25 Flawless Movies?

I clicked on one of those advertising "click-bait" sites: "25 Flawless Movies."  There are way more than 25 films listed, because there are hundreds of sucker advertisers paying the site owner to get their ad exposed to eyeballs. It's a scam. I never look at the ads, which is about the only content on the pages. It's also a scam because some of the movies listed were terrible, and all had flaws at some level.

But I was inspired to attempt an answer to a frequent question, "What is your favorite movie?" 

My answer is simple. It's 2001: A Space Odyssey. During college I saw it 10 times, once with my Senior Philosophy Symposium Class with our instructor that explained Thus Spake Zarathustra to us and what the movie was really about. I still find the special effects the best of any science fiction movie, including Star Wars.

Below is MY list, in alphabetical order.  I tried to cut it down to 25, then to 50, but I couldn't. I think there are 67. I enjoyed all of these too much to eliminate them from the list, even though some did not do well at the box office for some Moral Premise reason, and thus I would claim have flaws. There is really no such thing as a flawless movie, especially since movies (at least the good ones) are works of art and thus subject to subjective judgements.  Nonetheless...

What are some of your favorite movies? Please add them to the comments.

10
2001: A Space Odyssey (all time favorite)
A Man and a Woman
Aliens I
Amadeus
Amistad
Annie Hall
As Good As It Gets
Babel
Birdman
Blazing Saddles 
Blind Side
Braveheart
Bruce Almighty
Casablanca
Chinatown
City Slickers I
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Exorcism of Emily Rose
Die Hard
Dr. Zhivago 
George Lucas in Love (short)
Gone With the Wind
Grand Torino
Green Mile
Ground Hog Day
Hail Caesar!
Hancock
Help, The
Hurt Locker
Incredibles, The
Inception
In the Bedroom
Jaws
Karate Kid V (2010)
Kite Runner
Lawrence of Arabia
Liar! Liar!
Lord of the Rings: (all three)
Momento
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Noah (Aronofsky)
Notorious!
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Passage to India
Passion of the Christ
Precious
Pride and Glory (Gavin O'Conner)
Purpose Rose of Cairo
Pursuit of Happyness
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Ratatouille
Revenant
Saving Private Ryan
Searchers
Secretariat
Signs
Silence
Silver Linings Playbook
Slumdog Millionaire
St. Vincent
Taken
Warrior (Gavin O'Conner)
What Women Want
Where Do We Go Now
Where the Heart Is

Narrative Theory & Beyond Order

A few minutes ago I finished reading Jordan Peterson's book BEYOND ORDER: 12 More Rules for Life. 

I normally do not write book reviews on this blog, and I hope this post doesn't turn into one. But I mention it here on the Moral Premise Storycraft Blog because Beyond Order has a great deal to say about Storytelling and Narrative Theory. 

While I enjoyed and heavily endorsed his 12 Rules for Life, Beyond Order is better.  I think Beyond Order is better written and edited, but it also has more explicit things to say about Storytelling and its importance to culture... things I have said for decades.  

Unlike many people who comment on Peterson's work, his writings have not revolutionized my life, but they have reinforced my worldview and how I attempt to live it. The life principles he examines are very much how I was brought up by responsible parents within a Biblical Christian worldview. But yes, Peterson challenges me (he often sounds like St. Paul) in areas of my life where I am weak and need improvement. Don't we all? In that respect, I hope his words will motivate me to change what needs to change. 

Peterson's view of the world in which we live as a frightfully terrible place should have deep resonance with most of us. It does for me, but then I was born, and my Mother exacerbated, my melancholy-choleric temperament. Peterson's understanding of the malevolence in the world, however, dovetails with a story's need for an overpowering antagonist or villain that threatens the protagonist at every turn. 

In speaking of Friedrich Nietzsche, (who was the philosophical inspiration behind Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, my all time favorite movie) Peterson does a concise and resonant explanation of Nietzsche's famous "God is Dead" pronouncement. Peterson writes: 

[Nietzsche's] fear that all the Judeo-Christian values serving as the foundation of Western Civilization had been made dangerously subject to casual rational criticism, and ... the existence of the transcendent, all-powerful deity—had been fatally challenged.  Nietzsche concluded from this that everything would soon fall apart, in a manner catastrophic both psychologically and socially. (p. 161-162)

I guess Nietzsche was write. Of course God is not dead in a literal sense, unless your POV is the current social-political culture. Least the importance of that to successful storytelling slip by, this fits well with the concept of the Moral Premise—

Ignoring Natural Law (transcendent reality and the values of Western Civilization) leads to psychological and social catastrophe; but Building up Natural Law et al leads to psychological and social harmony. 

