David Scott Smith
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WIM M3 L7 David Scott Smith’s Character Profiles Part 2
My Vision: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned doing this lesson: That I still need to work on my Antagonist. And I need to review the alignment of these characters. I can also tell that my actor attractors aren’t really based on what the characters do, like the Pulp Fiction example is… I haven’t written the project yet, so I find it hard to dig deep into that without knowing their voice better… But I can tweak this to be a better start…
THE HIGH CONCEPT:
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
I’ve chosen the Dramatic Triangle character structure.
STORM previous work
ACTOR ATTRACTORS
Lead Character Name: Storm
Role: Protagonist
1. Why would an actor WANT to be known for this role?
He’s one of the first smart, cool-headed military black ops that has a transformational journey from fearful rookie to confident master, the one chosen to lead vengeance missions, complete with theatrics, and playing his targets against each other.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in the movie?
Only he knows his full mission, and he can never tell the important people in his life the truth behind any of his actions or whenever he asks them to do something for him. As a result, everything he says has subtext! But what he discovers is that his mission is only a small part in bigger missions, and that alters his perception of reality.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the movie?
Saves the life of a teammate, takes vengeance upon those responsible for American deaths, saves his family from a car bomb, breaks into enemy quarters, breaks enemy code, plays enemy agents against each other, role plays with wife, in bed with a beautiful woman, stands up to 5 star generals, gets to overpower and beat up slimy soviet agents.
4. How is this character introduced that could sell it to an actor?
His smart moves and quick thinking saves his own life and the life of a teammate.
5. What is this character’s emotional range?
From calm to killing, from patience to rage, from calculative to instinctual. From insecure to confident.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
Everything he says distracts from his real mission at all times. There’s a deeper meaning under almost everything he says.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character has?
Pretends to be someone else with his wife. Struggles to be the best father he can be, even though he disappears on missions. Has an empathetic relationship with Queen Bee, helps her find her place in the world. Has admiration for his female boss. Has hatred for the Soviets. Has a cunning instinct for his main Soviet nemesis.
8. How is this character’s unique voice presented?
Through his ability to shape a different story for every person he recruits on his mission – as he talks, he’s searching for their yearnings and their weaknesses so that he can exploit them when he needs to.
9. What makes this character special and unique?
He has an Old Testament sense of justice that comes from being shot by his father when he was a teenager and left for dead – all he had was a hunting knife and a bible. He’s taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth out of every bad guy throughout the movie.
STORM’s JOURNEY
Arc Beginning: naive, insecure, self-interested rookie black op
Arc Ending: Storm has become “Psycho” (The One!)
Internal Journey: From weak, insecure and self interested to strong, fearless and empathetic
External Journey: from a rookie black op to a full-fledged “Psycho” who fights for a cause, runs vengeance missions behind enemy lines, and can manipulate the Soviet network of spies.
Old Ways:
Small time rookie black op
Self interested
Didn’t believe in himself
Afraid of his superiors
Accepted the dominance of others.
Ignorant of the large secret network of high level soviet agents
New Ways:
Can read the Morse Code
Manipulates the Soviet Agents
Runs vengeance missions across enemy lines
Courageous
Fighting for a cause
Has empathy
QUEEN BEE previous work
ACTOR ATTRACTORS
Lead Character Name: Queen Bee
Role: Triangle
1. Why would an actor WANT to be known for this role?
Queen Bee is an attractive, free spirited, intelligent woman who stands up for herself when she believes she’s right. She discovers a network of Soviet spies and has to sidestep the military to prove it and helps bring down the Berlin Wall.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in the movie?
On her off hours, she enjoys 1977 Berlin to the fullest! Night clubs, dancing, Bowie, boys. During her work hours she’s an attractive but uneducated genius – a problem solver who becomes obsessed with uncovering who is behind the signals she’s tracking.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the movie?
She trains as a signals intercept operator, she points out what she believes to be enemy signals that the military is missing but the military doesn’t agree, she investigates anyhow, she sneaks around her apartment complex, tracing wiring, she breaks into an apartment discovering a dead Soviet agent and a code book. She proves that the signal she discovered was really Soviet coded messages. She deciphers messages revealing a network of spies across the world (the discovery of sleeper cells). She stands up to colonels and generals who don’t believe her, and convinces a black op that what he’s doing is wrong.
4. How is this character introduced that could sell it to an actor?
She notices her commanding officer selecting trainees, but he skips her, and instead of obeying orders and just sitting there, she follows them into a testing room, where she outperforms all of them and gets chosen by Storm.
5. What is this character’s emotional range?
From excited and dancing to calm and focused to knowing she’s the smarted person in the room to being scared and running for her life!
6. What subtext can the actor play?
First, she’s a woman in the military in 1977 – she’s got to play dumb and bubbly and pleasant to avoid becoming hated by the boys in the military. She has to play differently with the younger girls in her department to try to win their friendship, but she fails miserably at that. Outside of work, she’s already got a cover story she has to tell locals and guys she meets in the clubs, but once she starts working on a secret mission with Storm, she can’t even tell any of the other girls in her dept what she’s doing, nor her commanding officer, which puts her in very awkward positions with tons of subtext – everything she says to anyone but Storm is a lie.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character has?
Her relationship with Storm is the most interesting – he’s the one person she can tell the truth and be her full brilliant and vulnerable self.
8. How is this character’s unique voice presented?
From the first scene she’s breaking the rules and being smart. Her unrefined charm and uneducated genius is obvious.
9. What makes this character special and unique?
QUEEN BEE’s Journey
Arc Beginning: an insecure & naive Dairy farmer
Arc Ending: has become a skilled intelligence officer who uncovers the largest network of soviet spies ever exposed
Internal Journey: from insecure and naive to skilled & daring
External Journey: from a Dairy Farmer to a skilled Spy who can subvert networks of secret agents.
Old Ways:
Insecure
Naive
Ignorant of the Cold War
Accepted the dominance of others
New Ways:
Creates technology
Manipulates Soviet Agents
Fighting for a cause
DANIL previous work
ACTOR ATTRACTORS
Lead Character Name: Danil
Role: Antagonist
1. Why would an actor WANT to be known for this role?
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in the movie?
