Sunday, 7 July 2013

Post 4: Beats

"Beating" is a hollywood term for beating out an idea - when something happens it is seen as a "beat" for example a key event such as the character finding a soloution to a problem. Normally, a short film would have roughly 8-12 "beats" within the story being told.

Example of breaking a short film down into beats:

Beat 1 - Introduce the world the film will be in

Beat 2 - Character introduction

Beat 3 - Introduce the problem

Beat 4 - How the character chooses to solve the problem

Beat 5 - The character experiences a major set back

Beat 6 - The character is almost defeated

Beat 7 - The character rejects a soloution

Beat 8 - The character discovers a soloution or not



"Mr. Foley"




Beat 1 - The male is in a hospital bed.

Beat 2- The character is introduced to be a male. His age seems to be late 40s or 50s having his bandages removed from his head.

Beat 3 - The problem introduced is that he unable to hear anything but the sound effects of the happenings of the ward.

Beat 4 - The character trys to solve the problem by running away from it.

Beat 5 - The sound effects are catching up with him and he is struggling to out run them.

Beat 6 - The male character is almost caught but runs onto an empty roof and blocks the door with a ladder.

Beat 7 - The character trys to hear a bird tweet however the sound effects get to him and are the sound of the bird.

Beat 8 - He tries to get a way and he thinks his answer is to kill himself by falling off the roof.

Beat 9 - However, the character wakes up again in hospital and is once again only hearing the sorrounding sound effects.

Here I have made the beats for my own film:



Beat 1 – introduce the setting of the film 

Beat 2 – introduction of Josh sitting by his Dad’s grave

Beat 3 – Josh at school misbehaving

Beat 4 – Josh meets 

Beat 5 – Josh gets into the wrong crowd of friends

Beat 6 – Josh almost has a fight with the boys

Beat 7 – the girl tries to help Josh but he rejects her

Beat 8 – Josh realizes what he is doing and accepts help

Knowing these beats of my film is important, especially when writing a script, as I will know all the major parts within my film. They help to summarise the film into its key points and show the importance of them.