The Guys Are In the Lead (Literally)

I’m sad to disclose it, but it’s true. I’m quite worried that Hollywood is sexist, and if you were to sit down and watch the top fifty highest-grossing films (adjusted for inflation), I worry you’d think so too. Sure, there are love interests and the oh-so-cliche girl friend who always ends up with the lead’s best mate (Hermione and Lea, anyone?). Really though, how often do we find female leads in films nowadays anyway? Though more and more women are emerging as lead characters every year, we still have a long way to go.

First, let me hit you with the facts. Fifty films from a variety of decades, genres, and studios were compared to attain the data I’m about to reveal. Split into three categories (films with a male lead, films with a female lead, and films with an undetermined lead), films with a female lead and films with an undetermined came together in a tie for last place. Racking in only 6 films each, they each counted for 12% of the total films included in my study of the fifty highest-grossing films of all time. That’s a not-so-whopping 24% of the films compared which leaves… well, you know the math! After I took out all the movies with female leads and undetermined lead, 38 films remained– that’s 38 films with male leads. Unfair for female audiences? I’d say so, especially considering that 50% of the audiences in theaters across America are females!

In a similar study that was briefly discussed in an OverthinkingIt.com post, blogger Shana Mlawski studied a list posted on the Entertainment Weekly website about the 100 greatest characters of the last 20 years. Though the difference in the number of male and female actors appears to be more even-keeled in this list, it still places men in the lead. According to this list, roughly 67% of the favorite characters named were male while only 37% were female. That’s almost double the amount of male characters listed as there are female characters!

So why is it that males are often given the lead role over female characters? According to some literary circles, males are more relateable as heroes because of the sexist (but still present belief) that men are stronger–both mentally and physically–than women. Though recent literary and film series (such as The Hunger Games) have been starting to pop up and counteract this inaccurate portrayal of men being the only strong characters, it still may take some time before we see an evenly-balanced playing field for women among these lead roles.

Another trend that appears to be present in the film community is to give females more masculine qualities when they are presented with lead roles. Examples of this include Lara Croft in the Lara Croft series, the Scottish princess Merida in Pixar’s recent movie Brave, Rose in Titantic, Alice in the Resident Evil series and accompanying video games, Beatrix Kiddo in the Kill Bill series, and who could forget Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind? These are not meek women looking for a man to call all the shots. As a matter of fact, they’re quite the opposite. These women know what they want and aren’t afraid to go for it. They’re rule makers, rule breakers, and even with their feminine qualities they don’t walk on eggshells as passive characters.

For a great example of this type of strong female lead, check out the clip below from the movie Brave and keep your eye out for similar characters as your hit the theaters or watch re-runs this weekend.

In the end, I think what we can take away from this most is that while men are portrayed as lead characters in films much more often than women, there are always ways to cast female leads and create just as promising pictures. Is this more work? It could be, after all, you are having to overcome some pretty strong stereotypes in the process. That said, this is one of the areas of my research where I’m going to have to take an unlikely stance than one might have originally imagined from my patterns in prior topics. I do not think audiences want only male leads because they were twice as common in film. Rather, I think from looking at the female leads that were present, we can establish that audiences are happy with either gender as long as the lead is active, brave, and exhibits the heroic qualities that both sexes can portray.

Let me know what you think.

-The Plot Girl

The Running Times That Run the Show

What are they? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a running time is the amount of time that a movie, performance, recording, etc., lasts from beginning to end. If you were to watch a film at your local movie theater, the running time would include what you see from the moment the lights dim for the feature presentation all the way up until the moment the final credits stop rolling. Though opening and closing credits are included in running times, trailers and advertisements that are shown in the theater prior to the film starting are not.

So why is this worth discussing and what do we know know about how running times that will help us make a great film? I’ll tell you.

Though I’d never noticed it before beginning my study of the fifty highest-grossing films of all time (please keep in mind that ticket prices have been adjusted for inflation), I see now that running times have a great deal of importance when it comes to not only creating a film, but planning one as well. From the chart, you can see that films come in a range of running times. Among the films I studied, the shortest film (Bambi) was only 1 hour and 9 minutes, while the longest film (Gone with the Wind) ran for 3 hours and 58 minutes.

As you can see, there are films that can range from just over an hour to nearly four hours! With such a drastic changes in length, how can you be sure which length will work best for your feature-length film? For starters, you can look for patterns.

If you’re looking to create an animation film anywhere over an hour and a half, think again! Though two animation films from the top fifty highest-grossing spanned longer than 1 hour and 30 minutes, the other seven all fell short of an hour and a half. Among the animation films in this category were Bambi, Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, and The Lion King. But wait! There were still two animation films that ran past the 90 minute point, right? Yes, but they were Shrek 2 at 1 hour and 33 minutes (just barely over) and Fantasia at exactly 2 hours–something that does not come as too much of a surprise considering Fantasia is very different from many of the other animation films that have been produced.