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the movie?
He fakes his own death by killing a subordinate and pouring acid on his face. He extorts an American soldier into giving him intel on Storm & what’s happening inside the fusion room. He kills those who double cross him. In public, he wears disguises to make himself look older, hides his physique, avoids looking like a threat.
4. How is this character introduced that could sell it to an actor?
He is introduced as a disarming figure who transforms before our very eyes into someone who is a menace.
5. What is this character’s emotional range?
From calm and collected to
6. What subtext can the actor play?
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character has?
8. How is this character’s unique voice presented?
9. What makes this character special and unique?
DANIL’S ARC
Arc Beginning:
Arc Ending:
Internal Journey:
External Journey:
Old Ways:
New Ways:
WIM M3 L6 & L7
Protagonist (the primary character with the biggest arc)
Antagonist (the opposition that forces the protagonist to change)
Triangle (key player who connects the protagonist to the antagonist)
<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Storm
1 Role in the Story: Protagonist: one of only 2 black ops stationed on base who’s secret job is to bend the rules to protect America/American interests and mess with the Soviets, putting him at the center of the conflict in Cold War Berlin, but his first mission was a failure and he is in a battle to regain his confidence.
2 Age range and Description:
Age: 28
Description: Storm is a good looking, broad-shouldered young man who always has a smirk on his face like he’s about to crack a joke, unless he witnessing an injustice, such as the Germans trapped on the other side of the Berlin Wall, and then he is clear eyed and serious.
3 Core Traits:
• Haunted
• A jokester
• Brainy
• Brave
4 Motivation; Want/Need:
Storm wants to stop the Soviet’s campaign of espionage against the US.
Storm’s need is to settle his guilt for failing his first mission and feeling responsible for the death of his first package.
5 Wound (What they can’t face):
That members of his team are dying under his watch and because of his actions.
6 Likability, Relatability, Empathy
Likability: He’s a man of action, he saves the life of his teammate in the beginning. He’s brave. He’s really trying.
Relatability: There to protect others. His job forces him to do things he doesn’t want to do.
Empathy: When his first mission goes badly, he’s overcompensating. His black op status causes him to lose a lot of connections to his wife and his children – we feel for him.
7. Character Subtext:
Storm is withholding because of his wound – his first mission failed resulting in the death of someone he was trying to rescue.
8. Character Intrigue:
Storm has hidden agendas at every level – his boss dictates his mission, he has to hide his true mission from his commanding officers and everyone else on base, but still get them to do their specialty work for him, to contribute to his mission without them knowing the details.
9. Flaw:
Storm: Overcompensating for failure
10. Values:
Storm: Saving the helpless. Revenge. Being your best.
11. Character Dilemma:
Storm: Excitement vs Safety
Danil
1 Role in the Story: Antagonist (the opposition that forces the protagonist to change) Danil is a former elite Spetsnaz soldier who is now leading several networks of Soviet spies and agents throughout the world with the aim of fucking up as much of America’s shit as possible. When he does a good job he is rewarded by getting a better apartment. His punishment for poor results is getting a roach infested apartment.
2 Age range and Description:
Age: 42
Description: Danil doesn’t joke, for him, life is serious. He has the eyes of a professional soldier who has experienced the ugly and dark side of humanity, but one who has folded that darkness into his own way of thinking. He peers over the spectacles he doesn’t need at the civilians he interacts with to appear older and disarming.
3 Core Traits:
• Macho
• Vengeful
• Efficient
• Observant
4 Motivation; Want/Need:
Danil Wants: to please his bosses
Danil Needs: to make his life better, be more free.
5 Wound: What they can’t face: that he’s losing ground with his bosses and his life will become worse than it already is.
6 Likability, Relatability, Empathy
Likability: He’s a man’s man. Smart, takes action.
Relatability: There to do the job, no matter what. He’s simply trying to survive given his circumstances.
Empathy: Publicly, he has to make himself seem unimportant to remain covert.
7. Character Subtext:
Danil becomes treacherously unethical when he’s afraid of failing his superiors
8. Character Intrigue:
Danil is competing and striving to outdo other agents at his level to impress his bosses. Danil also wants to outdo Storm.
9. Flaw:
Danil: Overdoing things
10. Values:
Danil: Being your best. Success.
11. Character Dilemma:
Danil: Winner vs Loser
Queen Bee
1 Role in the Story: Triangle (key player who connects the protagonist to the antagonist) Queen Bee is a signals intercept trainee who believes she’s discovered a new enemy signal, but her superiors blow her off as an idiot newbie hearing static. But her obsessive side kicks in and she can’t let go of the hunt for those behind this odd signal.
2 Age range and Description:
Age: 32
Description: Queen Bee is voluptuous and open, free in her mind and excited to be in Berlin. She looks at everything and everyone as a new opportunity to learn more about life – she just can’t help herself. After feeling trapped on her family’s farm back in Minnesota, she suddenly finds herself in Europe, in a hip and happening, cutting edge town like Berlin. Everything is exciting and feeds her hungry soul.
3 Core Traits:
• Friendly / easy
• Scandalous (silly)
• Problem solver
• Obsessive
4 Motivation; Want/Need:
Queen Bee wants to get to the bottom of who’s behind the new signal she’s discovered and what their plans are.
She needs to feel that she is making the world a better place.
5 Wound (What they can’t face): that her actions are endangering her son’s future.
6 Likability, Relatability, Empathy
Likability: Doesn’t back down. Sharp. Knowledgeable.
Relatability: Has no actual experience hunting Soviet Agents. Wants to go on the adventure. Wants to prove herself.
Empathy: Her contributions are constantly downplayed, her knowledge isn’t appreciated. She’s had to leave her son in order to prove her worth to herself.
7. Character Subtext:
Queen Bee is obsessed about proving herself right.
