Justificación e importancia del estudio

Rising Action, signifies that the tension or the suspense which motivates action is increasing. Rising Action ensures that the audience doesn't become bored with or accustomed to the level of action or drama for too long a period of time in a movie. When the stakes aren't raised—or when a new thread of dramatic tension isn't introduced—the audience can become complacent to the plight of the hero.

Rising Action, therefore, is the practice of keeping the protagonist under constant increasing pressure as soon as their journey begins—finding new ways to catch the protagonist unaware, exploring new threats to the protagonist's well-being.

This gives your hero many opportunities to win (or lose) the esteem of your audience; gives them many opportunities to either succeed or fail, and also keeps

your audience in constant suspense as to the hero's current, and future, predicament.

EXAMPLES:

The film Misery (1990) begins with best-selling novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan) completing his newest novel, the final installment of a series of novels written about his fictional character Misery Chastain. At the onset, everything appears fine. Paul finishes his novel, ritualistically smokes a cigarette and opens a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Later, Paul checks out of the country hotel he frequents while writing and makes his way back to the city where his publishers await. However, Paul and his car are doomed to get caught in a torrential blizzard that sends him over a cliff: dead, if not for Annie Wiles (Kathy Bates). Already the action has risen a great deal—the drama of Paul's near fatal accident fuels tension into the story, tension that the screenwriter refuses to give up, as it is soon apparent that Annie puts the 'fan' in 'fanatic'. She is nearly single-mindedly obsessed with Misery Chastain and her adventures, and as long as Paul is recuperating under her roof, she intends to continue her novels, even if it's only for an audience of one. Again, the action rises—increasing the suspense when we realize that Paul's significant injuries aren't being mended in Annie's care, but rather, the crippled writer is being held prisoner in her house and forced to appease her eccentric needs. Yet the writer doesn't end there—the action rises more as Buster (Richard Farnsworth) takes it upon himself to find Paul when it's clear his body is no longer in the vehicle that crashed off the highway. And when it's clear that Annie won't be capable of keeping Paul, her most prized personal possession forever, she intends to bring the both of them into the afterlife, together. This brings the action to it's pinnacle as Paul struggles to find a way to escape this struggle for survival that takes place not just in the few moments of a car accident—but over the course of months spent in Annie's brutal care. The idea is that the action continues, at every stage of the story, to rise to ever greater heights—keeping the audience, and Paul, in a constant state of anxious panic.

The 1967 film In Cold Blood, a film based on a 'non-fiction novel' which itself was based on the real-life account of Perry Smith and Dick Hickock's murder of the four members of the Clutter family, is a film that methodically—and patiently

—continues to mercilessly raise the action of these brutal murders, including the death sentences of Smith and Hickock themselves. The audience watches as the plan itself is hatched; and though at first the prospect of murdering the Clutter family seems surreal and abstract, eventually we are faced with each one of the Clutters face their own deaths—faced with the killers facing their deaths—and

RISING ACTION (CONT’D)

with such staggering relentlessness that the film becomes a stark focus on tragic brutality. This is the film's lasting and most memorable strength; its uncanny ability to witness all its characters as mutual victims who are caught up in ever-mounting senselessness. This is greatly accredited to the writers' ability to constantly raise the action of the film with each passing moment—with every decision the characters make, the stakes get higher and higher until there's no turning back, and ultimately, it's too late for everyone.

Scenarios

Scenarios, place characters into situations, or circumstances, that challenge them and dare them to overcome obstacles that stand in their way. Scenarios are usually set up in such a way as to exploit their potential for drama to the highest degree; crafting scenarios that challenge characters in ways that are unique to their flaws and confront their fears/desires directly expose their vulnerabilities to the audience. Scenarios need not always challenge a character in an external, physical way—sometimes scenarios can occur which challenges a character's emotional, psychological or philosophical state of mind—making the conflict an internalized one that the audience must watch unfold. Scenarios are a way of giving your character an opportunity to demonstrate how they approach

problems, overcome obstacles—despite their own shortcomings or vulnerabilities as an individual.

