The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Remember the Titans

written by Gregory Allen Howard

Remember the Titans is a Hollywood feel-good movie about whites and blacks on a high school football team learning to play as a team and going on the win the Virginia state championship. Textbook 3-act structure.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (1 min.)
    • We are in a time of racial tension.
  2. Complication (3-6 min.)
    • The new assistant coach at a predominantly white Virginia high school is black. He gets appointed head coach, replacing the hall of fame candidate white coach.
  3. Call to Action (12 min.)
    • The black coach accepts the conditions of the white coach for staying on as an assistant.
  4. Act One Plot Point (18-20 min.)
    • Training camp begins. The black coach mixes races in the rooms.
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (45 min.)
    • There's a conspiracy by the white school board to dump the black coach. One loss and he's gone.
  6. Act Two Plot Point (86 min.)
    • A star player gets injured and paralyzed in a car accident. Hopes for the state championship look dim.
  7. Climax and Resolution (103-5 min.)
    • The black coach overcomes pride to use a trick play suggested by the white coach to win the state championship on the last play of the game.

Notes

Movies like this are pretty predictable but also full of emotion -- and, of course, in movies like this, "right" defeats "wrong" all the time. It's Hollywood, after all.

MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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