WEDNESDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:

HARRY POTTER
AND THE DRIVING FORCE

Every time I do a tip about a wildly popular film like TITANIC or LORD OF THE RINGS, I get a whole bunch of e-mails explaining how I obviously didn't "get" the movie, or that I obviously didn't read the book, or that the reason they do that in film #2 is the great scene that's coming up in book #7... if they ever make that into a movie.

I read the first HARRY POTTER book, thought it was okay (even wrote a tip about it) and have seen all of the movies. I thought the first two movies had some amazing things in them, but were slow going and by the time we got to the end I was bored. Sure, I'm not a kid (target audience) and I didn't read the second book (so I guess I'm not a rabid fan - also the target audience, it seems). But I'm a kid at heart and I like fantasy stories. All I want is a great movie going experience, and the first two POTTER films had plenty to go "gee whiz!" about, but seemed way too long. Okay, they were trying to remain faithful to the books, and JK Rowling seems to have a major say in what happens on screen. When I heard that the third film was "the good parts" version of the book, trimmed down to 2.5 hours, and "darker" and "more adult" than the other two, I thought maybe they were going to make a better POTTER movie. One that had all of the amazing "gee whiz!" stuff, but was also exciting all the way until "Fade Out".

Well, it was shorter.

But HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN still loses steam less than halfway through... and ended up the least successful in the franchise. It starts out great, with Harry unable to bottle up his anger at being treated like crap by his muggles guardians and using his magical gifts for evil. This is a great moment because you're laughing at the spell, but you also realize the power that Harry has... and how easy it is to misuse that power. When the story kicks in a few scenes later and we discover that the evil wizard Sirius Black has escaped from wizard prison and is coming after Harry, the film shifts into high gear. Sirius had been his parents best friend, but he ratted them out to ultra-evil wizard Valdemort. Valdemort killed Harry's parents, tried to kill Harry... and Sirius ended up in prison for his role in the crime. Now there are those who think Sirius will come after Harry, and those who fear Harry might go after Sirius in revenge for his parent's murders. Now we are completely revved up! I'm thinking this is going to be the best HARRY POTTER film ever!

And then it stumbles in a weird way. The title of the movie is THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, the story they've set up is about an escaped prisoner... and then the story shoves the escaped prisoner plot aside for other stuff.

There's a great scene on the train where the wizard versions of Tommy Lee Jones from the FUGITIVE, these ghost-like things called "Dementors", search the train car-by-car looking for the escaped prisoner. But when they come to Harry, they seem to attack *him*. As if he's the threat to Harry's future, rather than Sirius. And that's when the story derails, because in scene after scene the escaped prisoner Sirius is treated as less of a threat to Harry than the Dementors... whose purpose is to capture Sirius (which should be *helping* Harry). Harry is more afraid of the Dementors than he is of the escaped prisoner who is probably coming to kill him. And the subplots about horse-birds and quidditch and the mysterious new teacher and Ron's missing pet rat push us farther off the tracks into the sand and the story loses traction and stalls out.

For me, the film reached a point where I no longer cared about the story, I was watching for whatever cool stuff might pop up before the closing titles. HARRY POTTER had turned into FX porn!

I may not be the only one who feels that way. Warner Bros. Distribution dude Dan Fellman predicted the film would fall off less than 50% in it's second weekend... But AZKABAN's audience fell more than 63% - compare that to SHREK 2 which only fell 33% in it's second weekend or HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS which only fell 52% in its second weekend or the first film (SORCERER'S STONE or PHILOSOPHER'S STONE) which only fell 35% in it's second weekend. The repeat and word-of-mouth audience seems to be shrinking with every film. There's something about the films that isn't satisfying audiences, and here's my theory...

The first, and most important thing is: The film has to work as a film. Fans of the books will fight this idea - they don't want the films to be different than the books at all. But the way a book works and the way a film works are DIFFERENT, and what works in a book may not work at all on film. The key to adapting a book for the screen, any book, is to *adapt it* - to make a story that works on the page into a story that works on the screen... and that means making changes to fit the medium.

