Point of Attack: Launching the Story with Energy

The beginning of the movie isn't the same as the beginning of the story. Every movie opens by dropping you into a new world with its own physical and psychological reality — the ordinary routine of how that world works. Then something intrudes and breaks the ordinary. Usually a coincidence, something that just happened to happen, and the whole story starts rolling.

That's the Point of Attack: the single point where the world gets disrupted and the story truly begins.

It's not the same thing as the inciting incident, which is a full setup of the tension that will drive the second act. The point of attack makes the inciting incident not only possible but inevitable. When it's sharp and clear, it clues the audience how to invest their own psychic energy in your story.

In this episode, I break down the point of attack in five films that couldn't be more different from each other — in genre, country, and era — to show how the same underlying principle launches the story in each of them: Happy Texas, Seven Samurai, Wonder Woman, Inside Out, and Saving Private Ryan.

This is not a rule but more of a tool you sharpen the story setup with, and it usually emerges and sharpens in the rewriting process. If you've got a script underway, this one might change how you look at your own first act.

In this episode:

• 00:17 — What the point of attack is, and how it's different from the inciting incident
• 04:21 — Happy Texas: an armadillo in the road sets off a mistaken-identity comedy
• 07:38 — Seven Samurai: a hidden villager overhears bandits plotting to raid his village
• 11:02 — Wonder Woman: a WWI pilot crashes through the space-time continuum into a mythological world
• 18:24 — Inside Out: a "For Sale" sign shatters a happy midwestern childhood
• 23:10 — Saving Private Ryan: a name on a dead soldier's uniform, nearly half an hour into the film
• 33:01 — Why this is a tool, not a rule — and how to check your own first act for a point of attack

Want to see the film clips referenced in this episode? The full Deep Dive Take Five video version is available free now on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ProfessionalFilmAnalysis/posts/point-of-attack-163811063

More: https://linktr.ee/Professional_Film_Analysis

Is filmmaking art, technology, or business? The answer is, yes. 

Film is an art form, but it's also a very technical and very expensive art form. You can think of filmmaking as a three-legged stool of art, technology and money. And if one of those three is weak, the process suffers.

Our brain has two ways of working. We have a creative, imaginative mind, and we also have an analytical mind. So how do we get the analytical left brain and the intuitive right brain to work together to make a movie? The easiest way to describe it is as a back and forth: you have an impulse and you create something, then you examine and analyze it, then you re-create it, but on a different level with the insight from the analysis that you did.

Writers, poets, mystics, philosophers, even scientists create and discover through what I call the creative cycle or creative spiral. And you'll find it permeating the process of human creation in widely varying fields.

The key to powerful creative stories lies in the unconscious mind. The creative cycle is the process of drawing the best material into consciousness.

This is foundational to all creative work and especially to filmmaking. I'll be referring back to these principles in other videos because it's always part of the process.

🎬 Deep Dive episodes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/ProfessionalFilmAnalysis 

✉️ Newsletter on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/professionalfilmanalysis/p/the-creative-spiral-and-the-filmmakers?

It's a sad reality: the audience doesn't care about your character -- and your story -- until you put the hook in them and make them care. 

This Quick Take episode shows how the right kind of introductory shot of a character can start the process of drawing the audience in so you can get them on board for the full journey of your story.

Read the article on Substack

Watch the video

What happens in the mystical darkness of a movie theater? Experiences beyond ordinary life, sometimes life changing.

What is the storytelling craft, the psychology and neurology that make cinematic storytelling so powerful?

This is the story of how film analysis was born—in a classroom at the American Film Institute 1968, when a Czech refugee named Frank Daniel tried an innovative approach to teaching film. Taking a film apart, piece by piece to examine the moving parts and how they affected the viewer. And in that classroom, learning to see movies through professional eyes, were filmmakers who would change movies forever.

Watch the video:  https://youtu.be/T8hj8aQFCfA

Read more in Substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-188277101