The End of the Story

 "Why can't these writers come up with endings that work?" 

This sounds like a quote from some modern-day film producer or book critic. In fact, it was written by Aristotle who predates movies and the printed word by a good few years. 

 

Endings are hard. Have you ever sat through a perfectly good movie only to be disappointed, confused or even angry at the end? One of the problems with endings is that the really satisfying ones are often also the most predictable. This is partly because the ending we want as a viewer is the one that does all the things we are hoping will happen. As a writer, sometimes the job is to get to this end in a way that looks like you won't get there or provide an end which is original. There is a need to be creative amongst writers that can make going for the obvious distasteful.  

 

In improv, obvious is very much our friend. Doing what is obvious to you and hopefully the group allows you to build a story in steps that keeps everyone on board and allows you to make a longer, more cohesive story than if you take big "creative" steps. 

 

The ending in an improv scene or narrative can also be obvious. It should, in general, be a tying up of as many things that have been established as possible without it feeling overdone or trite. And given the fact that improv audiences are more forgiving than moviegoers, knowing as they do what is being done is being made up there and then (and not been in production for the best part of a year), you shouldn't worry too much about overdoing it and certainly you should not overthink it. 

 

Surprise endings in general rarely work well. It’s fantastic when they do (these are the story endings that get celebrated), but so often they don’t quite get it right. Even in movies and books, where the writer has time to put enough subtle clues in so that the surprise is surprising but also still satisfying, I would say most attempts at a "surprise ending" don't please the audience. In improv, we can't be nearly so clever as to pepper subtle clues to something we have no idea about at that moment. Truly random ends to stories with no clues to them are the ones that make people the most confused and angry. Many people reading this will recall improvised stories they were in where at the last minute something unexpected was introduced that became or triggered the end. 

 

The satisfying ends are when something that has been struggled or searched for is finally achieved or found. Or it is not found, but the characters realise something important about themselves, in particular that they didn’t need it and what they really needed they had all along. A good end comes from a clear want or need, either of the central character or the group as a whole. In fact, a very satisfying story sees the group get what they need, the hero gets something they wanted, and the antagonist gets what they deserve. Another common end is to end up back where you started but with a new perspective. 

 

That’s not to say all endings should be like these. Tragic endings are the opposite, where the protagonist doesn't get what they, the group doesn’t succeed, and, indeed, everyone might be dead. These absolutely work for some types of story. And in between are the perhaps more realistic “poignant victories” where something has been achieved but at a cost.” Some endings are deliberately anticlimactic or ambiguous. Some genres demand it. But they should still feel true to the events and the world of the story. 

 

The end is a hard time, but we are instinctive storytellers. It might be hard to know what to do for an end, but when an end happens, we feel it. The audience especially does. I have been at enough shows where the audience has felt the end and is surprised the story is continuing. Sometimes leading to a further end or pleasing “denouement” but mostly not. 

 

So, if you have listened hard throughout, stopped making up new things after the middle, played and explored the characters, situations and world you have, realise what the characters want and need, and set the on the path to achieving that, you’ll be on your way to something that feels like an end. 

Opening Other Doors

I recently attended the Amsterdam premiere of Another One Opens, a movie made in Vienna by The English Lovers, a widely-respected English-language improv group there.

It’s a fully improvised movie. Or, at least, as fully improvised as a movie can be, which is quite a lot in this case.

Improvising in movies isn’t new, but it’s usually very limited and rarely part of the greater process. There is a growing trend for allowing actors to improvise lines in comedies, but this was always the norm for Christopher Guest’s awesome mockumentaries. Certain directors of drama and social realism have used improvisation to discover the specifics of the characters and to generate naturalistic dialogue. In the case of comedies, it allows the actors to come up with funny lines organically, which can really work when you have a cast of great comedians.

Another One Opens began as a concept with a set of locations and seven actors and the story came about through things that happened during the preparation and process itself as well as during the scenes. It harks back to the days where a movie was made by pointing a camera at a park bench and a policeman, and having Charlie Chaplin come along and try to sit down.

Still from englishloversmovie.com.

