Craig Frank (right) and Janna Bossier in Episode 1: Unleash

Thank you everyone for reading my previous blog on Writing and Structuring Drama for the Short Form.  I was worried that the subject matter would get too deep into the thinking I put into my craft as a writer. So now I follow it up with an even deeper writing blog post.

I’d like to showcase how I tried to make Compulsions a truly thematic based series. As a writer/story teller, one of the challenges I placed on myself in tackling this show was whether or not a short form web series could be presented thematically.  And adding to the challenge, could a short form series support not only an overarching theme, but showcase different individual themes from episode to episode.

Stanley Kubrick once said, “A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

This is another quote I absolutely love.  I feel, if done correctly, themes can deeply enrich the story for the audience at both a conscious and subconscious level. Many of my favorite stories of past and modern times can be attributed to strong central themes. For example Moby Dick was about Vengeance, and The Dark Knight was about Chaos. Of course one of the big differences between these stories of traditional mediums and any web series is the length of time. Would there be enough story time in a short season, and would there be enough time to do themes on an individual episode basis?

For our show in general, the theme (to me) is dealing with Internal Darkness. It’s in the framework for all three characters, Mark Sandler is a Sadist, Justine Davis is a Hunter, and Cassandra Morrissey is a Voyeur. Each character has a side of normalcy but on the inside  they have a darkness aka ‘compulsion’ that they let loose but keep controlled, and it is through these ‘compulsions’ that they achieve their release.

Though achieved, the general theme was the easy step. The much tougher task was to tell a different theme going from episode to episode.  Thus far our show has 8 episodes,  each episode runs between 3-6 minutes, and in each I’ve attempted to craft the story around an individual theme.

For this example I’m going to break down Episode 2: Friends. Which you can sample again below.

Though the title of the episode is “Friends”, the true theme of the episode is ‘levels of friendship’.

Here is the scene by scene breakdown.

1. Mark, declaring Justine as a friend, delivers the information to Justine.
2. Mark at the office dozing off, Randy rolls over and wakes him up, they have a very male/bros conversation about the what’s causing Mark’s sleepiness.
3. Mark in the Interrogation room with Adam as the interrogation continues
4. Mark at the Office – continuing scene 2 and continuing the male/bros conversation.
5. Mark in the Interrogation room – continuing scene 3. Where Mark finally gets the info he’s looking for but instead of rewarding Adam, he punishes him (“I am not his friend”)

Now as you look at the (in reality) 3 different scenes in this episode you see that Mark has three levels of friendship here.

Mark & Justine: In the short exchange you get the idea that these two know more about each other than any one else in the planet. There’s a high level of familiarity, comfort, and efficiency with one another.

Mark & Randy: In this exchange you have the two guys playing out a classic frat boy egging on scene but with a different spin as they are really talking about two different things. Also Randy thinks they’re much closer than they are.

Mark & Adam: This exchange is strictly business and in a sense very machiavellian. Mark gets the information he wants from Adam and instead of rewarding him or helping him. He instead swings a steel chair across his face.

So there you have it, a central specific episodic theme played out across one four minute episode of our show. Whether or not you agree, like, dis-like the use and execution of themes in our series is entirely up to your own subjective opinion.

Naturally I encourage you to re-watch Season 1 to pick out the details of the thematics of each episode, and across all episodes. I personally would love to see more stories on the web with an individiual thematic base, and I hope if anything that this post will help show a way it can be done.

If you haven’t already, check out my previous blog post about writing drama for the short form video which really breaks down the structuring of Episode 4: Solutions  and how you can tell two intertwining stories in such a short amount of screen time.

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