Comments on: Video: Scorsese on Story vs. Plot

By: @ozzywood

@ozzywood — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 03:19:36 +0000

TSD Revisited: : Video: Scorsese on Story vs. Plot – Jon Favreau interviewing… https://t.co/thuTu3rr #screenwriting #writing #scriptchat

By: jon_dash

jon_dash — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:40:46 +0000

Oh dear. See this is something writers never seem to be wired to understand. When Scorsese is talking story vs plot he is talking about form vs content. Let me give you an analogy – Van Gogh painted by dramatically stabbing, jabbing and applying the paint vigorously and thickly so that a tumult of brushstrokes and texture are clearly visible – this tells you as much or more about the painting and what he was trying to express than the crows in the cornfield or wilting sunflowers depicted do.

It’s about medium. It’s about how you use the medium of cinema to tell the story – lighting, composition, focus, camera movement etc – “mise en scene”

Remember cinema exists as a medium because of the invention of the camera. Not because of written word.
It is visual communication, telling a story through pictures – for directors like Scorsese the lens is the paintbrush and he is painting with light.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:54:20 +0000

Yeah. But Scorsese’s films are all hero’s journey. So are Hitchcock’s. So this distinction is all abit suspect, or at least needs to be clarified.

By: David Di Muro

David Di Muro — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 03:37:55 +0000

Plot is the systematic sequence of events, which expressed the way in which a story is told. Story is the soul. It is the big picture. Plot is the blueprint for conveying that story – which contains characters – to the viewer/reader etc

well that is my definition.

By: Simon Morice

Simon Morice — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:18:28 +0000

Plot is a component of Story and so is character – also theme and genre. My take is that Scorsese is talking about character driven versus plot driven stories rather than saying character is an alternative to story. That would be like talking of engine versus car in motoring.

Some stories are better told through the interactions of character mindsets and mental processes than through external activities and situations – although all must be present for completeness. Like stories, in real life we don’t live only in our minds or the world, we live in both.