The result is interesting. It is a great-looking movie, nicely acted and professionally made. Maybe because it has its roots in improvised long forms, the genre seemed to veer about a bit. It was basically a “coming of middle age drama” but with some comic interludes and an element of magical mystery. The characterisation was good, but didn’t feel deep enough, somehow. I think movie goers are used to getting more back story and psychological insight into the changes rather than in improv where, as long as a character commits to the change, we’ll buy almost any reason.

Clearly improvisation is only a major tool of the movie as not everything on screen can be improvised in the sense that it’s used in improv. Scenes often require multiple takes, for example. Also some scenes were, by necessity, shot out of sequence, which is really difficult when you don’t already know the story. It means a lot of scenes didn’t make the final cut, but then that’s true of movies shot with lots of planning. Plus many of the scenes with moments of character discovery did not make the final movie. This however, mirrors the work of directors such as Mike Leigh and John Cassavetes who use and used a lot of improvisation to find out about the characters.

The story, which is usually pretty darn fixed in a movie, was one area where the improvisation method was followed. The story not really being set until near the end of filming, but being worked bit by but out after the end of that day’s filming. Very much how in a long form, it’s only after a scene you can see where a story is heading and use this to decide what needs to happen next or at least who needs be the focus.

Still from englishloversmovie.com.

The talk after was very interesting and brought up one of the important things about improvisation: improvisation is a process. It is an alternative method of putting on a show (or in this case, making a film) to writing a script and rehearsing it. Now this has many implications: One is that the expectations from improv is that it won’t create as good a result as the other process. And in general, I would agree.

Much of the enjoyment people get from an improv show is because the audience is in on the fact the actors are making it up. The audience is much easier on them. Improv audiences are much more accepting than theatre audiences and certainly more than stand-up audiences. The same joke for example does way better if it happens during an improv show than if it is part of a stand-up routine or a scripted play. In fact, I would go a lot further and say that much of the laughter in an improv show comes from the process being visible to the audience. An actor being momentarily lost for words, a mistake being pointed out as a mistake rather than made part of the world, a gag that breaks the reality, that look many actors give to the audience to show them they are just mucking about and not taking any of this seriously… all of these contribute to much of the comedy in an improv show. It’s easy to think that this sort of thing are part and parcel of improv comedy rather than the crutches many improvisers find make sure it’s funny no matter what. It makes it harder to (a) use improv for anything other than comedy and (b) take the craft to the next level.

I do believe a cast of actors fully in tune, really working towards the goal of creating a great theatre piece (or whatever they intend to create) can create something as good as many scripted efforts. But I think that is the goal if you want to take the art further than it is. Until that is the focus of enough troupes, improv will always be treated like the lazy step-child of theatre and stand-up.

Still from englishloversmovie.com.

And although it seems the effort to create an improvised show is much less than to create a scripted one, it’s more that the efforts are placed differently. The build-up is not focused in a short period on a specific show but over a longer period on the process in general and on the building of the team. Plus an improviser capable of improvising a whole play-like structure needs to have had more stage-time than most actors need to be able to play a role effectively, because there’s a lot more going on, in my humble opinion. Not to take away from the craft of acting, which is a skill often lacking in improvisers and the reason believably is often not seen as a big requirement of improv shows.

This “improvisation as theatrical process” approach is definitely the one of The English Lovers as can be seen in their commitment to making a movie and the quality of the movie they made. A movie that more than proves the concept that a movie can be made this way if you have the belief and are willing to take the risk. Because, like everything improvised, there is a risk, and a movie is a much more expensive risk than most you are likely to take. And the more it is tried, the more chance that it might become a respected way to make low budget, reality-based movies.

More details of Another One Opens can be found on the website and IMDB.

Thought of the Day: Improv is easy

Improv is the easiest thing in the world. You just have to fight your ego and overcome thousands of years of social conditioning to let it happen.

Tension and Release

For a while, I've been thinking about tension and release. It's a very prevalent and yet difficult to define concept. We all know what tension is, but it's hard to describe. We know when it's there, but it's really hard to create it. It's a very important part of modern film-making.

semi-random picture to increase the tension.

I suppose one quick attempt to define the terms is this: Release is resolution or closure and so tension is the absence of that resolution, i.e. a situation requiring resolution. Clear? We get onto more concrete definitions in a later entry.

To think about it in terms of broad genre, drama is about the building of tension and comedy is about the release of it. Roughly speaking.