This is just one category though, right? Sure, but other genres use similar running time rules as well. Out of the four historical epic films that made the list, all four of them (Cleopatra, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, and Gone with the Wind) ran over 3 hours. This is understandable, as many films in this genre cover a period in history. For example, below you will find the original trailer for Gone with the Wind, which is not only the number one grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation) but also the longest film on the fifty-highest grossing films list. This type of story doesn’t describe just the characters, but rather a time in history (in this case it talks about the fall of the South). With so much time and events to cover, it needs almost 4 hours in order for an audience to fully understand the story.

Though animation and historical epic have proven to be the most prominent genres to adhere to specific running times, there are other subtle clues to be found within other genres. For example, through comparing running times (see chart at the end of this post to check it out yourself) I found that five out of the eight comedies that made this list have a running time that runs between 1 hour and 30 minutes to 2 hours. Likewise, sci-fi films tend to also follow a pattern with five of the eight sci-fi films on this list falling between 2 hours to 2 hours and 30 minutes. Does this mean that a sci-fi film running an hour and a half won’t sell? Of course not! Every rule has its exceptions. Overall though, a sci-fi audience might not be as opt to see a shorter film if what they’re accustomed to watching traditional sci-fi films with story plots spanning at least two hours.

I hope these discoveries have been as interesting to you as they were to me! Please feel free to check out my list of the top fifty highest grossing films with their accompanying running times and genres below (just click the chart to enlarge) Let me know if you can discover any other patterns on your own!

Talk soon and keep writing!

-The Plot Girl

 

Recipes, Elements of Storytelling, & What They Have in Common

They say that you can’t write a formula for a great film. That said, I say you can still write a great blueprint, and here’s why:

A great novel, a great film–they’re different from traditional art in the sense that a painting or sculpture doesn’t need to make sense. Artworks such as these can be abstract and can make sense even without structure.

Writing a novel or film doesn’t have this luxury, though you gotta admit, it’d be nice! Every story, even in the most unique of situations, must be just that–a story. Throughout the years, writers and producers have experimented, toyed, and found ways to break the rules of writing. Sometimes it works and can create a masterpiece, but more often than not stories have the following characteristics: a beginning, middle, and end; plot; characters; motives; conflict; etc.

There’s a dozen other characteristics I could add to this list, but for the sake of argument, you get the general gist: most stories have common story elements and even more importantly, most stories have structure.

There is no cheat sheet to creating the perfect structure, but just as you would add flour, sugar, and eggs to a cookie recipe, you may find that adding common story elements to your own plots make for a basic recipe for a well-written film or novel.

How do you make your work stand out though? How do you make it your own? Through personalization, of course! Just as other ingredients (such as chocolate chips or peanut butter) may be added to personalize your basic cookie recipe, you may do the same with your story by throwing in your own special elements of fiction. Just as a kitchen is the place to explore for a cook, your work, to you, is your very own playhouse to experiment in! Go ahead, explore and create your own masterpieces.

Think you can’t? Want to be super different? While creativity is encouraged, the acknowledgement that a lot of stories are really the same story retold is also important. Can’t wrap your mind around the idea that many stories are the same? I couldn’t either, but consider the photo below.

Star Wars and Harry Potter… Two very different stories, but are they? To accuse J.K. Rowling of ripping off George Lucas and stealing his ideas would be ludicrous. To accuse her of using a similar story? Well, that’s right on point, but most writers do.

For example, take the video below. Created by Vadzim Khudabets, a movie trailer producer, Eterna is a six-minute trailer/compilation of ninety-nine action movie previews (displayed below).

Described as “one epic trailer”, the Eterna trailer reveals how similar action movies are, not because they are copying one another, but rather because they use the same motives and archetypes that have survived over the course of storytelling as long as it has been around.

Moving forward, keep these structures and–more importantly–cliches in mind. Knowing cliches and being able to recognize them will help you to follow normal, time-tested structure within the genre you wish you pursue without falling into habits that will make your work appear unoriginal or stale.

As always, happy writing!

-The Plot Girl

Let’s Talk About Film Genres

What is genre? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, genre is a particular type or category of literature or art. In the world of movies, it is often times the one-to-two words that describe what a viewer should expect to see from a film: romance, action, comedy, animation, etc.

As we saw in the chart from last week’s blog, the fifty highest-grossing films of all time (adjusted for inflation) yielded a wide range of genres.

