The three-act structure is the way a movie can be divided up into sections. Hollywood uses this format which consists of the first, second and third acts.
The first act typically sets up the movie, introduces characters and gives the basic information. The next act introduces the plot of the movie or what will be trying to be fixed by the end of the movie. This is where all of the problems ensue and the complications occur. Act three begins with the climax of the movie, or where the conflict in resolved in a dramatic way usually. Act three is short and almost at the very end in the Hollywood style three act structure.
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The movie Mean Girls follows this style and structure well. The movie starts off with a girl, Cady, who moves to the United States to start high school after living her entire life home schooled in Africa. She attends school and makes friends with two conflicting groups of students, the “plastics”, or popular girls, and “the burnouts” which are the weird kids. Act two starts off when her friend Janice convinces Cady to pretend to be friends with “the plastics” and secretly sabotage their existence. Many ploys to secretly throw off the group take place and none get wise until the very end. The leader of “the plastics” gets wise and comes back with revenge, framing the rest of “the plastics” and Cady for writing a mean book of rumors of all the girls at the school. There is a school wide fight and the climax of the movie happens towards the very end when Cady fesses up to writing the book, when she really hadn’t. She restores order to the school and the group of girls disband, making new friends and no longer tormenting the school.
This structure has proven to make a good story and Hollywood continues to use this same formula.
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