The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Witness

written by William Kelley and Earl & Pamela Wallace


Witness would be a typical "bad cop" thriller were it not for the unusual setting that gives it its special charm: the Pennsylvania Amish community. By putting a violent story in a renegade "peaceful" community, wonderful dramatic complexities enrich the narrative.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (11 min.)
    • The hook happens later in this story than is usual. This is because the opening sequence, which focuses on Amish life, is itself a kind of "hook" in that we immediately know we are in a culture that has retained much older ways of living, eschewing conveniences the modern world takes for granted. The two worlds clash when Samuel, the Amish son of Rachel (a recent widow), witnesses a murder in the men's room at a train station. This will send the two worlds on a collision course.
  2. Complication (15 min.)
    • The murdered man was a policeman, and John Book, the protagonist, leads the investigation.
  3. Call to Action (19 min.)
    • John takes Rachel and Samuel under his wing, putting them up at his sister's while he gets ready to begin the investigation.
  4. Act One Plot Point (26 min.)
    • At the police station, Samuel sees a newspaper photograph of a black police office on the wall - and points him out to John as the man, one of two, that he saw in the men's room. John realizes we have a bad cop. He goes to his superior with the news. However, John is then set up - and escaping, realizes his superior must be in cahoots with the bad cop. Now he is in real trouble since he has to prove that his superior and former mentor is a bad cop as well. John, who has been wounded in the shootout at the set up, drives Rachel and Samuel back to their Amish farm - and promptly passes out behind the wheel. He stays there to be cared for (35 min.)
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (63 min.)
    • A strong subplot is the love story between John and Rachel, which begins as she nurses him back to health. One night they dance to a car radio in the barn - despite the Amish being forbidden to dance - and there is clear electricity between them. Now John is personally involved in what happens to Samuel, the witness.
  6. Act Two Plot Point (82 min.)
    • John learns that his partner, his only contact back to the office, has been killed. He knows who did it - and he calls his superior to lay down the gauntlet, come and get back because only one of us is going to survive. Three bad cops do arrive (89 min.), and a long "gunfight at the Okay Coral" ensues before John comes out victorious.
  7. Resolution (105 min.)
    • John and Rachel have a long goodbye, a visual scene without dialogue, as the camera explores their feelings. Their world are two different for them to stay together, even though they have fallen in love.

    Notes

    Something Witness does very well is handle exposition dramatically. We need to learn about the different lifestyle of the Amish, and an amateur screenwriter would tell us this is long, boring, expository dialogue.

    Here we get our first education through images in the opening sequence of the story. Later we learn more about the Amish in a dramatic context, in which exposition can be sugar-coated like medicine hidden in candy. For example, we learn that the Amish don't have telephones when the John's superior, trying to find out which of hundreds of Amish farms he is hiding out on, reprimands an assistant for not letting his fingers do the walking, calling one farm after another. He is then informed that this would be a great idea - if the Amish had telephones. The dramatic context brings forth this exposition in a natural, dramatic way. Lesser hands would tell us straight out, in dialogue that would be unnatural and serve no purpose other than as exposition.


    MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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