| Approaches to Structuring a Screenplay |
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 In fact, there are two ways. But they are both based on structure and cannot live without it. The first is the ‘classical way’ best known from Syd Field’s instructions. Like Aristotle in the case of drama, Field cuts the screenplay into three parts, or, to be precise, five. Field simply adds one plot to the exposition and, therefore, counts two of them. Three acts, two plots, that’s it. The other type of screenplay structure does not consist in forgetting about all of this but in dividing the chronology into parts and reconnecting them again. This is because the human perception does not permit another manner. The audience has to be able to make itself a ‘hi-story’ out of the film, no matter how confused the scenes may be cut into each other. It follows that the writer has to stick to what is actually recognisable as and combinable with plots, just as real life events. He has got the story before, and then he cuts it into pieces in order to paste it together again. That is the only way to make an apparently unorganised bunch of scenes comprehendible. As follows, both of the two ways of structuring a screenplay base upon the structure of everyday experiences. The only difference is that one gets cut into, only at the beginning though, seemingly unconnected pieces. Short films invite to this latter option because they do not require too much mental memory and can so count on a better understanding of redundancy between the scenes.              |
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