EXAMPLES:

Antichrist (2009) follows the lives of two grieving parents (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) attempting to reconcile their souls and their marriage after the death of their infant child. Distraught, the two seclude themselves in a rural wooden cabin deep in the wilderness; the setting where the story takes place. Yet, at this location, various scenarios unfold. One particular scenario takes place when the two encounter each other in the cabin's tool shed. What begins as an intimate scene between husband and wife quickly turns macabre when She attacks Him viciously, knocking him unconscious. While he's passed out, She drills a hole through his ankle and attaches a heavy iron weight to his foot, making him incapable of easy mobility when finally he does manage to awake.

Yet, understandably so, when he does rouse his initial instinct is to escape—but the weight that's been bolted through his body makes it difficult, to say the least.

This is an example of the writer placing the characters in a scenario—one that indicates a clear, unmistakable need for the character (in this case, His need to escape the wrath of his crazed wife) and provides that character with an obstacle that prevents he or she from achieving their need (in this case, a ten pound weight bolted through your ankle).

In Finding Nemo (2003), Nemo (Alexander Gould) is a young clownfish who has been stolen away from his home in the ocean and brought to live in a fish tank inside a dentist's office. This provides Nemo with a scenario which must be averted: Nemo wants only to return to his father Marlin (Albert Brooks) and his home under the sea, so it becomes clear that Nemo needs to escape the confines of this fish tank. Nemo has help from the other fish in the tank as they try a number of different ways to get Nemo out of his predicament. This is another example of a character placed in a scenario; when a clear goal is given, and an obstacle that prevents the goal from being met. The tension (and enjoyment) of watching a scenario unfold is rooted in the characters meeting the challenge of reaching their goal; what lengths they will go to overcome the scenario and, ultimately, whether they succeed or fail in their attempts.

Scene

Scene, refers to a separate and distinct interaction between a character

interacting within the world of the film, be that either through an exchange with another character or group of characters, interacting within an environment or setting, or exchanging a personal, silent moment regarding a prop or piece of costume. There are many different forms a scene may take; many different ways a writer can express character and story within a scene—though it's not difficult to suggest that the most interesting scenes happen between one or more characters.

A scene's primary functions are always to convey character and progress story.

Strictly speaking, a scene is limited to being an exchange that takes place in one location and at one time, and plays out it's entire duration in real time.

EXAMPLES:

One of the culminating scenes in American Beauty (1999) is when Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) finally manages a moment alone with Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari); a young teenage girl who has inspires Lester's boyish fantasies and lusts. After Lester's recent workout regiment, Lester now finally has the confidence to openly, and unapologetically, flirt with the young Angela—who

SCENE (CONT’D)

had previously come across to everyone as a proverbial vixen. Yet, to Lester's surprise, Angela seems inexplicably at a loss as to how to interpret Lester's come-on, and seems incapable of reciprocating the flirt once Lester initiates it. This scene reveals some vulnerabilities to Angela that neither the audience or Lester were previously aware of, while also demonstrating the full range of Lester's character arc; illustrating how far Lester had come—as an individual—since our first impression of him at the beginning of the film. All of this is achieved in one scene, through one exchange between two characters who we have come to expect certain behaviors from but who, to the audience's surprise, deliver almost diametrically opposite attitudes than what the audience had come to anticipate.

This illustrates the power a single scene has in changing the course of the story, and how an audience can view the characters.

John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) starring James Stewart as Ransom Stoddard, attorney at law and John Wayne as Tom Doniphon—an undistinguished man from the town of Shinbone—are both posed with the problem of Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin); a gunman outlaw who terrorizes the small western community. A scene where Tom talks with Ransom about Liberty, he informs Stoddard that his heaps of law books wont do him any good in Shinbone, where a man solves his problems with a gun at his hip. Ransom is beside himself by this prospect—for him, a man of the law, the idea that anyone is capable of resolving problems the way both Liberty and Tom do is

unimaginable, and goes so far as to compare Tom— a good man but without prospects—to the outlaw Valance for their mutual adherence to relying on a six-shooter to resolve community disputes. This scene introduces Ransom and Tom's attitudes toward Liberty to the audience.