Is there any way to spot where a new act begins?

[at Quark's]

Whenever I read an episode's description, on Memory Alpha, it is subdivided in several 'acts' (mostly five I believe). I'm assuming these 'acts' aren't just made up by the people writing the description and were really there in the original material as well.These divisions aren't however obvious to me when I'm just viewing the episode, whereas the finer subdivision into scenes usually is. Is there any way to spot these boundaries without looking to other sources?

More fundamental perhaps, does the notion of an 'act' still really serve a purpose in an episode for the average viewer? Or are they mostly there to establish a framework for the writers and the actors to work within?

 

[UnknownSample]

It just means the bits between commercials, I think.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Yes...some shows even displayed numbered act cards after commercials, e.g. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (which also had act titles) and Twelve O'Clock High. The original version of the "Where No Man Has Gone Before" pilot is supposed to have had them.

 

[DarkHorizon]

When you see the fade to black, that is the end of an act.

 

[at Quark's]

It just means the bits between commercials, I think.

Ah, right. I think I'd rather add the modifier 'as intended by the show's creator', though. I've seen T.V. channels interrupt an episode for commercials at any point, even in the middle of a scene and a conversation that was obviously meant to be shown in one go.

 

[The Wormhole]

I've seen T.V. channels interrupt an episode for commercials at any point, even in the middle of a scene and a conversation that was obviously meant to be shown in one go.

That's common in shows that were not filmed with commercial breaks in mind, this is common among BBC shows being shown outside of Britain. BBC does not do commercial breaks, so when the shows get shown outside of the UK, the channels have to cut into the show to work the commercial breaks in. Also, there are some cases where the commercial set-up is now different than when a show previously aired. I've seen this before, say a thirty minute show has three commercial breaks and is made accordingly, Then later, the channel has to work into a fourth for whatever reason, they will cut into the show at a point not originally intended to be a commercial cut-off.

And finally, some channels just screw up sometimes. I remember a show which just cut for commercials in the middle of a scene, and when it came back they did continue exactly where they left of, but after a minute they faded to black for the actual spot the commercial break was intended.

 

[Forbin]

Yeah, in TOS's time there were 4 commercial breaks, now there are 5 or 6 (feels like 12 sometimes), so any older show now has to have the breaks pop up at times where it wasn't meant to happen originally, royally screwing up the flow.

 

[MacLeod]

When you see the fade to black, that is the end of an act.

Though in some more modern shows such as NCIS they do it slightly differently with the B&W image.

 

[Albertese]

This kind of act structure is not in any way related to the three-act narrative structure that Western Literature has clung to since the plays of ancient Greece, however.

In that model (roughly) the acts conform to what's happening in the story. Act 1 introduces the characters and the problem they're facing, Act 2 shows them trying to deal with the problem but without success, and act 3 shows them realizing the answer to the problem and carrying that solution out. More or less. And this has nothing to do with commercial breaks.

TV shows on commercial television (and other stuff too, like Shakespeare plays for instance) use acts more like chapters in a novel. But if you hear someone analyzing a movie, let's say, and they're talking about the ending while referring to it as the "third act" they are speaking in the Greek Three Act structure sense of the term.

Of course, there are variations on that formula, but most stories fall into the mold pretty well.

--Alex

 

[Timewalker]

Whenever I read an episode's description, on Memory Alpha, it is subdivided in several 'acts' (mostly five I believe). I'm assuming these 'acts' aren't just made up by the people writing the description and were really there in the original material as well.These divisions aren't however obvious to me when I'm just viewing the episode, whereas the finer subdivision into scenes usually is. Is there any way to spot these boundaries without looking to other sources?

More fundamental perhaps, does the notion of an 'act' still really serve a purpose in an episode for the average viewer? Or are they mostly there to establish a framework for the writers and the actors to work within?

David Gerrold gives an excellent explanation of this in his book "The Trouble With Tribbles." It's an account of the making of that episode, including all the rewrites he and others did to make everything fit within the allotted time and have the action conform to the prescribed acts and lead up to the intended commercial breaks.

He describes it as having to write not one climax as would be done for a short story or novel, but several, and the most important was the one that would come at the halfway point in the show so the viewer wouldn't be tempted to change the channel.

 

[at Quark's]

That's common in shows that were not filmed with commercial breaks in mind, this is common among BBC shows being shown outside of Britain. BBC does not do commercial breaks, so when the shows get shown outside of the UK, the channels have to cut into the show to work the commercial breaks in.

I suppose that in our country, patterns of commercial breaks don't necessarily follow that of the US so that TV stations would have to improvise sometimes and just find a relatively opportune moment for such a break.