If your story deals with the plight of persons trapped in poverty and their grit and determination to claw their way out, Peterson offers this juice fodder for story development.

There are many reasons... why people are poor. Lack of money is the obvious cause—but that hypothetical obviousness is part of the problem with ideology. Lack of education, broken families, crime-ridden neighborhoods, alcoholism, drug abuse, criminality and corruption (and the   political and economic exploitation that accompanies it), mental illness, lack of a life plan (or even failure to realize that formulating such a plan is possible or necessary), low conscientiousness, unfortunate geographical locale, shift in the economic landscape, and the consequent disappearance of entire fields of endeavor, the marked proclivity for those who are rich to get richer still and the poor to get poorer, low creativity/entrepreneurial interest, (and) lack of encouragement.  (p. 169)

Just the statement of Rule XI, Do Not Allow Yourself To Become Resentful, Deceitful, or Arrogant sounds to me like part of a Moral Premise Statement. Not only does it provide several ideas for the negative side of the moral premise, but it suggests that it is within the protagonist's power to change. 

As a further tease, here are the subtitles for the chapter on Rule XI:

The Story is the Thing / The Eternal Characters of the Human Drama / Nature: Creation and Destruction (see the Moral Premise Statement in that) / Culture: Security and Tyranny (more MPS fodder) / The Individual: Hero and Adversary / Resentment / Sins of Commissions / Sins of Omission / The Existential Danger of Arrogance and Deceit vs The Place You Should Be.

It's a long chapter (pp. 303–353) and a wealth of story themes perfectly laid out with motivations for both the hero and villain involved. I wrote in the margins on page 315 one of the great adages of storytelling: "To achieve our greatest desire we must face our greatest fear." That is true of every protagonist and hero. 

In the midst of that same chapter Peterson provides a case study of a real-life Sleeping Beauty. He essentially writes the treatment for a modern day, true life, live action drama. Someone should do the screenplay (pp. 321-328)

In short, read this book if you're serious about understanding character and motivations.

 

The Diegesis and Non-Diegetic Sound

Sound Designer at Work

The term "diegesis" refers to the fictional world filmmakers create and everything in it. The word comes from a Greek word that evidently means narration or narrative. I don't know this from any study of Greek. I read it in my film school text books. There is more about the terms here at DailyWritingTips.

I contribute answers now and then to Quora on the film and screenwriting threads. This morning someone asked "How does the non-diegetic sound contribute to the atmosphere in a film?"  This brings up one of those things movie goers take for granted and yet are so important to the experience of going to the movies. 

Screenwriters struggle with communicating the emotional context of a scene. The emotional content of a scene is more important to the movie goers than the intellectual aspects of the diegetic action, although there can be no emotional response without the diegetic making intellectual sense. The interplay between these two is a paradox of communication. Screenwriters must work only (well, 98% of the time) with the intellectual diegetic elements and yet hope to create an emotional response in the audience. 

However, the diegetic intellectual elements by themselves, rarely create the deep emotional response that audiences subliminally crave and that make the movie moment (the diegetic moment) memorable. We can all remember great movie moments and describe them to our friends. But I'll bet you can't remember the non-diegetic elements that triggered your emotional response, which in turn allowed you to remember that scene so well. This is one of the great mysteries of storytelling and especially narrative films.

Perhaps the single most important aspect of transferring the intended emotional response is NON-DIEGETIC SOUND, which is typically NOTHING that the screenwriter can write.  The paradox is that audiences rarely, if ever, can recall non-diegetic sound, unless they buy the Motion Picture Soundtrack CD or tracks and listen to the music. Yes, the music bed that plays in the background (and not from a radio or music source supposedly on the set) is non-diegetic sound. But there is so much more to it, like sound effects and sound mixing of the diegetic sound (e.g. dialogue, Foley sound, and on-camera noise).  Screenwriters try to infer non-diegetic sounds, but generally the ideas for such sounds and the genius of creating them and mixing them is left to suggestions by the Director and expertise of Sound Designers, Supervisors, Editors and Mixers. Sound Design is incredibly important to the success of motion pictures and yet as screenwriters we have very little to say about it. Sad but true. Which is one reason skilled screenwriting that can imply such things is so important. 

