Writing the Short Film, 3rd Edition

15

The Hyperdrama

Hyperdrama is in many ways far from both melodrama and docudrama. Although it maintains the basic structural elements and places a conflictual main character against a plot, hyperdrama is the opposite of the tonal realism and factual realism so central to the other two meta-genres. In this sense, excessive exaggeration and fantasy are both key ingredients of the hyperdrama. Although the analogy to the fairy tale is too restrictive, the parallels are there—the predominance of elemental moral struggle. In “Little Red Riding Hood,” the danger is known, the wolf, and the moral struggle concerns respect for one’s elders. How different is the story in the Star Wars trilogy, where respect for one’s elders is modernized? In the trilogy, ...