August 24, 2018

Watch: What ‘Seven Samurai’ Teaches Screenwriters About Story and Structure

Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Seven Samurai’ is one of the most influential films in cinema history. Here’s what the 1954 classic teaches us about screenwriting and structure.

As Jack from (Jack’s Movie Reviews) remarks at the beginning of his video, Seven Samurai’s influence on popular film (and particularly, American film) is vast. Countless filmmakers, including George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, have drawn inspiration from Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece, and its characters, shots, scenes and even “narrative beats” have been quoted time and again.

Jack’s video focuses on the film’s script and story, written by Kurosawa along with longtime-collaborators Hideo Oguni and Shinobu Hashimoto, the latter of whom passed away last month at the age of 100. Specifically, he looks at how the film’s structure plays a large part in taking what could be two potential problems—its huge number of characters and epic length—and “not only mitigate…but turn them into assets.”

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Source: NoFilmSchool