Inside Job
Divide the argument into causal chapters and repeatedly connect abstract mechanisms to decision-makers, rewards, and damage.
THE STORYTELLING PROBLEM
How do you explain an interconnected economic catastrophe without losing narrative momentum?
THE STRUCTURAL SOLUTION
Divide the argument into causal chapters and repeatedly connect abstract mechanisms to decision-makers, rewards, and damage.
STRUCTURAL MAP
Establish Institutional Investigation and the central dramatic question
Teach the audience how to read the people, world and evidence
Expand the problem through interviews and graphics
Let Outrage complicate the original premise
Change the meaning of information the audience already possesses
Resolve the emotional movement without overstating certainty
INFORMATION-RELEASE STRATEGY
The film establishes its central question early, then controls when each form of evidence can meaningfully answer or complicate it.
Information is valuable only when it changes the viewer's understanding of character, causality or consequence.
The ending resolves the film's emotional movement while preserving any uncertainty essential to the subject.
CHARACTER SYSTEM
The person or collective carrying the central dramatic movement
The force, institution, geography or internal condition restricting change
People who translate context and consequence
The character through whom the audience most clearly feels the stakes
EVIDENCE SYSTEM
Primary evidence carrying action and presence
Context and interpretation that changes meaning
A supporting form used for proof, texture or transition
METHODS IN THE FIELD
Chapter a complex argument
Complexity becomes story when causality is staged as a sequence of choices.
Follow incentives
Follow the reward system to find the human engine of an institution.
Translate mechanisms visually
Complexity becomes story when causality is staged as a sequence of choices.
Return abstraction to accountability
Follow the reward system to find the human engine of an institution.
WHAT AN EDITOR CAN STEAL
01Complexity becomes story when causality is staged as a sequence of choices.
02Follow the reward system to find the human engine of an institution.
APPLY IT TO YOUR FILM
- What is the hardest storytelling problem in your material?
- Which structural form turns that limitation into an advantage?
- Does every kind of evidence have a distinct narrative job?
- Where does the audience's central question change?
- What uncertainty should the ending preserve?