All that to say Markus Innocenti (a former Supervising Sound Editor), gives a wonderful answer to the above mentioned Quora question, which is linked HERE. 

On the linked thread I thanked Markus for his excellent answer and make some remarks, which I have elaborated above. He then wrote this, which should be an encouragement to all screenwriters:

Thank you — and I agree. It is extremely difficult to suggest non-diegetic sound in a screenplay, and to do so is often ‘unwelcome’ given the traditional view that a director interprets a script to conform to a personal ‘vision’. I think it’s true to say that good writers work endlessly on finding ways to “suggest” an interpretation that lies closest to their own — in the full knowledge that, at the end of the day, the emotional impact of the film will rely on the director’s choices as to how the non-diegetic is applied.

The Problem and Solution for Bio Pics

I was asked on Quora: 

When creating a Movie that's Based on a True Story & the Audience knows what will happen even before seeing the movie. How do you create that moment of Suspense in a specific scene that makes the Audience think that something different will happen?

Here's my answer:

Bio pics (“true” stories about known people) rarely do well at the box office. There are two fundamental reasons. (1) If you tell the true (physical) story the movie will not be dramatically structured to be entertaining to general audiences and thus it will bore all except for the small number of people who are fans of the person. Solution: enlarge the audience by making the movie suitable as entertainment to a large audience. That leads to the second reasons bio pics do poorly. (2) To structure a story so it appeals to a large audience you must tell the story so there’s a regular emotional rollercoaster ride, that is, you must make it entertaining. No doubt this will require fictionalizing the story, which will alienate the person’s fans and result in bad word of mouth—a death knell for a movie.

The Tuohy Family (L, movie; R, real)

There are two solutions: 

(A) Select a significant moment in the person’s life that changed their life’s trajectory and tell it in such dramatic detail (you’ll have to still fictionalize (add, omit, compact, or exaggerate) to make it interesting) that you avoid the two problems above. The exaggeration was done in the hit movie starring Sandra Bullock titled BLIND SIDE where the personality characteristics of the real-life Tuohy family and Michael Oher’s life were exaggerated. In Amadeus, Salieri’s motivations and involvement was heavily fictionalized. (B) Focus on (and make visual) a significant aspect of the person’s internal, personal, or spiritual life that is typically unknown to the public but nonetheless documented historically but not elaborated upon. Here the filmmakers are fictionalizing the story (probably) but no one can effectively argue with their take on the story.

American Hustle

The last bit of an answer is that IF the above aspects of story telling can be satisfied, the storytellers will focus on not WHAT happened (as everyone knows), but we probably don’t know the back story of HOW it happened or WHY nor the potential intrigue, suspense and conflict that was involved. Heavily fictionalized, a great example of this is AMERICAN HUSTLE that feeds off the Abscam political scandal, and of course TITANIC and many others. So, a good storyteller will focus on something that the audience doesn’t fully know, and then make it true at a moral level.

Titanic

In the end, all successful movies may be fictionalized externally, but the successful ones are true at the inner moral level. What’s on screen thus becomes a metaphor for the moral journey the character(s) must inwardly travel. Remember, all actions by real people (and characters we identify as real) originate first in the mind as a motivation based on moral values. That’s why all good stories (whether intended this way or not by their makers) are based on a true and consistently applied Moral Premise. 

Are Screenwriting and Hollywood Dead?

 I received an email from a reader who articulated an oft asked concern about pursuing a writing career in the motion picture industry.   The questions he asked, in an email with the subject line that has now become the title of this post, are often asked of me (hundreds of times, perhaps)... as if I have some precognitive, clairvoyant insight. Hollywood legend William Goldman famously wrote of Studio Executives (see the yellow highlight in the photo below):

For those of you who can't download images, the text says, "Compounding their problem of no job security in the decision-making process is the single most important fact, perhaps, of the entire movie industry: NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING. ... Again, for emphasis— NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING. [Goldman, William (1969). Adventures in the Screen Trade. New York, Warner Books. page 39.]  I've included the picture from my copy of the dogeared book (a must read for anyone thinking of writing screenplays) to prove that it was not I, but the author who capitalized and centered like an on-screen super: NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.

Now, two things about this famous line have always caught my attention. (1) NOBODY is bad grammar. It's suppose to be "NO ONE," or at least it was in the good-old-days, whenever that was.  But then William Goldman is one of the most celebrated and successful entertainment writers... books and screenplays. He's wonderful to read. And, (2) if you drive around Hollywood much and gawk at the mansions or hang-out inside of a few of them, as I have on occasion, it's clear that A LOT OF BODIES KNOW SOMETHING.

