Category: Writing Exercise

Ah-Ha – Take On Me video: A study of the Three-Act Play

Yet another blog on Ah-Ha’s Take on Me video. Previously I have discussed Agency and Point Of View (POV). Now let’s review the video from the three-act story structure. Who would have thought a pop video had so much depth? There is a reason it swept the music video awards around the world the year of its release. Far more than a bunch of dancers or swirls of video images inspired by musical notes and poetic words, the video presents a full story covering multiple genres of superhero fantasy, action-adventure, and romance.

The generally accepted three-act structure for fiction is as follows: Setup, Confrontation, and Resolution.

During the Setup we are introduced to the location, the characters, and the nature of the story. In quick succession the video introduces us to the real-world diner and the four-panel art of the black and white comic book. We meet the heroine, the waitress, and the hero, plus the placeholding characters of the other musicians, the diner patrons, and the cook. The placeholders are what I call scenery characters. The heroine is pulled into the comic world (in the INCITING INCIDENT from which all other events follow) continuing the setup by letting the viewers see how the two characters interact with each other.

Act Two, Confrontation, starts with the first of the series of obstacles and ascending action. As Liana mentioned in her blog (you can find the link from HERE), for a thriller or action story villains should build to increase risk. And this story has its share of ever-increasing dangerous antagonists.

First of the obstacles/confrontations is the waitress. The first of the villains. As allowed, the first villain may not be the real villain, and may become an ally later. In this case, justly angry she crumples the comic world and throws it out. The confrontation isn’t strong, but breaks the watcher away from the fantastical actions of the transformation into the comic world and the comfort of a destiny-driven romance with the anger and destruction set in the real world.

The second obstacle/confrontation are the drivers who hunt the lovers through a crushed world until a dead-end prevents further retreat. From the displaced danger of the waitress, the story has shifted to a more immediate and rushing action of the fantasy world.

Second act midpoint is reached and the twist is introduced. The transformation into the comic world can be reversed. The woman is returned to the real world. But the male is still a two-dimensional character and unable to follow her. He faces the obstacle left behind.

Now here it becomes interesting from a dissection of writing analysis. Even though the stakes have lessened, the woman no longer is in danger, the emotions ramp up because now we have returned to the real world. The danger escalates again because we are back to full-color real-world. People looming, disorientation, bruises and injury from the last encounter becomes visible, and the only thought is escape.

Disaster exists just behind her; her hero did not follow her. The third and final villain is introduced – fear … and death.

The writer became cruel here, allowing us a moment to breathe when she returns to her apartment. All the previous obstacles have disappeared – the waitress has been avoided, the black & white drivers dodged, and the diner escaped. Only one obstacle remains. The true obstacle from the very beginning; the lovers are from different worlds. So we the viewers, our hearts just barely stopped racing from the second-act climax, join her in the Third Act, the Resolution.

In the third-act, we bleed with the character we have come to know from the previous two acts of set-up/introduction and confrontation/obstacles when she turns the page and discovers her hero has been left for dead. She cannot reach through to his world to touch him, to feel the pulse, verify if he is alive…if he ever was alive.

Then a crash and the final twist is introduced. The hero starts trying to cross over into her world through the frame of a doorway. The denouement, climax of the chain of events, has him throwing himself, injuring himself further, trying to reach her world. For some reason (never discussed) crossing from a 3-D world into a 2-D world is much more simpler than forcing a 2-D black and white being into the 3-D full-color real world. But for her, he tries, killing the parts of himself left alive by the drivers.

Wrap-up in the third act has the heroine running to the hero once he joins her in the real-world.

The video is amazing because it not only has an action plot, but an emotional plot. You can follow the growing relationship between the main characters throughout. The woman decides to “take on” the man in his world; and he decides to “take on” the woman in hers. By the end of the story, you know they are committed for life. The screenwriter used ascending and descending action to increase the emotional involvement of the watcher.

WRITING EXERCISE: Find a short video or commercial which struck you as having a full story and analyze for three-act structure, POV, and agency. Think about why the commercial/video works and what you can steal for your writing.

READING EXERCISE: Read a short story. Does it follow a three-act format (Setup, Confrontation, Resolution)?