phaedrus044

So insight: Polti's insight isnt really useful as a story structure. However it does label all the possible dramatic moments. So it doesnt care much for introducing the characters or how their life is resolved, but talks how about transition in the middle happens - so how act 2, act 3 play out.

I took all the 36 situations and mapped it. It predominantly maps to 4 beats. Which isnt surprising because it is the middle drama.

This is quite useful for writers to analyse - especially if they have a "your act 2 is sagging" note and need to look at how to fix it. Definitely useful as a prescription layer. Thanks for helping me discover that.

The feedback that I got from a lot of you was, what about all the existing story frameworks that are out there - be it Aristotle's Poetics, The heroes Journey, Dan Harmon's Story Circle - and there are 23 of them.

So I took each of them, mapped their beats to this notation to see what that looks like. So now we can do a comparative of those beats in the notation that we developed.

http://arc.quanten.co/archetype/frameworks

it is interesting that these 23 frameworks, pretty much map to 10 of the archetypes that we spotted in successful films, which means there are atleast 8 more (we spotted a total of 18 so far) that are working archetypes, that just haven't been formalized yet with a framework

At the least, this becomes a good repository for folks to reference the various story frameworks that exist.

Thanks everyone for your inputs. It was greatly helpful in shaping this.

There is a toggle on the top that goes from Swaras to Solfrege - which is the western notation for music.

There is a floating window now that shows what the mapping is between each register and the note, so that it becomes easier for folks to understand the correlation.

"I wonder what the cross over will be like when you do 'western' film and media."

All of the 405 films that you see there is Hollywood films. The list of the movies that constitute this data is listed here : http://arc.quanten.co/browse

"You might want to have a way to tie this to something that the user has already seen as an intro."

If you want to see how this breaks down, We've put out two sample content - one is Anora (which won the Oscar for Best picture last year) and in terms of TV Shows we have also mapped the Pilot episode of The Pitt (though the data used for the analysis was only films)

you can access the complete breakdown for the film and series here:

http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/series

"I'm interested in why you all wanted to do this project at all."

I used to host a filmmakers club in my open floor office for a few years and used to listen to filmmakers talking about how they make films. While I come from the software world where everything can be A/B tested and there is a beta, test, feedback, iterate, release cycle, it felt odd that films lack any of it - and it is pretty much a hit or miss. And unlike software, you don't get a chance to re-release a film. And the lack of any meaningful audience data and structure data, felt like a huge gap - one that artistic sectors like music and culinary arts have quite well bridged, but the visual story telling world hasnt. That's where the wheels started to churn - that was almost 11 years ago.

Thank you for your kind words.

You are spot on.

Absolutely. It is the engine for civilization and the operating system for human belief.

This predominantly seems to be around character arcs (how a character evolves over a story) vs the overall narrative arc? Its interesting neverthless.

You win too :)

A lot of hollywood's story telling circles around two predominant structures - the hero and saving the cat (or damsel). As of late, that trope isnt quite working as much. A majority of the films that are made are of the genre drama, not action/adventure the two structures struggle.

I have a copy of John's book and have read it. Been down this rabbit hole for a few years now :) Thanks for sharing though. appreciate it.

Check the sample page for Anora, it might help : http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film

(scroll down to the bottom to see the narrative beat structure)

The system identifies it, we havent started naming it yet, though we can at some point. I need to work with more showrunners to understand their thinking and process on it. Know anyone?

So curiosity aside, I do keep reminding me what problem am I solving and for whom? Auteurs don't care for anyone's opinions and they don't need the tools nor will pay for it.

I definitely do want to study "great" films - not just popular, but films that are timeliness. The next thing on my agenda is to benchmark the WGA 101 Best Screenplays of the 21st century and after that benchmark the WGA 101 Best Screenplays of all time (which starts with Casablanca).

Even if there are no users for it, I'd be curious to find out how things have evolved and what stands out. But as a nimble startups, don't think auteurs and art house filmmakers would be customers. And they shouldnt - they should do what they do, and go with their gut.

The Campbell structure is the Sa-dominant and is the linear ascent.

You shouldnt seperate a story from a structure at all. You should find the right bones for the story. Not suggesting otherwise in anyway.

PS: if by any chance, you come across the script for that film, do share. Would love to see what it says. Im curious myself now. If i had to guess, reading the synopsis of the film, i'd say : https://arc.quanten.co/archetype/anishchit

You'll be surprised to know that the first version of Iron man, starring Robert Downing Jr started with the comment from Stan lee as "I don't care for the script" and had to be completely rewritten. So doing 4-5 rewrites is quite normal.

The benefit with a system like this is, you can decide which archetype best tells your story, and also you can benchmark versions of the story to see how close / further away you are as you do your rewrites.