8. Character Intrigue:
Queen Bee has two levels of secret identity: the first is hiding as much of her background as possible… She hides that she has a son and ex husband, and that she was abused not only by her mother but also by her husband, and that they have a bond and have successfully gotten the husband custody of her son; The second is when she starts working for Storm, she suddenly has a new secret identity – that she’s “mission critical” and is actually doing something far more directly & tangibly worthwhile to protect the United States than anyone on base besides Storm.
9. Flaw:
Queen Bee: Says the wrong thing, undervalues herself
10. Values:
Queen Bee: Meaningful work. Being your best.
11. Character Dilemma:
Queen Bee: fit in to the military vs be true to herself
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David Scott Smith’s Subtext Characters
MY VISION: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned doing this assignment was: I got a little hung up on this exercise because it felt like an important decision, and most choices I made felt like they didn’t work for my main characters. I also got hung up because the example from Basic Instinct didn’t seem to follow the explanations presented in the lesson.
Character Name: Storm (Protagonist)
Subtext Identity: Covert Black Op who hides his identity from everyone and works for a boss higher up than any of his on-base commanders.
Subtext Trait: Joker, Secretive, manipulative, player
Subtext Wound: Acceptance Wound
Subtext Activity: He covers by being a joker and secretive, but when triggered he becomes manipulative and plays people.
Subtext Logline: Storm is a covert black op who is secretly using a trainee to locate a top Soviet Agent.
Possible Areas of Subtext: Storm has to hides his true identity and mission from his commander, wife, kids, teammates, queen bee. He takes action based on his mission that breaks with military norms, he lies to cover, has extraordinary access to intelligence resources and POTUS admin. With his intelligence resources he can manipulate and blackmail his targets. He disappears from his regular life to execute missions on the other side of the wall. Everything he does is secret to everyone but his true boss. Etc.
Character Name: Queen Bee
Subtext Identity: A signals intercept trainee (a spy) who is addicted to getting to the bottom of everything.
Subtext Trait: Secretly Obsessive, in denial
Subtext Wound: Acceptance Wound
Subtext Activity: Covers by denying her own importance, but becomes secretly obsessed with proving that she’s right.
Subtext Logline: Queen Bee is a signals intercept trainee who discovers what she believes is a new type of enemy signal, but when her ideas are rejected, her acceptance wound is triggered and she becomes obsessed with proving that she’s right.
Possible Areas of Subtext: becomes obsessed, secretly disobeys orders, spies on the man she thinks is behind the signal, doesn’t realize he’s noticed her, becomes addicted to the rush of spy work and danger, becomes addicted to Storm, goes too far, gets discharged with a section 8. Etc…
Character Name: Danil
Subtext Identity: the Con or the competitor – a spetznaz black agent
Subtext Trait: casual, avoidance unpredictable, Unethical, Treacherous
Subtext wound: he is trapped in his espionage world and has to perform or else his life and livelihood are in danger (he’s backed into a corner)
Subtext Activity: Danil covers his wound by casual avoidance but when triggered becomes unpredictable, unethical and treacherous.
Subtext Logline: Danil is a covert Spetznaz agent wreaking havoc on US interests in Berlin and around the world.
Possible Areas of Subtext: Danil spends his life in hiding. He hides his real identity: from everyone in his apartment building; from US agents; from US signals intercept; from his friends; from his mother. But when he discovers that he’s been made by Storm and queen bee, he retaliates by faking his own death, attempting to kill members of Storm’s team, Storm, Queen Bee, activate a sleeper cell near Queen Bee’s son to target him, have US military housing bombed, planes hijacked, etc
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David Scott Smith’s Character Intrigue
My Vision: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned doing this lesson: I like exploring these aspects of intrigue and subtext… My characters feel like they have all of them all the time.
Character Name: Queen Bee
Role: Triangle
Hidden agendas: The character has a covert plan and is implementing a strategy or taking action to accomplish a goal that affects others without their knowledge. Queen Bee has a hidden agenda to prove that her theory about this new transmission is correct behind the backs of her OIC and trainer who have told her that she’s wrong and to ignore it. Also, when Storm has to lie to her and tell her the signal is nothing, she has a hidden agenda to keep looking for the source of this signal.
Competition: the character is striving to outdo another for acknowledgement, prize, profit, power or some other thing of value. Queen Bee is in competition with her trainer and OIC who both think she’s barking up the wrong tree.
Conspiracies: A secret plan by two or more people to do something unlawful or harmful, to work covertly against someone else. Storm and Queen Bee make a secret plan to prove her theories about new Soviet communications behind the backs of her officer in charge.
Secrets: secrets are something they keep hidden or concealed from others that impacts the situation. QB keeps hidden her personal past, her current position on the base is TopSecret so she keeps that hidden, her work with Storm is beyond top secret.
Deception: Causing someone to believe something that is not true – she will have to deceive many people with her cover stories and fibs to get things done.
Unspoken Wound: Being called “stupid” her whole life. She sucked in traditional school work – dyslexic – got pregnant young, “trapped” never got to explore her own potential. Being called stupid is a trigger for her. She at first admits that she must be, and then works obsessively behind the scenes to prove that she was right.
Secret Identity: There’s two levels of this for QB: the first is hiding as much of her background as possible… She hides that she has a son and ex husband, and that she was abused not only by her mother but also by her husband, and that they have a bond and have successfully gotten the husband custody of her son; The second is when she starts working for Storm, she suddenly has a new secret identity – that she’s “mission critical” and is actually doing something far more directly & tangibly worthwhile to protect the United States.
Character Name: Storm
Role: Protagonist
Hidden agendas: Storm has hidden agendas at every level – his boss dictates his mission, he has to hide his true mission from everyone else, but still get them to do work in their specialty for him, without them know the details.
Competition: A competition develops between Storm and Danil and the Americans vs Soviets in general.
Conspiracies: Storm conspires with his boss, Storm conspires with QB, Storm conspires with Soviet agents he turns.
Secrets: Storm keeps secret how poorly his first mission went.
Deception: Storm deceives his wife, his kids, into believing that he’s doing things other than what he’s doing.