Below is a quick list I made of emotional situations which create tension and a possible release...

sadness - happiness
regret - forgiveness
anger - relief
loves me not - loves me
enmity - reconciliation
tragedy / loss - coming to terms with it
serious - laughter
hate - love
argument - making up

There will be more on this soon as it's something that's definitely on my mind. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this fascinating but underexplored area of performing. My thoughts are currently all over the place, as you can tell.

Patterns

A lot of improv and storytelling in general has a lot to do with the setting up, continuing or building on, and completing or breaking of patterns. Most games found within a scene are a continuation or building up of a pattern. A satisfactory ending to a story is often the bringing of a pattern to a pleasing end or bringing it back to the start. Any surprise ending and the punchlines to many jokes are all breaking a pattern.

Humans are very adept at spotting patterns. We use it in our interpretation of speech and writing, and the recognition of objects and faces. Our personality and behaviour is a set of patterns we unconsciously adhere to. A (daily) routine is a set of patterns we perform regularly. When a routine is upset, the pattern is broken. After a period of confusion or chaos, a new pattern emerges. Even if patterns don't break, they usually evolve. The habits you had 5 years ago will probably have changed into new ones. Maybe they are completely new, but often they are toned down, exaggerated or changed another way.

We can exploit this feature in our characterisation. And use our innate pattern-matching ability to spot games, common traits and hidden links.

It is quite possible, I'm sure, to define improv entirely with reference to patterns. It would somewhat remove it from the practical realities of performing it but be a very useful intellectual and even educational endeavour. If I get round to doing it, you'll be the first to know.

What is Improvised Comedy?

It's fair to say, if you are reading this blog, you probably have an idea what impro is. Maybe you call it improv, I know I do about half the time. But whilst you probably know what it is, it is instructive to have people define it. You can learn a lot about people's approach and passion to something by their definition of it.

Often it's easier to define impro by what it isn't. It isn't scripted theatre and it isn't stand-up comedy. It isn't pantomime and it isn't avant garde socio-political monologue. But it does combine elements from all of those.

Jochem Meijer as Yeus, God of Improv by Rick vd Meiden

When telling an audience what it is, I say it's "the noble art of making stuff up on stage." But to a more scientific audience, such as yourselves, I would say it is "a form of comedy theatre using simple techniques to create new scenes based on little or no initial information." And now it doesn't sound fun at all. So let's get a bit more artsy, "a system of theatre using listening and positive play techniques to build scenes and stories using a combined imagination." But quite frankly, once you are an advanced improviser, who has absorbed so many of the general improv guidelines and for whom the core rules of listening and agreeing are habitual, you could describe it as "dicking around on stage." The problem is that for a tight group of advanced improvisers, dicking around on stage is like watching wonderful theatre. Lesser performers can't just dick around on stage because it just looks like dicking around on stage, and nobody wants to watch that for an hour unless you already really, really like the performers.

So if I had to give one definition out of all of these it could be "The noble art of dicking about on stage to build stories through simple listening and positive play techniques" But I'd like to go with something simpler, that I'm sure has been used before:

Stories from a collective imagination.

Your Improv Star Signs

Vaguarius the Vague Man	Something will happen to you at some point in the future. It will involve a loved-one, or someone you don’t know and involve an unspecified common house-hold object.
Nobuttie the Denier	Something wonderful will happen to your love life. No it won’t.
Cashproblemus the Shop Arguer	You will go into a shop but not have the correct change. You will get into an argument. The incident will end by you leaving having stolen the object you were trying to buy.
Dothis the Teacher	Someone you do not know will start doing everything you tell them. You keep telling, they keep doing. They can never get it right.
Lugless the Man With No Ears	Next week… Where are my horses?... Someone will… There they are.
The Nameless Man	You will meet someone you do not know. You will never know his or her name. And he or she will never know yours.
Pimpdaddius the Pimp	You will meet a man. he will make you sing and dance and recite poetry and try to stand on one leg and pretend to strip.
Didthat the Student	Someone you do not know will start telling you to do things. You will do them. They keep telling, you keep doing. You can never get it right.
Noway the Gagger	You will come into some money. No that’s not money, that’s cheese.

Impro Thought of the Day: Pimping

The difference between endowing someone with a strong character trait and pimping is often respect.