Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Avatar has been compared to Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Ferngully,
> The Last Samurai and even Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but In Space. So yeah,
> it's not like it's the most original and innovative story in existence.

  Speaking of which... http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Speaking of which... http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/

Yep. That was the one. :-)

I saw a fascinating lecture a couple decades ago where someone from MIT has 
written an AI program that would read scripts and summarize them into 
relationship diagrams. I forget the exact examples used, but the lecturer 
put up an overhead slides with Hamlet's characters (Hamlet kills King, King 
kills Ghost, Ophelia loves Hamlet, etc) and he lifted off the names and laid 
down some other popular story with names, just like that, and it fit 
exactly. An amusing concept.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Jim Charter wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Captain Jack <Cap### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
>>> In acting classes that I have attended as well as taught, we talk
>>> about "two dimensional characters", "cardboard cutouts", and
>>> "characters with no depth", all referring to the same thing.
>>
>>   Btw, was the original expression "two-dimensional character" (meaning a
>> character with no depth), after which some people started using an
>> exaggerated version of the expression, "one-dimensional character" in
>> their desire to say "a really, really flat character", and after years
>> of using that, it has basically replaced the original expression and thus
>> everybody nowadays says "one-dimensional character" when they really mean
>> what "two-dimensional character" meant originally?
>>
> That is probably it, yeah.  Though extending the metaphor in that way
> does yield some useful ideas.
> 
> That the character lacks all dimensionality except as a single thrust,
> or file.  Hints at the
> possibility of a no-dimensional character, a single point, useful as a
> reference, a position, and that is all.

Would that no-dimensional character be the guy that a main character
bumps into on a street, calls the main character a jerk, and then is
never seen again? Those characters show up all the time in comedies, but
I am having trouble thinking of any in a drama that did not end up so
simply because of editing.

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Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote:
> Would that no-dimensional character be the guy that a main character
> bumps into on a street, calls the main character a jerk, and then is
> never seen again?

  I would call that a "one-dimensional character" because that character
serves a role. One single extremely narrow role, but a role nevertheless.

  You could have different types of such characters. Someone could eg.
aplogize instead of getting angry (an extreme case would be a Japanese
tourist who apologizes very profusely).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   You could have different types of such characters. 

I read a fascinating book full of short stories called something like "tales 
from the catina."  It took all the zero-dimensional characters from Star 
Wars and wrote short stories/novelettes about each one. It also seemed like 
they were interconnected, as if each author was given the end of the 
previous story to start from.

So there's a story about the guy playing keyboard in the Catina band, and 
how he's down on his luck, so he sells a blaster to the jawa who was 
cleaning up the dead bodies at the attacked jawa transport, who takes it and 
tries to get revenge on the empire by shooting the guards who believed these 
aren't the droids they were looking for, who go rough up the pig-faced guard 
to get an audience with Jaba the Hutt, who is in the process of talking to 
the monster trainer to get a new monster of the type Luke dropped the door 
on, etc etc etc.

A very fun concept. I think they actually made two books full of such stories.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>>   You could have different types of such characters. 
> 
> I read a fascinating book full of short stories called something like 
> "tales from the catina."  It took all the zero-dimensional characters 
> from Star Wars and wrote short stories/novelettes about each one. It 
> also seemed like they were interconnected, as if each author was given 
> the end of the previous story to start from.
> 
> So there's a story about the guy playing keyboard in the Catina band, 
> and how he's down on his luck, so he sells a blaster to the jawa who was 
> cleaning up the dead bodies at the attacked jawa transport, who takes it 
> and tries to get revenge on the empire by shooting the guards who 
> believed these aren't the droids they were looking for, who go rough up 
> the pig-faced guard to get an audience with Jaba the Hutt, who is in the 
> process of talking to the monster trainer to get a new monster of the 
> type Luke dropped the door on, etc etc etc.
> 
> A very fun concept. I think they actually made two books full of such 
> stories.
> 

lol that's great.  Yes I am also reminded of the bass player in the 
movie "Nashville" who keeps backing up different stage shows throughout 
the movie.

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:4b5a1ffb@news.povray.org...
>
>  Do I understand correctly that when a character in a story exists 
> basically
> for one single purpose (eg. to be a jerk, a greedy executive, a naive
> Mary Sue, or such) with no other personality traits or history, and when
> this character maintains the role in its purest form throughout the entire
> story, it's usually a bad case of two-dimensionality?
>

Not necessarily bad... as a character goes through his story and he meets 
people, he may only see them for a moment. His first impression may be his 
only impression. If we are seeing the story through his eyes, the character 
will seem to lack depth, because the protagonist never sees it. Learning a 
lot about characters which do not advance the plot would slow the pacing of 
the story, and pacing is very important.

IMO, Avatar has excellent pacing. The energy of the story ebbs and flows 
very nicely, and I felt very engaged by the whole thing. The story of Avatar 
wouldn't work very well as a novel, unless they added an awful lot to it 
(more about life on Earth, more about the side characters, and so on), but I 
think it worked really well as a film. In a good film, the story is always 
competing with the visual, and, to a lesser extent, with the music and 
sound. A simple story is sometimes best in that kind of mix.

One of the things I do before an acting performance is to write a backstory 
for my character. I list facts that happened in the character's life, even 
if they have nothing to do with the story and they'll never come out in the 
performance. What it does is to remind me that they character isn't just 
words on a page, but a representation of a real person. It helps me to 
understand why the character does what he does, and, I think, adds to the 
performance, even for a minor character. I'd be willing to bet a large chunk 
of change that Stephen Lang, as one of the artistic directors for the 
Actor's Studio, did that before he did this movie.

--
Jack

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:4b5aa2ed$1@news.povray.org...
> Captain Jack wrote:
>> I've always been a big fan of the "seven basic plots" idea.
>
> Which of those would The Dark Knight fall under, I wonder.
>

The idea of there being a basic number of plots for story telling predates 
motion pictures, by a long shot. Script writing for (American) film is 
usually done under the "three act" formula, where characters are introduced, 
a problem is introduced, the protagonist goes on a quest, there is a trial 
by fire, there is a redemption, the hero wins and learns something, and 
there is an epilogue. The plot is often subjugated to this, because 
formulaic scripts get the money, so the plot will be twisted a lot.

Around the nineteenth century or so, it became popular in western literature 
to have parallel stories, where the same basic plot happens in the story at 
the same time, on different scales. This has carried over into modern film 
making, which complicates the issue.

Add to that, with Dark Knight you're talking about a "franchise" series, so 
the main character isn't really allowed to change. Change in the main 
character is essential to traditional story telling, so, again, the plot has 
to be twisted.

More to the core, though, Batman stories in general are not about 
good-versus-evil or boy-meets-girl, which are the classic story elements of 
western literature. They are more about the conflict inherent between 
Jungian archetypes, down below the goofy tech and the glitzy special 
effects. It has much more to do with Greek tales of Zeus defeating the 
Titans than it does with the concerns of us mere mortals. It sells because 
we all want to see the bad guys go down in as spectacular a way as possible, 
but that's not really what it's about. Batman is about angst and anger and 
happiness and depression and despair; this body of work is, at its heart, 
more allegory or tone poem than it is plotted stories.

--
Jack

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This won't change anyone's mind about the movie, but if you're interested in 
the nuts-and-bolts, this is a pretty good "making of" video (about 20 
minutes long):

http://seqmag.com/2010/01/making-of-avatar/

--
Jack

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And our favorite YouTube critic is back:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/02/phantom-critic-reams-avatar/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Or, alternatively:
http://tinyurl.com/yzdccqv

...Chambers

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