In the lead was adventure, animation, and comedy. Following close behind? Action and sci-fi. In last place, there was a tie between crime, family, musical, thriller, and western. Many of these films had a combination of genres. The most popular combination was action adventure films. Some of the least common include horror comedy and crime comedy, and is it really that much of a surprise? It would appear that mixing genres as different as these can be done, but is much trickier and not as commonplace as other combinations. Often times, these combination films comes out less Blazing Saddles (#49 on our list) and more like the half-dozen Scary Movie parodies.

So what can we learn from looking at this data? For starters, it helps to look at the most commonly targeted audiences and the greatest way to appeal to as many of the viewers as the film can. Bigger audience appeal = more tickets sold. Capisci? For example: action films have a tendency to appeal to men more than women, and vice versa for romance films. That’s not to say that there aren’t women out there who like action movies or men who don’t hit the movie theater for some sweet romantic comedies. Even as a women, I love action movies. That said, the most popular genres–adventure, animation, and comedy–tend to bring about happy and/or exciting movies that often appeal to both sexes. Nearly everyone can find a way to relate to these films. Even when adding subgenres, these movies tend to steer clear of less-popular themes, like horror and westerns. While not everyone enjoys adventure, animation, or comedy, it is certainly easier to fill a theater and sell tickets to a comedy film than it is to a western or horror film–where only a small percentage of the population is interested in seeing cowboys or the terrifying things that go bump in the night. For this reason, it is much easier for a great adventure script to get sold than it is to sell a just-as-great western. Lately, there has been a trend of adding subgenres to films in order to attract a larger audience. This was done recently with Natalie Portman’s character in the new movie Thor 2: The Dark World, a marketing movie so obvious that Jimmy Kimmel even talked about it on his late night show (you may find the clip below).

Since Thor already had a large audience of men who were drawn to this film for the action scenes and plot so famously found in Marvel stories, the marketing to women through romance scenes was promoted in order to expand audience appeal even more and attract viewers (particularly women) who may not have come to see this movie otherwise. If you are able to add a sub-genre and market your film/script to an even larger audience than by all means more power to you!

I’ll say it once again, as I did last week, if you are super passionate about a particular subgenre or less-popular genre–go for it. You have a much better chance of writing a really great script if you write about something you feel legitimate excitement for than if you write about something that bores you. That said, if you are starting from scratch and feel no particular sense of allegiance to any one genre, the odds are in your favor if you write within some of the more popular genres displayed in this date. Sure, there may be more competition, but there will also be more production companies looking for those scripts, more money to fund them, and more openings in the market to place those films.

Next post we’ll talk about popular story structure and elements. Until then, write on!

Talk soon.

-The Plot Girl

The Journey Begins

Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter: all totally different stories, right? Maybe not. There’s a book called Hero with a Thousand Faces written a little over sixty years ago by a very intelligent mythologist by the name of Joseph Campbell. Now deceased, Mr. Campbell’s studied the commonalities between hero-based stories such as these. His work was one of George Lucas’ strongest influences when creating the Star Wars series, which later became one of the greatest film series of all time. Is it a coincidence that four of the six movies from this series went on to make Box Office Mojo’s list of the fifty Highest-Grossing Films Adjusted for Inflation? I think not.

So why study stories such as these and what can we learn from them? If you were to browse your local Barnes & Noble bookstore, you could go to the writing section and find dozens of books claiming they hold the secrets to the next greatest novels and screenplays. The irony is: many don’t. Often times, you needn’t look any further than the classics and best seller sections of that same store to learn how to write well.

Most great stories stand the test of time. Even with new works emerging among the plethora of novels and films that come out every year–most notable stories tend to worm their way to the top. Does that mean that every truly great book is on a best seller or classics list? Not always. There are always some hidden treasures that take years upon years to really become appreciated both in the film and literary industries. Likewise, is every best-selling novel or film truly great? Nope. Look at films like The Fast and the Furious: five sequels and this franchise is far from extraordinary! As you can see, popularity does not necessarily equal greatness; there can be flukes and exceptions among even the most exceptional best-selling lists. That said, the majority of popular works and classic novels have succeeded because they contained great stories. Despite their many differences, most cover a wide range of common ground.

For this reason, I’ve decided to spend the next few months reviewing and researching the highest-grossing films adjusted for inflation, particularly the top fifty. The first topic I’ll delve into with my next post will discuss genre. As you can see from the graph below, the most common genres found in these films were action, adventure, animation, a drama–an interesting find for someone who enjoys writing romance (such as myself)!

Though you certainly have a better chance of success writing a script about romance if it is what you are most passionate about and you have a great story, a production company might be more inclined to back and support a just-as-great story listed in one of the more popular genres listed.

Stay tuned for more info and check back in the coming weeks for more information on topics such as the best decades for films (and why),the most successful runtimes and ratings, and the most effective and common character motivations.

Talk soon and keep writing!

– The Plot Girl