eli5: What are “acts” in a movie/film and how are people able to figure out where they start/end? Are there always three acts? More? Less? Please explain.
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There can be more, there can be less. Three Acts is just a really easy template to follow.
*Act 1:* Here’s a normal person, living a normal life. But *SHOCK* something crazy just happened and he’s going on…
*Act 2:* An Adventure. Along this adventure he’ll meet new friends, new enemies, learn new skills, and grow as a person until he can…
*Act 3:* solve/fix the shockingly crazy thing that happened at the end of act 1.
It’s a very nice and neat outline, so if you’re writing a script for a movie, it can help you plan accordingly. And audiences are used to films in this format, even if only subconsciously… so it works out well. Partly, it just fits super nice and tight in a 90-120 minute run time of a standard Hollywood movie. You can totally [add more acts](https://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/e/five-act-structure), but you’ll need more time to work through them all… and you’ll note that even in that 5-act example, it’s broken down into 3 main groups (sorted by color)
Of course, movies can spice it up a bit. For just one example, Star Wars (the original 1977 movie) starts with some wiz-bang laser stuff before starting with Act 1 proper (Luke on the farm). Act 1 tends to be a bit boring, so a lot of movies do stuff that like to try and hook the audience from the start.
You can also make some acts longer, you can have an Act 1 that tries to hit the shocking revelation and go into act 2, but then *fakeout* we’re still in act 1 until some even MORE shocking thing happens. There are a lot of ways to play with the formula.
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