Jeff Bedrick that’s a bit simplistic. Maybe you need to watch it again.

HAHAHAHA. Comon man, he also gave suggestions. 😂

oh the irony

Haha, that’s funny. However, he’s not writing a movie, he’s teaching a lesson and in lessons information does need to be repeated many times in many ways.but it tells you something about bad films - they’re lessons which is why they’re a chore to watch!

he has to repeat it so people like you understand. Read the comments in here, he said for 10 minutes dont use repetition, and the comments are like "ohhhhh well,...you can use it sometimes" (facepalm)

Zsanine Turner The first season was the only good thing about it.

Yeah I feel old.

ikr! I feel the same. If he could be my every day teacher tho smh, I would feel like a fucking genius

+Giorgi Gudiashvili I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this video was uploaded three years ago and there don't seem to be any sequels. not on this channel anyway.

Was that Barbarella or Barbed Wired?

You are starting to get it.

youre not listening, you havent learned anything. You feel some repetitions are necessary. The whole 10 minute lesson says DONT USE REPETITION

An Morein agreed. Top comment totally misses the point. forgive the repetition...

No. That's a fallacy. There's no "perfect choice", specially not when "constrained by time".. and by that I mean a real limit and the point in which you decide to move forward to another project. Creativity cannot be forced, and a better choice might appear suddenly in your head years later when nothing can be changed. It's a matter of fate most of the time.. and the best that is within reach.

@@Big_Dai That is true. The "best choice" is indeed limited by time and ability.

Sound Foundation Entertainment Kevin Hemingway?

Colonel Neville - Ernest Hemingway

Exposition is information needed for the audience to understand the story, so when there's too much it takes you out as it no longer becomes about developing the plot organically becuase the film is essentially talking to you

Most films have to have some level of exposition. How the information is presented determines how it fits in the film.

He's obviously not going to go into exceptions. He's passing out the general rules. If you're good enough, you know how, when and if you must break them.

Hodor, saying, "Hodor," is a trope. Not dialogue.

I don't think he's suggesting that there can never be repetition. Sometimes it can be used to good effect, but it's rare to find. In the example he gave the problem is not that one character is trying to convince another to listen to them and asks three times. It's that it doesn't move along because the writer has not found the right words.

Thanks, Michael.. interesting points. I wanted to say that I browsed your site and enjoyed many components.. might have to buy one of those books!

You can repeat objects, lines of dialogue (set-up and pay-off like "I see you" in Avatar"). And so on. The "Southpark" running gags are famous. The problem is when you repeat again and again, back and forth, the same emotion or the same line of dialogue or the same tactic. If a charater don't achieve what he want saying "Come to me to California" as in Good Will Hunting, she/he will try another thing. She/he can inquire "Why you don't want to go with me?". After receive a new "no", she will try something else, and so on. She can cry (in a domestic drama)? Or get a gun in a thriller. Paul Thomas Anderson repeat the same line of dialogue sometimes. "Fuck you", "Fuck you", "Fuck you"! But if you take a closer look, there is a tiny of difference between each "fuck you". There is a escalation of conflict.

He's referring to repetition as a means to convey power in language. It doesn't work. He's absolutely right in that repeating the same thing over and over in order to give it more impact will not work.

So does Mamet. But these guys do it intentionally, where the repetition is the point. You know, like in Glengary Glen Ross, over and over "Are we talking about this?" "Yeah, we are talking about it." "I mean are we discussing it?" "I don't know if we are discussing it. We're just talking. Sure." "Talking about this?" "Yeah, okay, we are discussing it...." Brilliant dialogue but only to show the frustration, where the repetition is the frustration, the repetition is in the characters trying to clarify. Stuff like this has to be done intentionally and by someone as brilliant and skillful as Mamet. If it is done accidently by a new screenwriter, that script will read like sludge.

Zayd Depaor And terrible music. So many films ruined by skimpy music budget recently.

savedfaves Yes and terrible plot....just saw a movie perfect example of awful plot...Red Light 2012....had some atmosphere, started well....then destroyed itself, like it was written by a 12yr old....incoherent, inconsistent and stupid... filmmakers need to learn that supposed 'twists' are not necessary....if every twist was clever then the shortest route between two points would be a zigzag, but it isn't!

What about Wes Anderson? The man makes it his mission to make you constantly aware you’re watching a film, but most of his films are great or at least entertaining for what it is.

Realistic dialogue is boring. We can get that at a thursday night bridge game. If I am going to pay $15 for a 2 hour movie, I want more than Aunt Betty's banana bread recipe.

Tom Park Well, all his parts are in the usual places I believe.

+Colonel Neville Point for you buddy :D But seriously, where to find the rest of the parts OF this series? :)

joaquinlucom123 but then it isn’t just repeating the same action. It becomes relevant in a different context.

But that's important to the story. He's talking about useless shit dialogue being repeated

He's referring to the beat not actual words repeated in a character's speech, though sometimes words can in fact repeat beats.