Film executives work with something called comps, what they believe are their comparables - in terms of similar stories and similar structures. The structure of your comp could give you some hints of where you might want to lean towards - or you can go the opposite direction too.

As someone who is building a tool, we take a conscious decision to be at best descriptive + suggestive, but never prescriptive. present the data, let the creators decide how they want to take it forward. I believe that is where originality will thrive.

I have friends who are filmmakers and they'd write me off if i had any other thoughts :)

The primary audience for these are producers and development executives on the studio side, and independent filmmakers if they want a tool to evaluate and give them insights to build on it.

https://blog.quanten.co/why-quanten-arc-does-not-tell-you-wh...

Not pitching, but giving some context here : The first product we built is an audience analytics platform. We use near eye headsets while audiences are watching films during test screenings, to collect occulometric and biometric data to map engagement.

Emotions are a messy thing to map and rely on. For eg, there was a film that we were testing, and three of the 50 audience members had a totally off-beat engagement signal compared to the rest of the audiences - and this was a scene in the park. So after the film was done, I had flagged the moderator to ask those three audience members what happened in the scene. So he casually brought up what parks meant to them. And one of them said, it was a weekend routine to spend time in the park with his mother whom he lost recently - so the minute he saw that park shot, thats all he could think of, and had nothing to do with the film.

So if you really base a narrative structure on emotions, we will have to baseline every single person on earth for all of their experiences, and wade through that - and it would be impossible to produce a mass media outcome.

Stories hinge on emotion (absolutely) but beyond that it is also a journey, where the audience participates, pays attention, and engages - we see this with occulometric and biometric data. And to truly engage, audiences must understand the words being spoken - i could watch a portuguese film without subtitles and as much as i could guess maybe 10% of the narrative, i wouldnt have a clue whats going on - let alone participate in it.

Our system currently cannot accomodate for languages other than english (we are doing some tests with German, French, Spanish and Hindi - but i wouldnt rank the confidence levels on those to be high enough yet). Beta, at best.

Thank you for asking that very crucial question. I appreciate it.

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2018/07/the-plot-clock-structure...

Appreciate you sharing it.

While there are six general shapes, I've noticed that there are nuances to it. Also the medium significantly changes the form. Just as youtubers creating content follow a different format, compared to tiktokers - even within produced content, I have noticed that Film, Franchise Films, Prestige Drama, Network TV, Mini Series, Shorts etc have nuances.

Stability Incitement Pursuit Reversal Crisis Revelation Climax Resolution (sometimes) Epilogue / New Beginnings

https://postimg.cc/nM9cTkpt

But as stories get more complex, with multiple stories weaving in and also as you bring different genres in, some structures are better than others for different stories.

While I have figured out 15 so far, I want to take the WGA 101 screenplays of all time, which goes all the way from Casablanca, - and i want to see how some of these structures have evolved and are evolving over time.

For eg, since the past 2-3 years, leaving an open end (like in the case of Project Hail Mary in a new universe) shows up in 12% of films, compared to less than 1% before that. Those kind of insights are interesting.

Thanks for sharing that link.

But yes, I do believe that if AI is going to get so good at things that we are all going to have free time, we are going to have more time for entertainment. It is either going to be the arena or protests - and theatre might reclaim its glory days.

Ive been watching some of the shows by the National Theatre via streaming and do enjoy them.

Adjacency wise, a few startups have asked if they can use this framework to finetune their storytelling. Im still thinking.

There are 72 major raagas - called mela kartha raagas - those are the root raagas, and there are combinations and permutations done that generates the janya raagas - which is children raagas (there are thousands of those - and different artists can create variations on these).

Most films in Hollywood have narrative beats - its 7-8 beats. Each tv show for eg, has 5-6 beats. Most micro drama episode has 2-4 beats. Its quite structure that way.

If you take a structure like Save the cat, or Heroes' journey, the order of the beats are also quite well laid out - just that those two structures dont cover the span of stories, and rest is all quite undocumented.

Im trying to work backwards - and quite aware that i am probably identifying derivatives than the root, but even the derivatives can be quite useful to guide others from generating engaging content.

I am not aware of Aarne Thompson's work. I'm looking it up right now...

My musician friends who are scholars in indian music tell me that there is a difference between a written raaga and a performed raaga and in a performed raaga, the actor has the right to improvize on that.

Im trying very hard to not go into the rabbit hole which might become purely academic :) But i would think that if we take how youtube content is structured, or tiktoks are, each format would lend to a new structure.

Thats my sense, i could be wrong. What do you think?

http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/film (Anora) http://arc.quanten.co/showcase/series (The Pitt S01E01)

There was this snide remark that someone in hollywood made where they said, they make movies whereas Europe makes (art) cinema.

I havent figured out how to resolve that yet.

But yes to korean, japanese films - that's very much on the list.