My nieces call the HARRY POTTER novels "chapter books" - books divided into "bite sized pieces" that you read one chapter at a time. And the first book works really well if you read it one chapter at a time. JK weaves together a trio of stories, alternating chapters, and creating either a cliffhanger or an exciting tease at the end of each chapter to keep the pages turning. When you put in that bookmark after finishing a chapter you can't help but wonder what happens next. That's what makes the books real page turners, and so popular with kids and adults alike.

Each chapter has enough fuel to propel you into the next chapter.

That's a good thing in scripts, too - you want every scene to have enough fuel to propel you into the next scene...

But films are not seen one scene at a time. You may read a novel over several days, or even several weeks (the HARRY POTTER books aren't short). So a novel really only needs enough fuel to get you to the next chapter. You can wonder what happens next, and find out when you read that next chapter... which propels you to the next chapter. Because a movie is seen in one gulp, you not only need enough fuel to propel you from one scene to the next, you need a strong driving force that propels you from the beginning of the film to the end...

And this is where HARRY POTTER movies run out of steam.

When you transfer the three threaded plots to screen they become a bunch of minor subplots that don't add up to a single driving force story. There's enough force to drive the story from chapter to chapter (and keep the pages turning) but not enough force to drive the overall story... and that's what's important in a movie.

So in AZKABAN, we have an escaped prisoner who ratted out Harry's parents and may be coming to kill Harry. That would be good - it's enough fuel to drive a movie - except that's not what the story is about at all. And it's not about that other fear - that Harry might try to hunt down Sirius to avenge his parents' murder. That would have worked, too. Instead, the story isn't even about Sirius! He doesn't show up until the end of the film. Instead of the dangerous escaped prisoner being the antagonist, the Dementors sent to capture him become the antagonists. So the bad guy in the film's title isn't really part of the story! Instead, the *good guys* are the bad guys and those good guys seem less interested in capturing Sirius than they are in causing Harry problems. That's confusing on a basic level... and it also completely telegraphs one of the film's major plot twists.

Story 101: The Antagonist is the character who comes in the way of the Protagonist achieving their goal, or/and the Protagonist is the character who comes in the way of the Antagonist achieving their goal.

Sirius isn't even part of the story, here, it's the Dementors who keep causing problems for Harry - on the train, in the quidditch match, in his dark arts class, and at the end(s). But why? Why do they go after Harry? How does Harry get in the way of their plan to capture Sirius? Even if they are using Harry as bait, they're spending more time damaging the bait than they are fishing.

If Harry's goal is to find out why Sirius, his parent's best friend, ratted them out (and then get vengeance) then the Dementors should be on his side (they have a similar goal). If the Dementor's goal is to capture Sirius, they're on the same side as Harry (or have similar goals) - so why do they pick on him? I'm really not sure what Sirius' goal for breaking out of Azkaban Prison at exactly this point in time is - why today and not yesterday or tomorrow? I'm not sure what Sirius' goal really is in this story - he's not actively coming after Harry (if he was, that would be enough driving force to power the film). If his goal has to do with the Peter Pettigrew character - that has nothing to do with Harry! And we still have the question: Why now? The Peter Pettigrew character had to exist in the past two films, and he wasn't a problem for Sirius then... so why now?