Unspoken Wound: His father shot him and he promised himself that he would always be there for the helpless.
Secret Identity: Storm has a giant secret identity, that he’s working for someone completely different than the military.
Character Name: Danil
Role: Antagonist
Hidden agendas: Danil has a hidden agenda to affect Storm and his team.
Competition: Danil is striving to outdo other agents at his level to impress his bosses. Danil strives to outdo Storm.
Conspiracies: Danil conspires with his team to kill members of Storm’s team, get more info from the mole, etc
Secrets:
Deception: He deceives all the civilians around him, in the apartment building, etc by pretending to be older, and unimportant
Unspoken Wound: x
Secret Identity: Storm and QB have one form of covert identity (within their ranks they are covert, BUT they are in the American military, so their identity as US Military is obvious to all who see them in uniform. But Danil is a covert Spetsnaz agent, which means he hides in plain sight. He has a cover identity, cover clothes that hide his muscular body, cover body language (he slouches to play older than he is), colors his hair to appear older, wears glasses that he doesn’t need to soften his image. Everything he does has a double meaning. He walks a lot to lose tails, throw people off, sends signals, does dead drops, meets covertly.
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David Scott Smith’s Character Profiles Part 1 (<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>WIM M3 L6)
My Vision: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned doing this lesson: I’m behind, but am catching up. Here’s part 1 with some blanks, I’ll fill in more for my antagonist in part 2
THE HIGH CONCEPT:
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
I’ve chosen the Dramatic Triangle character structure.
STORM previous work
ACTOR ATTRACTORS
Lead Character Name: Storm
Role: Protagonist
1. Why would an actor WANT to be known for this role?
He’s one of the first smart, cool-headed military black ops that has a transformational journey from fearful rookie to confident master, the one chosen to lead vengeance missions, complete with theatrics, and playing his targets against each other.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in the movie?
Only he knows his full mission, and he can never tell the important people in his life the truth behind any of his actions or whenever he asks them to do something for him. As a result, everything he says has subtext! But what he discovers is that his mission is only a small part in bigger missions, and that alters his perception of reality.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the movie?
Saves the life of a teammate, takes vengeance upon those responsible for American deaths, saves his family from a car bomb, breaks into enemy quarters, breaks enemy code, plays enemy agents against each other, role plays with wife, in bed with a beautiful woman, stands up to 5 star generals, gets to overpower and beat up slimy soviet agents.
4. How is this character introduced that could sell it to an actor?
His smart moves and quick thinking saves his own life and the life of a teammate.
5. What is this character’s emotional range?
From calm to killing, from patience to rage, from calculative to instinctual. From insecure to confident.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
Everything he says distracts from his real mission at all times. There’s a deeper meaning under almost everything he says.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character has?
Pretends to be someone else with his wife. Struggles to be the best father he can be, even though he disappears on missions. Has an empathetic relationship with Queen Bee, helps her find her place in the world. Has admiration for his female boss. Has hatred for the Soviets. Has a cunning instinct for his main Soviet nemesis.
8. How is this character’s unique voice presented?
Through his ability to shape a different story for every person he recruits on his mission – as he talks, he’s searching for their yearnings and their weaknesses so that he can exploit them when he needs to.
9. What makes this character special and unique?
He has an Old Testament sense of justice that comes from being shot by his father when he was a teenager and left for dead – all he had was a hunting knife and a bible. He’s taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth out of every bad guy throughout the movie.
STORM’s JOURNEY
Arc Beginning: naive, insecure, self-interested rookie black op
Arc Ending: Storm has become “Psycho” (The One!)
Internal Journey: From weak, insecure and self interested to strong, fearless and empathetic
External Journey: from a rookie black op to a full-fledged “Psycho” who fights for a cause, runs vengeance missions behind enemy lines, and can manipulate the Soviet network of spies.
Old Ways:
Small time rookie black op
Self interested
Didn’t believe in himself
Afraid of his superiors
Accepted the dominance of others.
Ignorant of the large secret network of high level soviet agents
New Ways:
Can read the Morse Code
Manipulates the Soviet Agents
Runs vengeance missions across enemy lines
Courageous
Fighting for a cause
Has empathy
QUEEN BEE previous work
ACTOR ATTRACTORS
Lead Character Name: Queen Bee
Role: Triangle
1. Why would an actor WANT to be known for this role?
Queen Bee is an attractive, free spirited, intelligent woman who stands up for herself when she believes she’s right. She discovers a network of Soviet spies and has to sidestep the military to prove it and helps bring down the Berlin Wall.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in the movie?
On her off hours, she enjoys 1977 Berlin to the fullest! Night clubs, dancing, Bowie, boys. During her work hours she’s an attractive but uneducated genius – a problem solver who becomes obsessed with uncovering who is behind the signals she’s tracking.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the movie?
She trains as a signals intercept operator, she points out what she believes to be enemy signals that the military is missing but the military doesn’t agree, she investigates anyhow, she sneaks around her apartment complex, tracing wiring, she breaks into an apartment discovering a dead Soviet agent and a code book. She proves that the signal she discovered was really Soviet coded messages. She deciphers messages revealing a network of spies across the world (the discovery of sleeper cells). She stands up to colonels and generals who don’t believe her, and convinces a black op that what he’s doing is wrong.
4. How is this character introduced that could sell it to an actor?
She notices her commanding officer selecting trainees, but he skips her, and instead of obeying orders and just sitting there, she follows them into a testing room, where she outperforms all of them and gets chosen by Storm.
5. What is this character’s emotional range?
From excited and dancing to calm and focused to knowing she’s the smarted person in the room to being scared and running for her life!
6. What subtext can the actor play?
First, she’s a woman in the military in 1977 – she’s got to play dumb and bubbly and pleasant to avoid becoming hated by the boys in the military. She has to play differently with the younger girls in her department to try to win their friendship, but she fails miserably at that. Outside of work, she’s already got a cover story she has to tell locals and guys she meets in the clubs, but once she starts working on a secret mission with Storm, she can’t even tell any of the other girls in her dept what she’s doing, nor her commanding officer, which puts her in very awkward positions with tons of subtext – everything she says to anyone but Storm is a lie.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character has?
