From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing

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Identifying story beats

Identifying story beats

From the course: Creating a Short Film: 02 Writing

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Identifying story beats

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- So you flushed out your logline into three acts. Now it's time to delve a little deeper into the components in each act. Throughout each act, there are events that happen that turn the story in a different direction. These are called story beats. Now, just be aware the term beat in the filmmaking world is used to describe all kinds of things. It's actually pretty confusing. There are beats in acting or emotional beats, or even, you could call a pause in action a beat. But, in this tutorial, we're only using beat to refer to a shift in the story. We talked earlier about the inciting incident. This is an example of a story beat that occurs in Act 1. The moment that the protagonist decides to go on the main quest of the film, and we move into Act 2, is also an important beat. Oftentimes when the protagonist is presented their quest in Act 1, they think about and wrestle with it for a little while. They might even flat out turn it down initially. Some authors have called this the debate…

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