Messing with the MacGuffin

Earlier today, Tom Woodward tweeted the ds106 community a link to a blog post entitled, “8 Lines That Would Have Ended Star Wars Real Fast.” The post is a fabulous riff on script writing, imagining how a movie might turn out if the characters acted differently at a particular moment. And what makes the post so satisfying is the screen-cap from the film matched with the divergent dialogue.

Of course re-envisioning a movie’s plot steering moments makes perfect ds106 grist for the assignment mill. So I posted the assignment on behalf of Tom and entitled it, “Messing With the MacGuffin.” Alfred Hitcock popularized the term, to describe the moment in a story that get’s the “hero up the tree.” Without the macguffin the audience doesn’t get to see the tree shaken again and again and follow the hero’s response.

So for this assignment, stop the hero and let her know, “Hey you might not want to climb that tree. It looks really dangerous.”

Todd Conaway deserves credit for jumping aboard and submitting the first assignment with, “I’m Just Not Ready For This.” And though I’m going to put this into the syllabus next week as a must do (tutorial to come), I couldn’t wait either.

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2 responses to “Messing with the MacGuffin”

  1. […] the Spring version. And when I saw his latest post it led me to Michael Branson Smith’s post here which then led me to the genesis of the idea here. And then when I realized it waswas thereafter […]

  2. […] off Messing with the MacGuffin, playing with a pivotal point in a movie where the story could go one way or another- with the help […]