Her relationship with Storm is the most interesting – he’s the one person she can tell the truth and be her full brilliant and vulnerable self.
8. How is this character’s unique voice presented?
From the first scene she’s breaking the rules and being smart. Her unrefined charm and uneducated genius is obvious.
9. What makes this character special and unique?
QUEEN BEE’s Journey
Arc Beginning: an insecure & naive Dairy farmer
Arc Ending: has become a skilled intelligence officer who uncovers the largest network of soviet spies ever exposed
Internal Journey: from insecure and naive to skilled & daring
External Journey: from a Dairy Farmer to a skilled Spy who can subvert networks of secret agents.
Old Ways:
Insecure
Naive
Ignorant of the Cold War
Accepted the dominance of others
New Ways:
Creates technology
Manipulates Soviet Agents
Fighting for a cause
DANIL previous work (Blanks)
ACTOR ATTRACTORS
Lead Character Name: Danil
Role: Antagonist
1. Why would an actor WANT to be known for this role?
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in the movie?
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the movie?
4. How is this character introduced that could sell it to an actor?
5. What is this character’s emotional range?
6. What subtext can the actor play?
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character has?
8. How is this character’s unique voice presented?
9. What makes this character special and unique?
DANIL’S ARC
Arc Beginning:
Arc Ending:
Internal Journey:
External Journey:
Old Ways:
New Ways:
<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>THE WORK IN THIS LESSON: WIM M3 L6
Storm
1 Role in the Story: Protagonist: one of only 2 black ops stationed on base who’s secret job is to bend the rules to protect America/American interests and mess with the Soviets, putting him at the center of the conflict in Cold War Berlin, but his first mission was a failure and he is in a battle to regain his confidence.
2 Age range and Description:
Age: 28
Description: Storm is a good looking, broad-shouldered young man who always has a smirk on his face like he’s about to crack a joke, unless he witnessing an injustice, such as the Germans trapped on the other side of the Berlin Wall, and then he is clear eyed and serious.
3 Core Traits:
• Haunted
• A jokester
• Brainy
• Brave
4 Motivation; Want/Need:
Storm wants to stop the Soviet’s campaign of espionage against the US.
Storm’s need is to settle his guilt for failing his first mission and feeling responsible for the death of his first package.
5 Wound (What they can’t face):
That members of his team are dying under his watch and because of his actions.
6 Likability, Relatability, Empathy
Likability: He’s a man of action, he saves the life of his teammate in the beginning. He’s brave. He’s really trying.
Relatability: There to protect others. His job forces him to do things he doesn’t want to do.
Empathy: When his first mission goes badly, he’s overcompensating. His black op status causes him to lose a lot of connections to his wife and his children – we feel for him.
Danil
1 Role in the Story: Antagonist (the opposition that forces the protagonist to change)
Danil is a former elite Spetsnaz soldier who is now leading several networks of Soviet spies and agents throughout the world with the aim of fucking up as much of America’s shit as possible. When he does a good job he is rewarded by getting a better apartment. His punishment for poor results is getting a roach infested apartment.
2 Age range and Description:
Age: 42
Description: Danil doesn’t joke, for him, life is serious. He has the eyes of a professional soldier who has experienced the ugly and dark side of humanity, but one who has folded that darkness into his own way of thinking. He peers over the spectacles he doesn’t need at the civilians he interacts with to appear older and disarming.
3 Core Traits:
• Macho
• Vengeful
• Efficient
• Observant
4 Motivation; Want/Need:
Danil Wants: to please his bosses
Danil Needs: to make his life better, be more free.
5 Wound: What they can’t face: that he’s losing ground with his bosses and his life will become worse than it already is.
6 Likability, Relatability, Empathy
Likability: He’s a man’s man. Smart, takes action.
Relatability: There to do the job, no matter what. He’s simply trying to survive given his circumstances.
Empathy: Publicly, he has to make himself seem unimportant to remain covert.
Queen Bee
1 Role in the Story: Triangle (key player who connects the protagonist to the antagonist)
Queen Bee is a signals intercept trainee who believes she’s discovered a new enemy signal, but her superiors blow her off as an idiot newbie hearing static. But her obsessive side kicks in and she can’t let go of the hunt for those behind this odd signal.
2 Age range and Description:
Age: 32
Description: Queen Bee is voluptuous and open, free in her mind and excited to be in Berlin. She looks at everything and everyone as a new opportunity to learn more about life – she just can’t help herself. After feeling trapped on her family’s farm back in Minnesota, she suddenly finds herself in Europe, in a hip and happening, cutting edge town like Berlin. Everything is exciting and feeds her hungry soul.
3 Core Traits:
• Friendly / easy
• Scandalous (silly)
• Problem solver
• Obsessive
4 Motivation; Want/Need:
Queen Bee wants to get to the bottom of who’s behind the new signal she’s discovered and what their plans are.
She needs to feel that she is making the world a better place.
5 Wound (What they can’t face): that her actions are endangering her son’s future.
6 Likability, Relatability, Empathy
Likability: Doesn’t back down. Sharp. Knowledgeable.
Relatability: Has no actual experience hunting Soviet Agents. Wants to go on the adventure. Wants to prove herself.
Empathy: Her contributions are constantly downplayed, her knowledge isn’t appreciated. She’s had to leave her son in order to prove her worth to herself.
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David Scott Smith’s Actor attractors!
My Vision: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned doing this lesson: There’s a lot here that I’m excited about, although I’ll be honest, I see that not much of it has to do with my original plot… I think it would be interesting to do this for Queen Bee as well.
Lead Character Name: Storm
Role: Protagonist
1. Why would an actor WANT to be known for this role?
He’s one of the first smart, cool-headed military black ops that has a transformational journey from fearful rookie to confident master, the one chosen to lead vengeance missions, complete with theatrics, and playing his targets against each other.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in the movie?