On the other hand, I am not claiming to be one of those bodies. I think I know a thing or two. But there are always those that know more. There are also those whose different experience would prove things are different on the other side of Wilshire Blvd, although things are pretty much the same on both sides of Sunset Blvd. 

Okay, enough of the wisecracks and disclaimers. But before I get to the question of the day...my reader praised The Moral Premise for it's left-brain practicality, and without shame I need to pass on his kind words:

I found your book actionable and free of a lot of mumbo jumbo that just kills progress in the writing arts. ... What was great ... it was concise and manageable. I did an internet search today and... glad to see you're not dead. 

Are you sure? Let me check. (SFX: padding down body.)  Yeah, guess you're right.

THE QUESTION: 

My gut feel is that Hollywood is dead and movie making has no place in a short attention span society It seems like short episodic content is all people can handle...bing watching Netflix series etc., or play games on phones. I'm just wondering if I should sink my life into writing in a medium that seems to be past it's heyday. What movies do get made are blockbuster copy films.... I'd want a chance at actually getting my screenplay made into a movie and maybe making a living. 

 I'm not sure really how to approach all this. Before I go all in I wanted to get your advice on possible outcomes and what I'm actually looking at here professionally.

Let me parse this into smaller questions:

1. Due to society's short attention span are long form movies dead?

No, for the same reasons that movies did not replace novels. Short attention spans have been around a long time. It may seem that social media (e.g. TicTok) has made attention spans even shorter. But really all it's done is attract a wider audience that had short attention spans to begin with. I like TicTok videos. But I still like long novels and movies. What is to be learned here is that everyone is different (both creators and consumers). I have a neighbor who is a successful entrepreneur. He is highly intelligent, possesses reams of common sense, is energetic, has a strong work ethic, and his ability to focus on tasks is never ending. Yet he falls asleep when he reads a page from a book, or so he says. I've never witnessed his malady. But he'll watch and learn from YouTube all day. He learns differently. So, with each new media invention we widen, not narrow, our audience. 

2. Is short episodic content all that people can handle...binge watching Netflix series for example. 

My wife and I have been hooked at times on binge watching Netflix and Amazon Prime content. We also like feature length motion pictures and have a large collection of DVDs and Blurays by our HD video screen in the living room. We have been known to spend 4 hours in one evening binge watching an Amazon Prime series, of one-hour episodes. That is about twice as long as a "long" motion picture. So, at least in one respect "binge" watching is not any shorter than the acts, scenes, or sequences of a motion picture, and often longer.  Look at it this way. If you're writing a 500 page novel (I currently am), you have to make EVERY page of 350 words interesting. If you're developing a long motion picture, every scene better have conflict in it, and at the end of a sequence of 12.5 minutes there better be a disaster than propels your audience to watch the next sequence, or the next episode... or turn the page. It's true in writing novels as well as screenplays (whether comedy or horror) there better be a "reveal" or "discovery" or something "good" on every few pages or you'll lose your audience. At the same time, every scene on a script, like every paragraph and sentence in a novel better be well written if not ironic, metaphoric, shocking, or revealing.  Now, times do change. There was a time when Noah lived for hundreds of years, and the ark took only a few of those to build. But for the most part he sat around and had nothing to read or watch... and then there was Abraham who wandered in the wilderness for a long time with nothing to look at but sand and camels.  Now, do I think  social media sucks brain cells out of users?  Sure do. 

3. Should I sink my life into a medium that is past its heyday?

What you should do is not a question I can answer. My advice in terms of your life goals is to follow the advice of Laurie Beth Jones (Jesus CEO, The Path) and Jordan Peterson (12 Rules for life, Beyond Order).  The two authors cross paths frequently in their advice, e.g. JBP's Rule V (Beyond Order) corresponds to Jones's Mission concept: "Do not do what you hate... but what you're passionate about." 

As to if the medium being past its heyday?  No, it's not. Not anymore than Streaming has replaced DVDs. Now, that may require a little unpacking. The sale of DVDs are clearly declined in favor of streaming. But in my situation I hate streaming and love DVDs/Blurays. Why? Well, (first) because although I have an ultra high speed Internet connection, streaming movies in my neighborhood is still fraught with disconnections. The movie stops in the middle and I can't get reconnected. And (second) because DVDs and Blurays have all that extra documentary material on them that is absent with streaming.  And, (third) because buying or renting two DVDs a month is cheaper than a movie package from the cable company. 

