The three-act structure: Myth or magical formula?

Abstract

Since Syd Field published his book Screenplay in 1979, the three-act structure has become a dominant tool for analysing screenplays and films. While the formulaic nature and constricting effects of this ‘paradigm’ have often been criticized by adherents of independent films, until now its explanatory suitability to classical and mainstream filmmaking has rarely been questioned as such. After commenting on the history of the concept, the article examines how well the model works in practice by statistically evaluating a large number of studies by different authors. This comparison reveals that there is a surprisingly low consensus on how to divide films into three acts. The discrepancies seem fundamentally due to the imprecision and vagueness of the paradigm’s core ideas, and thus neither the functions ascribed to acts nor the concept of plot points appear to be valid tools for ensuring consistency in analysis. Hence mainstream film needs to be seen as more complex – and structural analysis more a matter of interpretation – than the model allows for.

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“…of the storyline. The storyline followed a threeact structure, a model used in narrative fiction that divides a storyline into three parts: setup, confrontation, and resolution (Brütsch, 2015). Act one (setup) introduced the protagonist, the main characters, the environment, and the main events.…”

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“…In this work, Aristotle remarked that a tragedy is only whole when it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Yet others claim it was the screenwriter Syd Field who first introduced the three-act structure in film and with it a formula for successful films [12]. In this structure, a story has a beginning (i.e., Setup), a body (i.e., Confrontation), and an end (i.e., Resolution).…”

“…The peak of the story is during the climax, when the story is most intense, and the remaining questions are answered. Finally, the protagonist solves the issue and goes back to his old life with newly acquired knowledge or skills [12].…”

Narrative theory and the dynamics of popular movies

“…These terms have numerous parallels. In the literature on text, Chatman (1980) used the terms of discourse and story, but for me the term discourse is too tied to the notion of conversation (which I investigate in Study 8) to be unambiguous here. Bortolussi and Dixon (2003, p. 98) reviewed many other such pairs, such as the telling and the told, logos and mythos , chronological events and causal events, expression and content, and the how and the what; and Cohn (2015) discussed narrative structure versus semantics.…”

“…Motion can signal the necessity for action; it can also prime us for action through a cascade of physiological responses. Increases in motion can affect skin conductance, pupillary responses, and heart rate; all three of these are correlated with emotional responses; and all are triggered by motion in movies (Ando et al, 2002; Carruthers & Taggart, 1973; Soleymani, Chanel, Kierkels, & Pun, 2008). Indeed, it is often said that the most important goal of editing is to control the emotions of the viewer (Murch, 2001; E. S. Tan, 1996).…”