical consistancies and the assumption that one thing will cause the other to happen, with the plotline generally carefully laid out far in advance, and everything explained. In a few more obvious cases of sci-finess, there's ringworld or angelmass, in which the very nature of the plotline revolves around key concepts, and the characters are heavily guided more along a rail to these destinations as their interaction with these plot points is far more critical. In fantasy yeu can have the people "go see the wizard" and yeu really don't care HOW they go about getting there, just toss some stuff in their way at random usually for filler. In sci-fi, generally there's specific reasoning behind how to get to a certain path, and each encounter along the way is more rigidly enforced.

I think this's less based on the genre though, and far moreso based on the mindset of the writer themselves. It's just certain mindsets tend to prefer one over the other. A highly logical mind will have difficulties writing for fantasy as there's the overwhelming need to EXPLAIN the concept of magic, in which case it becomes a sci-fi interpretation of an otherwise fantasy world. But once that occurs, it'll likely also bleed over in other aspects as well, such as structuring plot development significantly.



Dramas, could be considered to be a similar mindset of fantasy, as essentially that's whot they are, with even more emphasis on the characters themselves. The concept of the world they live in though can be any of a number, but is generally more realistic to simplify things. Something like star trek's Voyager series, would be an example of a sci-fi drama though. It actually has very little sci-fi to it though, which's forcibly tacked on... see unlike a sci-fi story which revolves around the concepts, and uses the characters as a method of relating the concepts to the viewer, the characters ARE the concept, and the only use for the sci-fi aspect at all is to present new environmental and psychological and emotional challanges for them to overcome.

Comedies can go in a large number of ways but rarely seem to dwell heavily upon the characters, and are more interested in dumping the pre-made characters with a strong sense of wit, into bizzare situations, in which case it matches hand and hand alot better.

Horror's generally a very obvious example of using the puppetter style of character development... the characters act according to their strings, with a loose guide of "read this script, yeu are this stereotype". Horror does not really bother with making in depth characters or even really plotlines often, it's generally more treated as an action movie where yeu toss some people up against monsters, be they zombies, or a homicidal killer. Noone has any real REASON for doing anything... (WTH does jason kill people? Because it entertains the viewers! :hi: ). In these situations, the characters are dragged by strings to act however they're supposed to, but they usually at least use a handbook guide of stereotypes to define how they act semi-consistantly. The characters have no personality and life of their own though when not being held by the hand and told whot to do however. If that were the case, they wouldn't touch the damned door yeu're screaming at them not to go in. Seriously wth. Yeu were an intelligent, normal person seconds ago, and then BAM blindsided by genre blindness and yeu completely don't realize yeu're in a horror movie. The "plot" is more a haphazard excuse for people to be cut into ribbons in new and interesting ways. Note the emphasis on each victem usually being unique in their death scene. Just being eaten by zombies isn't good enough, no they have to stress differences in being eaten each time. That's the plot. And it's highly amusing ^.^ If yeu can suspend disbelief that the characters suck and the plot's nonexistant, then yeu can enjoy watching the vampire nazi-mongol robots taking over.

I don't really bother with most other genres, but I'm sure most also follow similar guidelines. I'm probably oversimplifying things alot too.




In regards to the post about puppets versus creatures. Twilight has to be the ultimate puppet book. Why doe ANYONE do ANYTHING in that book/movie? Because they have to to keep the plot moving. Ive never seen anythign like it, the characters arent even stereotypes there just, non-existent. How lazy is that, you cant even take the effort to copy and paste some generic characters you just leave them all blank.

Twilight's generally regarded by most people to be little more than a fangirl-horror-fic. The plot doesn't exist for the sake of furthering the story, and the characters have no purpose other than to either get eaten or fall in love. If yeu're not in one of these two positions, yeu have no place in a story of this nature. This's a prime example of where writing characters to fit whot yeu want them to do without even considering making it plausible as to why they'd act a certain way, just shows how NOT to write.




In any case, the whole writing concept's alot more complex than whot I've shown here too, and there's alot of extra styles as well and variations on a theme, but the basic concepts are fairly similar. Certain genres are more prone to one type of writing than another though, due to the fact that they have different goals (horror just wants to startle or scare an audience usually, suspense is NOT horror, suspense relies heavily on carefully integrated plotlines to add a fear of 'whot next?' that horror doesn't bother with. Yeu know from the start everyone but the annoying blonde girl and the good looking guy are going to get eaten by the werewolf, we just want to see HOW they die).
 

Valuable_Money

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Hrm in terms of particular genres? Not sure, there are some genre differences in basic ideas of HOW the plot works, but that depends on the writer too.

For example, there's a distinctive difference between sci-fi and fantasy, they're often mistaken for two forms of the same thing but there's one major difference: In sci-fi, yeu explain HOW things work and WHY stuff happens, with additional emphasis on the reasoning behind it. Fantasy just goes "oh that? Uhm... it's magic", and then doesn't bother to define magic.

:huh: What does that make Fullmetal Alchemist?
 
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