To be honest i´m a really really bad fiction reader, but all the time i could spend with reading fiction i spend with reading non-fiction books and magazines, mostly all of them about filmmaking. While there are books that are de-facto standards (Story, etc.) you´ll always find some not-so-popular gems, the one i´d like to write about this time is The Audience Contract: the human factor (thanks Dirk & Toni for the tip).
The thought behind that book is based on two ideas, 1. a contract with the audience and 2. the theory of the human factor.
The contract with the audience
As soon as an audience enters the cinema, buys the dvd or just takes precious time to watch your movie on TV they fulfil their part of the contract, they are investing money, interest and / or time. They are confronted with stories and characters they don´t know and usualy wouldn´t be concerned with.
So your part of the contract is to fulfil the fundamental needs of the audience. Every filmmaker should deliver this fulfilment, but especially the author of the movie is responsible to keep his promise to the audience.
About the human factor
This book is about an approach Roland Zag has developed (namely the human factor) which is based on the following theory:
Stories are a fundamental foodstuff of the soul. In order to understand which basic human need they satisfy, the social roots of our humanity must be understood. “the human factor” differs from most other screenplay theories in that it originates in the spectators and their instinctive social needs. This approach suggests that stories are essentially about belonging. It proposes that an emotional bond between the story and the audience can only be created when the proceedings in the narrative follow the principle of give and take that in most cultures regulates social life.
from the-human-factor.de
The great think about that approach is that they don´t sermonize the screenwriting structure all over again (don´t get me wrong, of course that is another important aspect, but not the only one) but it focuses on the impact of your characters and plot on the audience.
For example a very powerful way to create empathy for your protagonist is discrimination. If your protagonist is in a discriminated position from the beginning of your script the audience will automatically be on his / her side, that character of course shouldn´t be responsible for the discrimination otherwise it would be justified.
The basis of the human factor
The foundation of the theory about the human factor is the methodical study of all kinds of movies in regard of their interpersonal relations. Especially those movies that have been a massive success or a major box office failure have been studied and based on that analysis different patterns emerged which where based on the fundemental similarity of human experience. It´s common sense that every movie has a different impact on different people, but these similarities offer the possibility to understand stories and movies in a universal way.
This analysis included about 200 movies of all popular genres.
This theory may at first sound a little presumptuous, but as the author states, writing and inventing stories is an creative act that can´t be forced into a certain formula. This theory and the techniques described in the book offer methods to develop the full potential of every imaginable material.
Success vs. quality
Is every successful movie also a “good” one? Surely not. “Good” means different things for different people, so you can´t judge a movie to be “good” per-se. But personal taste is not topic of this book, significant are stories that had a certain appeal to a broad audience.
The author differentiates between his so called “contract with the audience” and the “art contract”, meaning that arthouse movies don´t aim for a broad audiency but explore different kinds of cinematic fields.
About the book
The book is divided in four parts:
1. Prerequisites of the audience contract
where he explains the underlying principles and theories.
2. The paragraphes of the audience contract
Roland Zag divides different emotional fundamentals in 20 paragraphs like §3 Social imbalance and empathy for discriminated, §5 The desire for poetic justice, or §7 layers of loyalty.
Each paragraph stands for an important human desire, for example “§5 The desire for poetic justice” is a central part of movies like James Bond, Independence Day or Terminator. A movie can and should of course operate on more than just one emotional paragraph, but very often there is one central paragraph a movie follows.
In this chapter the author takes 6 example movies and analyses them in regard of each paragraph.
3. Applicatory assembly
This chapter explains how to apply the methods and theories on your own work as author, director, producer or script consultant.
4. Examples
In this last chapter Roland Zag finds different key examples of movies for each paragraph (just like for paragraph §5 Independence Day or Terminator).
Final words
I really enjoyed reading this book, it operates on the basis of every story – the emotional hook of a movie and offers great techniques to develop and analyse your own material.
If i´m lucky i´ll take part on a screenwriting workshop this year about the human factor, we´ll see…
The one thing i didn´t talk about yet is probably problematic for some (or most) of my readers: as far as i know the book is only available in german and i don´t think that a translation is in progress. But probably you could email the author about his future translation plans…
Tags: book reviews, human factor, Screenwriting