How Many Characters Can Viewers Follow?
We’re editing an historical documentary “We Said No! No!” that initially featured fifteen characters. At first, none of them struck me as particularly memorable. I couldn’t remember who was who. I felt kinda dumb and confused.
I told director Brian Maeda that the consensus among experienced directors is that viewers cannot follow the story arcs of more than four distinct protagonists.
He was open-minded, so here’s how we’re solving this problem!
My editor and I identified four characters with the strongest story arcs, and relegated the rest to the B-Cast (meaning they will take up much less screen time).
Next, we introduced these four A-Cast protagonists in Act One with a trick that I learned from Academy Award-winning editor Deborah Hoffmann. Establish three characters first, then introduce the fourth.
Since three of these characters were writers–and we had access to dairies, field notes, and books–we teased their writing before the film’s title sequence.
After the title sequence, my editor made sure that all three protagonists appeared at least one more time in the first ten minutes. Imprinting a character can take multiple appearances.
The fourth character was the director himself, who became the film’s powerful chief narrator.
The takeaway suggestions:
- Limit your storytelling to no more than four A-list protagonists;
- Imprint three of them at the top of the film, by including at least 1-2 additional appearances within 10 minutes.
- Delay the introduction of the 4th character until later in Act One or Act Two, after the first three characters are solidified.
- Since the first several minutes of a documentary is such precious real estate, cut any early scenes that aren’t essential and that don’t involve main characters.
To learn more techniques for creating memorable character arcs, download for free my online seminar Editing the Character Driven Documentary (formerly $297).