It's been said before, know the rules before you break them. Although I don't think that Scorsese was even breaking the rules there like McKee mentions here, he was going inside the mind of a psychopath. "Listen here you fuckers, you screwheads, here is a man who would - listen here you fuckers, you screwheads, here is a man who would not take it anymore, here is a man who would not --" Bickle was a very troubled man with no purpose, angry at everyone and no one for his shortcomings in life. That little bit only reveals this element to his character as he was writing on his journal, normally changing his purpose as he is writing in his journal. It's symbolic of his own insanity, wandering left and right, so much we don't know what he will do until he saves the girl. It points to all indications that we literally do not know what exactly is boiling up in Bickle's mind.

migol1984 Bickle might be insane, but I would say the mirror monologue is very similar to what how most regular talk when practicing a speech or something in the mirror :) Using a monologue isn't a great example to prove my point though. Another one would be the "it's not your fault" from Good Will Hunting. In fact I would say repetition quite often creates very memorable scenes.

+BenRangel he is saying what he is writing in his journal.

+BenRangel we never actually see him speak those words, let alone in front of a mirror. watch it again. everything is voice over. we are in bickle's mind.

cannae216 elaborate please

+Kay Tee lol

Actually, he mentioned writing dialogue as an amplified version of real life communication, where he talks about literacy talent, using the right words, phrases. In screenwriting, writing in a way that people communicate in real life works, one could get away with it but the most memorable moments, words or dialogues are the ones that are quite unusual but yet meaningful in relation to the scene. Hope this helps.

thank you

Hi Martin! You ask a good question. This is only my amateur view. Dialogue in novels or screenplay is not "normal" conversation is what I gather. Dialogue in a story is difficult to write because it is not "normal" conversation yet you must do your best to make it sound normal. The dialogue is a means of conveying information where what is being said carries meaning to the story. For that reason it is not normal conversation. That is why Robert tells one to record oneself like for example at their job with coworkers. Play it back later and it doesn't really have a lot of meaning. Dialogue in story serves two purposes, one for sounding natural and two for conveying some kind of meaning or information relative to the story you are writing. That's just my take on it all. To anyone, let me know if I'm wrong. I hope I helped.

Fuck off and shut up you mc chicken shitting broke ass third grade drop out

***** Hey, if I haven't said the exact same things once, I've said it a thousand times...

+Boyd McCollum I'm 3 minutes in and he hasn't repeated anything and you'd have way for downvotes than upvotes if youtube wasn't so pc

***** no, McKee was just being banal in the first 3 minutes, with some repetition, then he really took off. And repeated himself again and again and again, over and over. Again. I'm okay with down votes from those idolizing RM. Even if they didn't watch the whole 9'14. The deeper issue you and others are missing is that his lesson is just wrong. His understanding of beats is flawed, and the banality of his observations on "repetition in dialogue" is like a lenght of 2"x4" whacking the viewer over the head. Over and over again and again. The worse thing a beginning writer could do is take this lesson to heart.

+Boyd McCollum "I'm okay with down votes from those idolizing RM." Ah, so you're mad McKee is respected and you are trolling his video like a theist on a Richard Dawkins video. Your whiney comment makes sense now.

Mehdi Husain Imagine he has to make a living. Crazy times. The KZfaq generation of "I want everything for free and I want it now". I mean, how dare he charge for teaching people how to write. The screenwriter of Captain Philips said he learned a huge amount from taking McKee's class. I think he deserves some props.

+savedfaves Normally I leave idiots alone, but I feel (as a man who attended Mckee seminar) that he deserves some respect. 60 people who have attended his seminar have won oscars (Including Ed Saxon who worked on Silenced of the lambs, 200 have won Emmy, 50 have won DGA and 100 WGA. Sorry I reply to your comment. Just want to help you nail this 2 year old comment in its coffin.

+BabaYaga Come on. Nobody attacked McKee here. He's a fine teacher and a wise man. He seems to be far from obtuse and from the books, the interviews and the KZfaq clips one can deduce that he has enough humour to laugh at a grammatical mistake in a lesson about faulty dialog. Please, leave idiots alone and don't join them.

+Mehdi Husain oooh. so, so sorry. Thought you were insulting mckee, My bad

:) Is this real ? Were we this close to troll each other and we stopped ? (thanks to you) In my arms !

Karla York -- This comment is from an iconic disrespectful moron who'll never make it as a screenwriter.

I actually thought he gave very helpful examples of types of repetition. The difference between repetition and actual content in dialogue.

There is a difference between actual movie dialogue and lecturing about proper use of dialogue.

Pedagogical language is based on repetition...

Repetition and reiteration have a place, perhaps, in human discourse. What McKee is pointing out is that it does not work at all in movie dialogue. Every bad script or B movie I see commits these errors, saying the same things again and again because they failed to find the essence of what they want to sa and thus to say it only once.