Only he knows his full mission, and he can never tell the important people in his life the truth behind any of his actions or whenever he asks them to do something for him. As a result, everything he says has subtext! But when he discovers that “his big mission” is actually only a very small part in some bigger mission run by people he doesn’t even know, his perception of reality is shattered and he struggles to recover.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead takes in the movie?
Saves the life of a teammate, takes vengeance upon those responsible for American deaths, saves his family from a car bomb, breaks into enemy quarters, breaks enemy code, plays enemy agents against each other, role plays with wife, in bed with a beautiful woman, stands up to 5 star generals, gets to overpower and beat up slimy soviet agents.
4. How is this character introduced that could sell it to an actor?
His smart moves and quick thinking saves his own life and the life of a teammate.
5. What is this character’s emotional range?
From calm to killing, from patience to rage, from calculative to instinctual. From insecure to confident.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
Everything he says distracts from his real mission at all times. There’s a deeper meaning under almost everything he says.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character has?
Pretends to be someone else with his wife. Struggles to be the best father he can be, even though he disappears on missions. Has an empathetic relationship with Queen Bee, helps her find her place in the world. Has admiration for his female boss. Has hatred for the Soviets. Has a cunning instinct for his main Soviet nemesis.
8. How is this character’s unique voice presented?
Through his ability to shape a different story for every person he recruits on his mission – as he talks, he’s searching for their yearnings and their weaknesses so that he can exploit them when he needs to.
9. What makes this character special and unique?
He has an Old Testament sense of justice that comes from being shot by his father when he was a teenager and left for dead – all he had was a hunting knife and a bible. He’s taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth out of every bad guy throughout the movie.
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David Scott Smith’s Genre Conventions
MY VISION: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned: The story felt better adding in the Genre conventions, it cleared some of the roadblocks for me. I still don’t know what some of those scenes will be, but I can see how I needed more action in Act 4, and it feels more like a climax now.
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
Main Conflict: A lead Soviet Agent is wreaking havoc on Western interests in Cold War Berlin with a campaign of car bombings, espionage, snipings, and infiltrating Field Station Berlin with spies. Storm is one of his targets and must go to war with him and his entire network of spies!
MY GENRE CONVENTION NOTES
PURPOSE: To thrill your audience with high stakes, plot twists, and suspense that never lets up until the adrenalin packed climax.
LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS:
MYSTERY/INTRIGUE/SUSPENSE: The mystery that Storm must solve in order to survive is “have I been compromised?” Intrigue comes from Danil’s sneaky & ingenious underhanded tricks. Suspense will come from knowing the danger that Storm faces (traps that have been planted, revealing that Danil is still alive, etc)
HERO: Storm is a resourceful rookie, smart but winging it. He comes to FSB with strong catholic morals, but they are crushed into his own code of ethics by the time he’s done there.
VILLAIN: Lead Soviet Spy Danil (name means “God is my judge.”) He has permission to “do whatever it takes” to “mess with the west” and he loves that power and will not give it up. He represents a bigger evil – the Kremlin all the evilness of the Soviet Union.
MAIN EMOTIONS: Suspense, intrigue, mystery, tension, anticipation, uncertainty, and surprise.
Below is the same outline from M2 L5, with new additions bolded.
Act 1
Opening: Storm prepares intensely for a mission. He’s nervous & excited – this will be his first mission behind the wall, and he’s going to rescue someone from the clutches of the Soviets. But his boss preps him for what happens if he’s captured, trapped or is killed.
Inciting Incident: He is smuggled through a checkpoint and into East Berlin where he meets his “package” – a defecting engineer he must smuggle out of Russian-controlled territory.
Turning Point: At the border, barely 50 feet from freedom, Storm’s “package” is killed by a sniper right in front of him! Storm is shot at as well, and he escapes with his own life only by sheer resourcefulness.
Act 2:
Reaction: Storm tells his wife that she won’t see him for a while, because it is unsafe for him to be there. Storm’s boss believes Storm has been compromised by the Soviets, removes him from field work, and assigns him to the signals intercept fusion room on base where he has secret orders to scan recent transmissions looking for clues about who might have been behind this and how they knew where he was going to be.
Plan in action: Storm follows orders, but comes up with nothing. Lots of chatter, no intel. The pressure is building on Storm because more another espionage incident disrupts another mission and gets some soldiers killed. Then he meets one particular signals intercept operator, Queen Bee, who tells him of a porch light at her apartment that she thinks is flickering code. He confirms that it is, assigns a team to transcribe it discreetly, another to break the code, and he and QB search for the source of this browning out of circuits. They trace the wiring to one particular apartment in her building.
Midpoint Turning Point: Ignoring orders, Storm arranges a break & enter of that apartment. Once inside, they discover their suspect – dead – acid melting his face. There’s an empty space where the radio used to be, and nothing else – except the guy’s code book, apparently dropped by someone in a rush to clear out of the place. Storm photographs and replaces it exactly where it was, to hide the fact that they found it.
Act 3
Rethink everything: Just when they thought they had the bad guy, he’s dead & they don’t know who killed him or why, so the mystery deepened. But they have a big clue, his code book. With this they can break the Soviet cipher for one day. They also learn his frequency schedule, and are able to listen in on live transmissions, discovering a new type of transmission technology that had previously been ruled out as static – micro bursts.
New plan: Storm has to admit to his boss that he disobeyed orders, but the intel they got is worth it.
* Queen Bee works on creating technology to document the micro bursts so that they can break the code
* Now that the baddie is dead, Storm returns home to be with his wife and kids.
* Impressed by Storm’s moves, his boss sends Storm “over the wall,” with the help of Germans who are American sympathizers in the East Bloc, to commit the military’s first Cold War vengeance killing in retaliation.
* Once Queen Bee breaks the micro bursts, they are able to track down individual soviet agents, and they map out hundreds of agents spread out all across the world, including in the United States (the discovery of sleeper cells)
* With this info, and again with the help of a network of American sympathizers, Storm is sent to turn Soviet agents to our side or else kill them.
