Analysing the advantages of Aristotle’s two-act structure in comparison with Syd Field’s three-act structure in short comedic animation scriptwriting

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates Aristotle’s two-act structure as an alternative for short comedic animation scriptwriting, and examines its advantages in comparison with Syd Field’s three-act structure. In this study, I am more interested in independent short form animation that finds comedy in dramatic situations, rather than being directly constructed as a series of gags. In certain cases, the three-act structure has been attributed to Aristotle. However, as Tierno implies, Aristotle merely suggests a two-act structure in his Poetics, consisting of complication and denouement, which has similarities to and even overlaps with Syd Field’s three-act structure (set-up, confrontation, resolution), so that they have been assumed to be identical by mistake. Meanwhile, there are subtle differences between the two structures, which will be separately discussed in this article. The three-act structure is widely used in Hollywood live-action and animation features. It is also applicable in short scripts but it sometimes appears to encumber, especially in very short animations. A short animation scenarist, who tries to be as minimal as possible, may not want to sacrifice the clarity of the story for the sake of this brevity. By applying an adaptive approach with an analytical-descriptive method, the present article shows how, in Aristotle’s two-act structure, it is possible to create a structured story in the shortest possible form by omitting the ‘set-up’ section and stepping into the heart of the story. The findings of the study reveal that the two-act structure could be a suitable alternative for comedic plots in which stereotypical characters appear as protagonists and the audience is not expected to spend much time building deep identification with them.