BUT NONE OF THAT IS MY POINT... which is that stories are never going to be out of vogue. The crux of culture, at anytime in history, and anyplace in the world, is THE STORY.... and the longer the better. You can write and produce for short attention spans or long attention spans.  But life is long, and the stories of people's unfold across decades, not seconds. Further, people will be happier and more satisfied with their lives the more they lengthen their attention span, especially for the work that they pursue in their lives (c.f. Beyond Order, Rule VII: "Work as hard as you possibly can on at least one thing and see what happens." ... and then there's Rule VI "Abandon Ideology")

 4. What movies that do get made are blockbuster copy films.

In a SMALL sense that is true. But such films are few in comparison to the many films that get made and released. Do some research. Get on IMDB and categorize all the movies made in the last year before the pandemic shut down production. List the original movies (even if their antecedent was a book) and those that were copy films or sequels. You'll be surprised.  

5. What are the chances that my screenplay can be made into a movie?

Pretty small. Near zero, if not zilch. Unless...

• You're a very talented writer
• You work very hard and develop your talent over many years 
• Your friends are filmmakers and they like what you write
• You live in LA, NY, etc and you're good at selling what you write  
• You have access to a lot of money to risk on funding what you write
• You are multi-talented and can produce, director, & fund what you write
• Any combination of the above... the more the better. 

 6. Can I make a living at writing screenplays

Very few people do, unless a few of the bullet points above apply.  There are two very apt adages that go along with the movie industry:

• You can die from encouragement.
• You can't make a living, but you might make a killing. 

There are, however, a lot of writers in the industry that make a living at writing for the screen, but they're not what you might call feature length motion picture screenwriters. Well, they are in a sense, but here's what they do for a day job (writing) while working on their passion screenplay that may never get made... although there's always hope and encouragement (see the above adage about death).

Write for a movie industry trade publication

Write and produce PPV (VOD) media for Internet (for a company or yourself) 

Write video media for corporations (on staff or independent)

Write commercials for Internet, TV, or Theatrical release  

Write for television and Internet channels

Write and rewrite scripts for others without credit (many do this)

Write for live television shows 

There are thousands of writers in the industry (spread around the world) that do the above. and the jobs are more like a regular job, except just about EVERYBODY (ah, EVERYONE) is freelance.  I know a couple of full time writers in L.A. who make good money year-after-year, by writing anything that comes along. Literally, they've done all of the above, plus writing for games. You'd be surprised how much a gaming script looks and reads like a motion picture script. 

Hope this helps.

Stan 

Story Planning - Outlining - Breaking - Carding

The editable (and thus functional) Apple Keynote files used to illustrate this post can be downloaded for a small fee. See this link.

However they do it, successful-efficient-productive story writers plan - outline - "card" - or - "break" long form stories before they write.

I've recently completed working with four different writers, helping them to break (or Outline, Plan, or Card) their story, and guide them through with the script writing, rewriting, end editing process. 

Without becoming anal or planning too deeply, story planning of the major story beats, for both the main plot and the subplots, is easily accomplished (okay, nothing good is really easy) by using one or more visual methods for outlining the story.  I've used 4" X 6" index cards on a door wall with masking tape, and I've used color Post-It's on a 4' x 8' pice of masonite with the Story Diamond outlined on it. I've tried to use Final Draft's Beat Board, but still find it limiting in ways I find Keynote freeing. 

In the last few years I've found the use of Apple's KEYNOTE application on a Mac to be easy to use, flexible, and transportable. I emailed drafts of complex carding files (in Keynote) to Dubai, Beijing, Moscow, and and yes email works here in the U.S., too.  I like Keynote over PowerPoint because Keynote is easier to use in terms of duplicating cards, adjusting fonts, colors, card alignment, and the slide size (i.e. beat board) can be as large as 8,000 x 8,000 pixels. The "slides" can be shared in various fixed formats like jpg or PDF, or you can send off the entire keynote file.  If you'd like the keynote file that created the slides below (the file will work with Keynote 10 and later) just write and ask for it. I'll send it for free though email, or post a link for you to download.

If you've followed me I keep offering up different ways to break or card-out stories. These ideas come from working with different clients and their stories, which dictate what we need to create to facilitate the communication of the story beats, and how the story is structured.   So below are a few beat plates for Story Planning I've created in Keynote, with a few comments below each image. Related is this linked post on the 8 Mini-Movie Beat Plate.

