Freytag's Pyramid on Dragon Heart

Dragon Heart plot using Freytag's Pyramid

Freytag's Pyramid is a normal structure of a Shakespear or Greece film with some modern movies following it. The Pyramid is a structure that has been in use quite often and shows how many movies have been structured. It is seperated into 5 seperate stages. Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and finally Denouement. Lets start with the first one Exposition.

Exposition

Exposition is the starting point of the story. This is when important background information is talked about, it is also when the characters get set up into the universe and when the story kicks off. This bit of the pyramid is used in almost every movie that's highly rated as you do need to give some story right at the start to make a movie good. This bit is used in Dragon Heart since right at the start of the movie moments leading up to the main story play out, giving background information and setting up our main characters.

Rising Action

Rising Action is the events that lead up to the big turning point, the Climax. For example in Dragonheart when Bowen meets Kara that is the start of the rising action as the two slowly become friends, hope is given to the main characters and they begin to rally the people for a battle. The battle will obviously be the Climax. In these series of scenes, the main characters change from "oh no our life is bad we got no chance" to "oh yeah we gonna beat dem up".

Climax

The climax of a movie is when usually in this type of movie the good guys fight the bad guys. All the rising action leads up to this and this is when the main characters switch positions of power. The bad guys are no longer in the lead and the good guys are now. In Dragonheart, the climax is when the massive fight begins leading right up to the final duel which is the falling action bit of this movie.

Falling Action

Falling action is usually the final duel between the main characters. With either the good guy or bad guy winning, usually, this bit of the movie will begin closing of the story with a satisfying ending and possibly an unexpected plot twist. In Dragonheart, this is the final duel between EIonin and Bowen resulting in Draco and Eionins death.

Denoument

Denoument is when the story is wrapped up with usually a happy ending if the heroes won or a sadder darker ending if the evil guy win. In Dragonheart, this is of course when Eionin is shown dead and the heroes look at Dracos dead body. With Draco's body then disappearing and him talking to Bowen the story is wrapped up in a satisfying ending for the audience.