"Just Like In Real Life..."

I helped a mentee work on his script today. The major changes that we talked about were with making his themes make more sense and be more prevalent. There's a great line from page 25 in a fun (albeit a PG-13) book:

Just like real life, in movies, things also must happen in threes. If you want your audience to remember anything, it has to happen at least three times.

The quote is repeated three times. Hilarious. And that's the idea we worked with today. His short has two major themes, but in his latest draft one of those themes had all but vanished. So, we went through the script and found seven more places to repeat his theme. The story makes much more sense now, and it also is much more humorous.

As you work on your stories, make sure your themes are present, but also be sure to keep the number to only one or two. Too many ideas and your film falls apart.

~Luke Holzmann
Your Media Production Mentor