Turning Point: Huge Failure / Major Shift: But these moves have a huge cost – in one night, the Soviets kill the entire network of American sympathizers across the Eastern Bloc that helped Storm on his missions, including a dear friend of his, and Storm finds a bomb planted on his car, nearly killing his kids and wife. Other members of his team are killed. Queen Bee survives, and discovers that Danil is still alive and behind this attack.
Act 4
New Plan: Storm’s boss believes that a new level of violence is necessary as vengeance for this and orders him to disappear again for a bigger mission of vengeance killings. Queen Bee disagrees and begs him to refuse. She doesn’t see an end to the fighting, and wants out.
ADRENALINE PACKED Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict: Storm chases Danil, they have a confrontation, it’s a struggle. Storm wins. One of the Soviets with Danil reveals that Danil had someone in Field Station Berlin that fed them info – Storm’s right hand man, his archivist.
* Storm confronts the Archivist, they arrest him.
* Upon his return to base, Storm discovers Queen Bee is not on base anymore. She’s being held during a Section 8 investigation. He’s asked if she was crazy. He can’t reveal what they do together, and that she’s brilliant and critical to his mission, and he also knows she wants out, so he confirms that he thinks she’s crazy as a loon.
Resolution: Storm is promoted to “Psycho” – a (fictional) Special Forces term for bad ass mofo.
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David Scott Smith’s 4 Act Transformational Structure
(I posted a few minutes ago, but it didn’t appear on the site… Trying again)
MY VISION: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned: We haven’t really focused on describing the Main Conflict, that’s interesting to do. I also rewatched The Godfather – holy crap, that’s a 3 hour movie! They weren’t sticking to 100 pages like our example! And finally, this outline is a bit weaker than I was hoping it would be. But I’m submitting it anyhow, just so that I can keep moving through the lessons.
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
Main Conflict: A lead Soviet Agent is wreaking havoc on Western interests in Cold War Berlin with a campaign of car bombings, espionage, snipings, and infiltrating Field Station Berlin with spies. Storm is one of his targets and must go to war with him and his entire network of spies!
STORM Old Ways:
Small time rookie black op
Self interested
Insecure
Afraid of his superiors
Accepted the dominance of others.
Ignorant of the large secret network of high level soviet agents
STORM New Ways:
Runs vengeance missions across enemy lines
Courageous
Fighting for a cause
Manipulates the Soviet Agents
Can read the Morse Code
Has empathy for his team
Act 1
Opening: Storm prepares intensely for a mission. He’s nervous & excited – this will be his first mission behind the wall, and he’s going to rescue someone from the clutches of the Soviets.
Inciting Incident: He is smuggled through a checkpoint and into East Berlin where he meets his “package” – a defecting engineer he must smuggle out of Russian-controlled territory.
Turning Point: At the border, barely 50 feet from freedom, Storm’s “package” is killed by a sniper right in front of him! Storm is shot at as well, and he escapes with his own life only by sheer luck.
Act 2:
Reaction: Storm tells his wife that she won’t see him for a while, because it is unsafe for him to be there. Storm’s boss removes him from field work, and assigns him to the signals intercept fusion room on base where he has secret orders to scan recent transmissions looking for clues about who might have been behind this and how they knew where he was going to be.
Plan in action: Storm follows orders, but comes up with nothing. Lots of chatter, no intel. Then he meets one particular signals intercept operator, Queen Bee, who tells him of a porch light at her apartment that she thinks is flickering code. He confirms that it is, assigns a team to transcribe it discreetly, and he and QB search for the source of this browning out of circuits. They trace the wiring to one apartment in her building.
Midpoint Turning Point: Ignoring orders, Storm arranges a break & enter. Once inside, they discover their suspect – dead – acid melting his face. There’s an empty space where the radio used to be, and nothing else – except the guy’s code book, apparently dropped by someone in a rush to clear out of the place. Storm photographs and replaces it exactly where it was, to hide the fact that they found it.
Act 3
Rethink everything: Just when they thought they had the bad guy, he’s dead & they don’t know who killed him or why, so the mystery deepened. But they have a big clue, his code book. With this they can break the Soviet cipher for one day. They also learn his frequency schedule, and are able to listen in on live transmissions, discovering a new type of transmission technology that had previously been ruled out as static – micro bursts.
New plan: Storm has to admit to his boss that he disobeyed orders, but the intel they got is worth it.
* Queen Bee works on creating technology to document the micro bursts so that they can break the code
* Now that the baddie is dead, Storm returns home to be with his wife and kids.
* Impressed by Storm’s moves, his boss sends Storm “over the wall,” with the help of American spies in the East Bloc, to commit the military’s first Cold War vengeance killing in retaliation.
* Once Queen Bee breaks the micro bursts, they are able to track down individual soviet agents, and they map out hundreds of agents spread out all across the world, including in the United States (the discovery of sleeper cells)
* Again with the help of a network of American sympathizers, Storm is sent to turn Soviet agents to our side or else kill them.
Turning Point: Huge Failure / Major Shift: But these moves have a huge cost – in one night, the Soviets kill the entire network of American spies across the Eastern Bloc that helped Storm on his missions, including a dear friend of his, and Storm finds a bomb planted on his car, nearly killing his kids and wife. Other members of his team are killed. Queen Bee survives.
Act 4
New Plan: Storm believes that a new level of violence is necessary as vengeance for this. Queen Bee disagrees. She doesn’t see an end to the fighting, and wants out.
Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict: One of the Soviet agents Storm turns reveals that they have someone in Field Station Berlin – Storm’s right hand man, his archivist.
* Storm confronts the Archivist
* Storm is asked about Queen Bee’s sanity in a Section 8 investigation, he can’t reveal what they do together, and that she’s brilliant, and so he confirms that she doesn’t fit in well.
Resolution: Storm is promoted to “Psycho” – a (fictional) Special Forces term for bad ass mofo.
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David Scott Smith’s Subtext Plot
MY VISION: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
I’ve chosen the Dramatic Triangle character structure.