In fact, until I started this thread, it never even occurred to me that in the U.S., timing of such commercial breaks would be relatively standard, and that the scripting of TV shows would be taking advantage of that. But it makes perfect sense, I suppose.

 

[FreddyE]

Most of Trek used to be shown on SAT1 here in Germany...back in the day..during Voyager / DS9 First Runs here they used to do this very weird thing...not only did they insert commercials pretty much at random...but they "rewound" after every commercial break..so that about 1 to 3 minutes from before the break would be repeated. I guess it was to make live harder for people who recorded the show and then cut out the commercials.

 

[Mister Spock]

Sky One in the UK used to be guilty of bad advert placing. I remember watching Dinotopia and they had the teaser, the opening titles... then went into an ad break.

 

[Kor]

When it fades to black, and then fades back from black to the exact same setting (sometimes an identical frame/shot), then it's a new act.

Kor

 

[alensatemybuick1]

I recall seeing the version of WNMHGB with the "act cards" circa 1984 (shown along with the blooper reel that would travel the college circuit). Was done very much like "The Fugitive", or an old Quinn Martin production (like Barnaby Jones or Cannon).

BBC America shows TOS with a 1 hr and 10 minute run time, I've assumed to allow showing the episode show uncut (or nearly so?) with current commercial time requirements.

 

[Mojochi]

Just listen for the music cues

When the music on Star Trek reaches it's peaks, & then the show goes to black, that's usually a commercial break & the end of an act

 

[FormerLurker]

Sky One in the UK used to be guilty of bad advert placing. I remember watching Dinotopia and they had the teaser, the opening titles... then went into an ad break.

That's standard operating procedure for American TV shows. Sometimes they'll play with it; NCIS has the opening scene, the credits, and then the rest of the teaser, for instance. But even that still follows the standard protocol of the first ad break coming after the teaser/credit sequence.

 

[Christopher]

That's standard operating procedure for American TV shows. Sometimes they'll play with it; NCIS has the opening scene, the credits, and then the rest of the teaser, for instance. But even that still follows the standard protocol of the first ad break coming after the teaser/credit sequence.

Yeah, I grew up with shows doing the teaser/cold open, titles, commercial, and then Act One. I still find it weird that many shows today will go directly from the teaser to the title card to the first act instead of putting a break there. If there's no break, why not just put the title card at the beginning? (This is particularly the case with the Arrowverse shows, which have opening "explaining the premise" sequences that essentially are main title sequences aside from not having any actual, y'know, titles in them. It used to be that a sequence like that would contain the exposition, the title card, and the main cast credits, but these days all three of those things are done separately, and that seems so inefficient to me.

 

[FormerLurker]

I think they're trying to be "edgy", without realizing what edgy really is. Either that, or it's an attempt to make it "cinematic" without realizing that doesn't work with a TV format. It's really easy to make it boring, and that's bad.

 

[Christopher]

I think they're trying to be "edgy", without realizing what edgy really is. Either that, or it's an attempt to make it "cinematic" without realizing that doesn't work with a TV format. It's really easy to make it boring, and that's bad.

If you're replying to my point, then it's got nothing to do with that. Many of the conventions of how commercial TV is presented have to do with hooking the audience quickly so they don't change the channel and watch something else. Older shows often did it by giving previews at the start of the episode (shocking in today's spoilerphobic times). Teasers/cold opens developed for the same reason, giving viewers story before the main titles to catch their interest right away.

The reason for the changes in more recent decades is the relentless increase in commercial time, with ads taking up more and more of each hour. That required shows to become more compressed and efficient, and that's the reason long title sequences gave way to brief title cards and the practice of showing all the cast and crew credits at the start of the first act. Conversely, as TV grew more serialized, it became necessary for shows to have long intro/recap sequences, and those eventually evolved into what are effectively old-style main title sequences, but since it had already become a convention to show the title card and credits separately, they stayed separate.

Proper main title sequences are making a comeback in recent years, especially on streaming services and probably pay cable too; Netflix shows tend to have really long title sequences, up to 2 minutes. Without the time pressure created by commercials, there's room to include such extensive sequences without taking too much time from the story. But there are some commercial broadcast shows today that use them, e.g. Orphan Black and Killjoys.

Incidentally, movie credits have gone through a similar evolution. In early movies, they showed all the credits at the beginning, and only a recap of the cast list at the end. Then, as unions negotiated credits for more and more staffers, credit sequences got longer and they eventually moved most of them to the end so it wouldn't take so long to get into the story. Of course, some fillms adopted cold opens, like the James Bond films. And eventually we started getting films that held all their credits until the end. I think I read that George Lucas got in trouble with the unions for holding the credits to the end on Star Wars in 1977, but the practice quickly caught on and now it's uncommon for a movie to show its credits at the beginning.