Here are the slides (or beat plates). I think you can click on any image and see a larger version. These were saved as 8K square jpegs.

TRADITIONAL CARDS ON A TABLE OR WALL

The typical 3x5 or 4x6 cards written on with a felt pen and then stuck to a wall or laid-out on a table are also easy to move around and arrange in keynote. You can add highlights to the cards or use different color cards or pens to indicate scene breaks, turning points, climaxes, etc. Or you can use different rows or columns for the story sequences.

INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER ARC BREAKDOWNS

In the above graphic each column represents the plot or subplot for a character. Seeing the chronological ordering of cards like this (in one column, top to bottom) helps me to ensure that the beats are chronologically logical. Looking at the beats for a plot in sequence allows me to check if there is an easy to understand cause and effect relationship between the beats, as the story for that column progresses down. 

One column per subplot or character arc. The first card at the top of a column names the character or subplot and the character's physical goal.  The last card in the column should indicate the resolution of the goal. Somewhere in the middle is that subplot's Moment of Grace (MOG).  All subplots whether they are 3 beats (the minimum) or 20 need: (A) to focus on ONE character (even if that character is a town or ensemble); (B) a Physical Goal; ; (C) a MOG; thus leading to (D) the arc needs to be clearly redemptive (up), tragic (down), or ironic (a little up and down). Also, each arc should illustrate the Moral Premise for the story in different ways... and yes, all the subplots and arcs in a single story need to have a common Moral Premise. 

NOTE: There is NO relationship horizontally to the cards from one column to the next. A subplot with only 3 beats might not begin until the middle of the movie. Once these individual character subplots are chronologically laid out (as above), you would place them in a beat plate like the one below in one of the subplot rows... and arrange them chronologically with respect to the other beats of the other subplots. Being able to shift these beats/cards left and right (or add or subtract beats) is critical to story planning or beating out the story. 

The final thing I keep stressing is that the Protagonist or Hero has about 50% of all the dramatic beats in the whole story. Thus, Protagonist "A" may have 45 beats, and when you add up all the other character beats and all the other subplots you should have about 45 beats for the others as well. That means while the Protagonist has 45 beats, the next largest number of beats associated with a single character may be only 20. There should be no question about who the movie is about. See also Story Structure Basics

BLANK BEAT PLATE 8000 (not sure what to call this)

This beat plate is a derivation of the 8 Mini-Movie Beat Plate without the focus of the 8 Mini Movies. Time moves left to right. The color boxes down the left side (A-Z) identify each subplot. They should have text inserted in them that label the CHARACTER and their PHYSICAL GOAL for that subplot. "A" is the main plot and will have the most beats. Across the plate horizontally (in four places) are the traditional beat numbers (1-13 Major Beats), and a few ancillary beats explained in the Story Structure Basics post. The light blue vertical spaces indicate PINCH POINTS (PP) where the antagonist creates a challenge for the protagonist. They escalate from left to right. The dark blue vertical spaces indicate TURNING POINTS (TP) where the protagonist actually takes action to change the direction of the story, because of the Pinch Points. The gray spaces between the blue columns are sequences of multiple scenes that set up the PP or TB. The theory behind this "IDEAL" structure is that there is never a dull moment in your story, and there is a regular emotional roller coaster effect from beginning to end. The actual dynamics of the story, however, will not look this regular. This is theory, don't try to match it exactly. 

COMPLETE BEAT PLATE 8000

This is what the a completed beat plate may look like just prior to writing... obviously here without any of the text in the boxes (this is an actual beat plate for a client, used with permission). Notice all the white boxes in the main "A" plot. The plot lines A, B, C, and D all belong to the protagonist. Subplots T–Z belong to other characters, one of which is an institution (Z). The number of beats for the protagonist (A–D) is close to the number of beats for all the other subplots combined (T–Z).   The white boxes that are not in the A plot are notes and not actual beats. 

I hope you can see the advantage of BEAT PLATE 8000 compared TRADITIONAL CARDS. The completed beat plate lets you easily examine the beats's interplay and chronological juxtaposition of events, that the index cards on a table do not allow. 

And, yes, the rows in this BEAT PLATE 8000 (e.g the 8 beats/cards in the orange row) correspond to the column of 8 orange cards in the INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER ARC BREAKDOWNS graphic.   (But don't try to correlate the other columns with the beat plate above. The orange column and the orange row both having 8 beats was entirely coincidental. 

If you want me to help you on your story or script, see my Script Consulting Page.