So we end up with a story that has a million subplots, most of which seem like padding. I though the bird-horse thing was amazing - but a moment of being amazed isn't enough fuel to power the film... so it ends up being interesting padding. It's a subplot that takes us away from the escaped prisoner story. It has nothing to do with whatever the central conflict is (which I think ends up being Harry's self confidence when dealing with Dementors). There never seems to be anything driving the story - if the story is about the escaped prisoner, where the heck is he for 90% of the story? We spend a lot of time not even thinking about him, not caring about Harry finding him to extract revenge over ratting out his parents (or hiding from him - Harry goes all over the place without ever bumping into Sirius!). For a film called THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN there isn't much about that prisoner in the story - except every once in a while someone mentions him, just to keep him in the story. That conflict should be the fuel that runs the *entire* story - it should be all about Sirius and Harry. An escaped prisoner gunning for Harry should be the driving force in the film, and any self-confidence problems Harry has should be in relation to that escaped prisoner (not the guards sent to capture the prisoner). The horse-bird thing? If that can't be worked into the escaped Sirius story (maybe it used to belong to him?) it's a roadblock. The plot twists that are part of the Sirius story become *stronger* if Sirius is the antagonist that Harry tangles with throughout the story (instead of just popping up at the end - in the same scene as all of the plot twists). The movie wouldn't be a carbon copy of the book, but it would tell the same basic story... just with the accent on different elements.

Your Screenplay Checklist

1) So what is the driving force in *your* script?
2) Who is your antagonist? What is their goal? How are they *actively* working to achieve it?
3) Who is your protagonist? What is their goal? How are they *actively* working to achieve it?
4) How does the protagonist get in the way of the antagonist's goal, and vice versa?
5) What is that big engine of conflict that's introduced in the beginning of your script that keeps that story zooming along until the end of your script? Is it an escaped prisoner? A kid seeking revenge against his parent's betrayer? What fuels your *entire* story?

A novel may be able to get by on enough fuel to propel the reader from one chapter to the next, but a movie needs a driving force that will propel the viewer from the beginning until the end. A central conflict with enough fuel to take us from fade in to fade out. We want the film to work as a film, even if it means the film may be slightly different than the book... even if it means there are things in the movie that were *not* in the book, and things in the book that *don't* make it into the movie. That's what adaption is all about - adapting. Changing the story from the book so that it survives in it's new life as a movie. This isn't destroying the book - the book still exists as a book - it's making the story work in a movie story form.

Okay - you can start sending me those e-mails now.

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Distilling Your Screenplay!

Loglines, Treatments, Pitching, Look Books, Pitch Decks, One Pagers, Rip-O-Matics?

You have written a brilliant 110 page screenplay, but how do you get anyone to read it? You need to distill it down into some form of verbal moonshine or story rocket fuel that will ignite that bored development executive or manager or agent and get them to request your screenplay. But how do you shrink those 110 pages into a 25 word logline or a 2 minute elevator pitch or a one page synopsis or a short paragraph? This 100,000 word book shows you how! Everything you need to know! From common logline mistakes (and how to solve them) to how your pitch can reveal story problems to the 4 types of pitches!

272 Pages - ONLY $4.99!

READY TO BREAK IN?

THE BUISINESS SIDE

*** BREAKING IN BLUE BOOK *** - For Kindle!

Should really be called the BUSINESS BLUE BOOK because it covers almost everything you will need to know for your screenwriting career: from thinking like a producer and learning to speak their language, to query letters and finding a manager or agent, to making connections (at home and in Hollywood) and networking, to the different kinds of meetings you are will have at Studios, to the difference between a producer and a studio, to landing an assignment at that meeting and what is required of you when you are working under contract, to contracts and options and lawyers and... when to run from a deal! Information you can use *now* to move your career forward! It's all here in the Biggest Blue Book yet!

Print version was 48 pages, Kindle version is over 400 pages!

$4.99 - and no postage!

FINAL DRAFT SOFTWARE

Use your creative energy to focus on the content; let Final Draft take care of the style. Final Draft is the number-one selling application specifically designed for writing movie scripts, television episodics and stage plays. Its ease-of-use and time-saving features have attracted writers for almost two decades positioning Final Draft as the Professional Screenwriters Choice. Final Draft power users include Academy, Emmy and BAFTA award winning writers like Oliver Stone, Tom Hanks, Alan Ball, J.J. Abrams, James Cameron and more. * * * Buy It!

copyright 2022 by William C. Martell