Digital media and creative industry people were invited along when storytelling legend Robert McKee arrived at Tyneside Cinema last Monday with his famous touring seminar and sharp tongue.

Two intensive days later the audience had heard about Aristotle’s classical story design, practical points on how to structure a story and that modern European cinema sucks.

After 25 years of teaching about storytelling, McKee doesn’t really need to watch his words. Having the likes of John Cleese and Charlie Kaufman as regular clients is surely a good reference.

Even so, about a quarter of the first day’s attendees failed to make it back on the second day of the seminar. Whether it was the American’s controversial ideas about European cinema’s drastic decline since the 70s or simple schedule issues, who knows, at least those that returned seemed to agree with Cleese and Kaufman.

Everything has a purpose

All things considered, the two-day-seminar wasn’t the easiest to attend. Not only were the house rules strict – no tweeting or sneaking to the toilet – but the presentation methods weren’t the most innovative ones. The first day was nine hours of pure talking and on day two, the words were spiced up with a few slides courtesy of that most modern of technologies – the overhead projector.

Ascetic as it sounds, it’s admittedly quite appropriate if you think of the old practice-what-you-preach adage.

Story is what McKee sees as the heart of it all. The storywriter is the architect and the rest are merely interpreters. McKee doesn’t come across as a great admirer of directors.

“If you give the same story to two different directors, you will have two different movies. If you give a director 120 blank pages, most of them can’t do anything,” he told the seminar attendees.

According to McKee, storytelling is more or less manipulation. In all great stories everything has a purpose. The objective is to spark certain emotions in the audience and story construction is the means to do it.

Secret to a great story?

However controversial some of McKee’s comments have been, there’s no denying his experience or abilities as a performer.

Arto Polus, a media production graduate from the University of Sunderland, attended the seminar and was, if not brainwashed, at least impressed by both the subject and the delivery.

“He certainly mastered all the rhetorical tricks. Punch-lines came at the right times even though the jokes didn’t always work.”

Arto left the seminar with a good feeling, focusing on the interesting bits and not getting too hung up on McKee’s views.

“He even said it himself, ‘it’s form, not a formula’. Some of his own favourite films have their stories constructed contrary to the classical story design.

“From the point of view of a storyteller, I found the two days really useful, but not everything needs to be taken literally. If you intend to be a screenwriter, you’d kind of hope to be able to think for yourself as well.”

So was there a secret tip to a great story McKee shared with the audience?

“No. Before constructing the script and working out the details, you have to have the story in your head, do the research and have a clear idea of what’s gonna happen. There’s no trick to that.”