Three-act dramatic structure

Three-act dramatic structure is a staple of the Hollywood system, but as noted elsewhere, it was first articulated by Aristotle. It describes the basic way that many humans tell and anticipate stories a setup, complications, resolution. "I think that s just the way we as humans are neurologically and culturally structured," says writer Susan Kim (see Chapter 21), noting, for example, that the mind constructs narratives even as we sleep. "I think there is something inherent in the dramatic form that s really powerful. And I think that s why, as storytellers, as people who want to make documentary or write plays, it behooves us to understand the potential of that structure."... 

Whether your film is described as having five acts or one, it can still follow dramatic (three-act) structure. There are many practical reasons to divide a story, including breaks for commercials (television) or audience intermission (theater). But "one-act" plays and "five-act" television specials can often still be divided into three acts. For example, even though David Auburn wrote Proof as a fictional, two-act stage play, the action can easily be broken into three-act dramatic structure. Auburn s "first act" contains all of his Act One and the first half of Act Two his "second act" contains the balance of Act Two and all of Act Three. AVhere you break a story for reasons like commercials or intermissions is part of the structural discussion, but does not necessarily interfere with your use of dramatic storytelling. 

Docudramas are organized dramatically in a manner closer to the documentary than to the melodrama. The melodrama is organized on a three-act structure. It deploys character in a particular way. It may or may not have plot. It may or may not have resolution. 

Three-act structure does not mean taking a film and dividing it into three parts and calling each part an act. An act can only be considered as such if it advances the one overall story (or essay) that you set out to tell. For example, a film that looks at early settlements in the United States can t be structured, "Act One, Plymouth, Massachusetts Act Two, Jamestown, Virginia Act Three, New York, New York." There is no common story there there may be common themes and this may work as an organizational construct for a film, but these aren t acts. On the other hand, you could tell three individual dramatic stories within that structure, one within each location that you then combine into a film. 

Did you intentionally use dramatic three-act structure for the film The first act ends, as mentioned, with the kidnapping. The second act drives to election day. The third act continues through to the outcome—she doesn t win, but she does get enough votes to save the party she s founded. And then we see the videos released by the kidnappers, to prove that Betancourt is still alive. 

What we re involved in, always, is trying to tell a story. Before I became a producer in documentaries [in 1988, on Eyes on the Prize], I had edited a lot of docs, but I wasn t always thinking about how to tell a story and have it escalate dramatically and emotionally. That s something I learned from the irascible Henry Hampton [executive producer of Eyes, a series that used a three-act structure to tell historical stories). And then right after, Spike called me about cutting Mo Better Blues, and I ve worked with him since on a series of narrative fiction features. What I ve learned from both is to always make the story dramatic. Get the characters up a tree, how re we going to get em down I apply three-act structure to everything. I don t always adhere to it as closely as we did on Eyes, but it s always in the back of my mind. 

Serpins consist of a conserved core of three P-sheets and eight or nine a-helices that act collectively in the inhibitory mechanism. As with the Kazal- and Kunitz-type inhibitors, the mechanism involves a surface exposed loop that is termed the reactive center loop (RCL). The RCL presents a short stretch of polypeptide sequence bearing the Pl-Pl scissile bond. Like other serine protease inhibitor families, the PI residue dominates the thermodynamics that govern the interaction between protease and inhibitor. Exposure of the PI residue to solvent is typically brokered by 15 amino acids N-terminal to the PI residue and 5 residues on the C-terminal prime side of the scissile bond. Evidence for dramatic conformational change in the inhibitory mechanism was first provided by the crystal structure of the cleaved form of ai-antitrypsin (37). In this structure and unlike the native form, the reactive center loop was not solvent exposed but occurred as an additional P-strand within the core of the structure. 

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