Feature Film Lesson:3 Act Structure. Act 2

So once you’ve set everything up in Act 1, Act 2 is where a multitude of obstacles are placed in our heroes path. If our film is going to last 90 minutes Act 2 is going to need to be around 45 minutes long. In a lot of ways the ‘set up’ is relatively easy to write, where as Act 2 is the real hard slog. Now we’re dealing with ‘confrontation’ (45 minutes of it) and development. Luckily there is a beacon to head to and it lies right in the middle of the whole film. This is the low point. This is the point where everything has gone tits up. Things could not look worse. Before the low point perhaps the protagonist has been close to achieving their goals but then it all falls apart on them.