- In act one, you've
established all the information your audience needs to know
and given your characters a set of challenges to overcome. Now begins the journey
to achieve their goals. Let's take a closer look at
our story spine for act two. In act two, our protagonist
often encounters a series of progressive complications. These obstacles force them
to make difficult decisions as one thing leads to another in a chain of events we call the journey. The choices and actions
your main character makes as they attempt to overcome
these escalating obstacles is the substance of the second act. But how do we make sure
the journey of act two is more than just a series
of events strung together? Let's ask our storytellers, my friends, how they think about
the elements of act two. - Act two is a place where you
beat your character up a lot. You have to keep making things
hard for your character, or the story has no conflict, and a story with no conflict has no shape, no pacing, no momentum,
so you just keep throwing harder and harder things their
way and they have to learn. It's a growth opportunity in figuring out how to overcome these obstacles, so act two is where you
see the most growth. - Yeah, it's really where the character, the metamorphosis
happens of the character. - Oftentimes as editors,
we encounter act twos that have become too long. We don't want act two to
go on and on with a chase that just goes on and on
and on and on and on and on. - But basically, you need to create a series of challenges
for your character towards that ultimate fork in the
road where they have to make a really difficult decision
from which there's no return. - And my favorite
example is in Inside Out, where Joy has been calling all the shots, as she did in the control room. She's always been the controlling one, and she thinks of Sadness
as nothing but trouble, a burden that she literally
has to drag along, but when they meet Bing Bong
and they need Bing Bong's help, and Bing Bong gets so sad
that he can't be helpful because he's sitting down crying candy, Joy tries to rally him to get going. That's her way of solving problems, right? Just rally. Whereas Sadness goes over
and sits down next to him and says, "That must have been
hard," and she consoles him, and the tears stop, and then
they're able to move on. That's a huge turning point for Joy. It's the first time she
recognizes that Sadness has value. - Act two may also contain the low point, when it seems that all hope is lost. Everything's gone wrong and your character may have failed in all
attempts to get what they want, or they may have achieved
everything they want, but still be frustrated or miserable because there's something
else they actually need. - The low point is a
point when it seems like everything is lost for
your main characters. - At the end of act two,
something really, really bad is meant to happen to your character to force them to confront the things that they didn't wanna
confront at the end of act one. It's why act two exists, and it allows them to then
demonstrate it in act three and sort of show that, for the
audience and for themselves that this change is permanent. - I think Pete Docter's
Up is my favorite movie, and it's because of the way this low point at the end of act two is handled. So all through the movie,
Carl has had this goal. It's a big irrational goal. "I have to put my house on Angel Falls in Venezuela because a long time ago I told my wife we would go live there." But when he finally achieves that goal and he's sitting alone in the house exactly where he told Ellie it would be, he realizes it's a hollow victory. Yes, he got what he wanted, but in the course of act two, he learned that what he needs is a relationship with Russell. - So let's summarize. Act two often begins shortly
after the inciting incident and is followed by as series of obstacles our characters must overcome
in pursuit of their goals. By the mid point of act two,
around the middle of the story, there's often a choice from
which they can never turn back. We sometimes call this
the point of no return. Act two may also contain the low point. This is generally where act two ends. In the next exercise, you'll
have a chance to identify the second act and its elements
in your favorite films, as well as start developing a second act for the story you want to create.