Assignment: Subtext Plot
What I learned from doing this lesson: initially thinking about the under currents in the story got me listing a bunch of diabolical plots each character has. But then it dawned on me that we are really talking about “the gimmick” of the film as a whole. The gimmick that gives character interactions more meaning because of the use of this gimmick. So when I thought about this more broadly, I suddenly had a hard time coming up with the perfect fit for the film as a whole. There is “scheme and investigation” in my story, and there is “layering” and “someone hides who they are” and “superior position” and “competitive agendas” but is that the WHOLE thing? From beginning to final reveal at the end? It’s not a list of what characters do, but an arrangement for the exposure of information to the audience so they understand the story in a certain way to experience a final reveal. I had a hard time with that. I felt that this story doesn’t have one gimmick that lasts the whole way thru to the end. But superior position seems like it will happen the most often, and while one big reveal doesn’t happen at the end, even the ending will be a reveal. And also scheme and investigation. Unlike the Fatal Attraction example, where those two characters interact constantly, some of my characters are on opposite sides of the wall, and so won’t interact much. Wondering if that’s a problem?
Superior Position as the plot (the audience knows, but the characters don’t)
* The audience knows Storm’s true mission, so there is subtext with queen bee, with his superiors, with his wife and family..<div>* The audience knows when queen bee is ignoring Storm’s instructions, knows the danger she is in, and fears for her. Also any conversations she has with him has subtext.</div><div>* The audience will learn that the Lead Soviet Spy is still alive (who was that body they found?)</div><div>* The audience will learn that The Rookie is revealing secrets to the Russians </div><div>*The audience will know that Storm and Queen Bee aren’t following orders</div><div>* Etc.</div><div>
</div><div>Scheme and investigation as the plot (one schemes, one investigates)
* At the start, Storm is assigned to discover if there is a mole. Once he picks up the scent of the Soviet network, he investigates them as well, figure out how to neutralize them. In the end does discover the mole is The Rookie</div><div>* Queen Bee investigates the signals coming from within her building, and once joining forces with Storm, investigates how to read the new signals, and then investigates Storm and what he’s really up to.</div><div>* The Lead Soviet Spy is also scheming to disrupt the west, to get The Rookie to give him information, to stop Storm and Queen Bee from infiltrating his network. </div><div>
</div><div>
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David Scott Smith’s Transformational Journey
MY VISION: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
I’ve chosen the Dramatic Triangle character structure.
Transformational Journey Assignment
What I Learned Doing This Lesson: It’s easy to write words down, it took longer to realize the importance of the words.
STORM
Arc Beginning: naive, insecure, self interested rookie black op
Arc Ending: Storm has become “Psycho” (The One!)
Internal Journey: From weak, insecure and self interested to strong, fearless and empathetic
External Journey: from a rookie black op to a full fledged “Psycho” who fights for a cause, runs vengeance missions behind enemy lines, and can manipulate the Soviet network of spies.
Old Ways:
- Small time rookie black opSelf interested
- Didn’t believe in himself
- Afraid of his superiors
- Accepted the dominance of others.
- Ignorant of the large secret network of high level soviet agents
New Ways:
- Can read the Morse Code
- Manipulates the Soviet Agents
- Runs vengeance missions across enemy lines
- Courageous
- Fighting for a cause
- Has empathy
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David Scott Smith’s Intentional Lead Characters
MY VISION: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
I’ve chosen the Dramatic Triangle character structure.
Intentional Lead Characters Lesson
What I learned from doing this lesson: to be honest, the instructions didn’t seem to match what the assignment was. I wasn’t clear on what I was supposed to put under “unique” – but I liked Jamie’s approach of “just keep writing”
Logline: Queen Bee is a Signals Intercept trainee who believes she has discovered secret communications and will do anything to expose who is sending these comms and why.
Unique: is in her 30s while other trainees around her are in their 20s, from a small town and abusive family, the military is her ticket out, and she has nothing left to lose. She is empathetic, and believes her role in the military will save lives.
Logline: Storm is a military intelligence black op who believes Queen Bee’s discovery is real and helps her expose a large network of Soviet spies.
Unique: Storm has a traumatic past – his father shot him and left him for dead – which instilled a survival instinct still in him to this day, and a wish to protect the innocent while also being the one to give the bad guys what they deserve. His black op position allows him to do both.
Logline: The Rookie works as an archivist in the Fusion Room with Storm, and is secretly transmitting intel to the Russians.
Unique: has a large family and so needs the money. His kids play with Storm’s kids. The Rookie was wounded on a mission led by Storm, but Storm saved his life. He has his reasons for doing what he’s doing. Ultimately he chooses to fulfill his own needs and not think about the lives he’s sacrificing by leaking intel.
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David Scott Smith’s Title, Concept, and Character Structure!
MY VISION: I am going to do whatever it takes for me to become a legend in both the filmmaking community and popular movie culture, so much so that audiences will stand in lines around the block to see my movies the way I did for Star Wars, ET and Raiders, and I will be buried with the 5 Academy awards given my work, and a tombstone that reads, “Awesome as fuck!”
What I learned from doing this assignment is: That I’m excited to learn more about character structure!
Title: Connect the Dots
Concept: The true story of the only man in the military who believed in a signals intercept trainee and helped her expose the largest network of Soviet spies ever uncovered – ultimately answering the question, “Who really brought down the Soviet Union?”
I’ve chosen the Dramatic Triangle character structure.
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Hi Everybody, David Scott Smith here.
I’ve written 5 screenplays, including 1 produced film I co-wrote, called “Show Me What You Got” available on iTunes, Amazon and Tubi.
My goal is to utilize Hal’s great classes to develop a book I and my partner have just optioned into an awesome screenplay.
Something unique, special or strange… I’m all of those adjectives, and more!
David
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My name is David Scott Smith.
I agree to the terms of this release form.
GROUP RELEASE FORM
As a member of Writing Incredible Movies, I agree to the following:
1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, through social media, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, videos, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.
2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.
I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.
3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.
4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.
5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.
6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.
This completes the Group Release Form for the class.