Make sure your audience is engaged in the scene's or sequence's principle character(s).
Generally, I'm interested here in talking about the film's central character1 for the sake of moving the discussion along. What is it that draws us to a character? Here's a brief list:
Considering Jerry Maguire for a moment, then, against this list:
We're initially drawn to Maguire because he's idealistic, and passionate about his idealism. The first thing we learn about him, really, is that he undergoes a conversion of sorts to this new idealism when he visits his client, the injured hockey player, in the hospital, and regrets urging the player to return to the game, against the wishes of the player's wife and son, who are worried that another blow to the head will cause him permanent injury. The film uses the fact that we can identify with the young son's concern for his father to allow us to understand Maguire's bold move to write the manifesto he does in his hotel room, in which he repudiates nearly every principle that governs the business of sports agents. Maguire's motivation is clear here, because the film remembers that his motivation is not as important as the audience's motivation; films' succeed in engaging us when characters act, yes, out of their impulses, but more importantly act in response to the audience's desires.
When Maguire reacts as he does, we're drawn to him for this very reason, that he gives voice and action to our responses. We're also drawn to Maguire because he's a victim for a noble cause; that is, once he gives voice and action in response to our desires, he loses his job, and we're engaged because of the sacrifice he made, or was forced to make, for committing an action that responded to one of our needs. The film further makes Maguire a victim in that he loses every client he has, save for two--Rod Tidwell and the young college quarterback who expects to be the first draft choice. Further, the film draws us to Maguire because of the way he loses his clients--by following the very dictum that he set out in his manifesto--to be concerned less with money and more with the human being who is his client. We're drawn to Maguire because we watch as he listens to Tidwell's ranting while, at the same time, we see his former protégé steal his clients away, one by one. Later, Maguire loses his fiancé after he has also lost the young quarterback as a client (further loss), and he doesn't handle it well, getting drunk (vulnerable). Further, we're drawn to Maguire because of the relationship he has with Dorothy and Dorothy's son. The film invites us to like Dorothy, because, when we first meet her, we witness someone who has unrequited longing--to share the life of passengers in first-class, then shows us that she is a good mother (likeable, identification), and then exploits our romantic impulse for everyone to be happy by making us then desire for Dorothy and Jerry to get together. Lastly, in the sequence we watched, we're manipulated further to be drawn to Maguire because of his loss of Dorothy, when she breaks up with him. Near the end of nearly every conventional film, the protagonist will appear to lose, or be in danger of losing, that which is most precious to him or her.
2. Given the above--that the film has engaged us in the protagonist--a film must make the stakes as high as possible, and make certain that we know how high the stakes are, if it's to manipulate successfully our emotional response.
In Jerry Maguire, the stakes are clear in the sequence I want to analyze:
High stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes, high stakes.
3. Juxtapose highs with lows, lows with highs. Consider the emotional response you wish to elicit ultimately and construct it by first leading your audience to experience its opposite. For example, if you want your audience to feel triumphant, build to it by first manipulating them to experience defeat.
You see this kind of pairing in every film; films are, in many ways, a kind of manic depressive exercise--we feel low, we feel high, and almost that quickly. Jerry Maguire wants us to feel triumphant at the ending, and so it forces us to that response by constructing a sequence like so:
You cannot achieve an emotional response in a vacuum, but must plot it carefully on a spectrum. We must have a point of reference--okay, the film wants us to feel high, but what does it mean by high? How high? It's all relative, and we achieve the context for the defeat or victory by the film's careful construction of this spectrum.
As a corollary to this, bad things must happen at the worst time.
For example, in Cast Away, Chuck Noland's plane must go down right after he was on the verge of asking Kelly to marry him--and, to a lesser, extent, the page that pulls him away from her must come in the middle of a Christmas dinner, and at a moment at which the levity is the greatest. In Gladiator, Maximus must be captured and sentenced to death immediately as he was on the verge of going home to see him wife and son. In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Li Mu Bai must die at the moment he is most free to act on his love Shu Lien. In American Beauty, Lester must be shot at the moment he has discovered contentment.
As an additional corollary to his, good things must happen at the moment things seem most bleak.
For example, in High Fidelity, Rob and Laura must reconcile immediately after Laura's father's death. In Erin Brockovich, the man who provides the key information for the case against PG&E must be the person we have been suspicious about, and he has to provide the information just at the moment we are most concerned about Erin's safety.
4. Patience is everything, and suspense is everything. Be willing to make your audience feel uncomfortable, make them fret, make them anxious, and only then you give them the antidote--that is, you relieve the suspense, give them the answer, and the answer they want, if it's a triumphant moment you're looking for, and the answer they fear, if it's not a triumphant moment you want.
Jerry Maguire understands this. In order for us to celebrate when Tidwell rises from the turf, we must be at our vicarious wit's end. The film has to tease us for a long while, make us wait for what seems an inexorable time while Tidwell is on the ground, while his wife frets, while Maguire frets, while the announcers fret while the stadium--that had exploded into an ecstatic cry of victory when he scored--sits silent. The sequence continues for an incredible (and risky) three minutes--it's three minutes from the time that Tidwell hits the turf and when he starts to stand up. That's more than two percent of the entire running time of the film, an eternity in film time. Remember that suspense is really just the taxing of an audience's patience, and that suspense--which is also really just a moment in which the film frustrates our desire (to know what happens) makes us feel anxious--we want to get on with the story. We're like kids at Christmas--we want to open the package, but our parents are saying, no, you have to wait for your grandma to get here. For us to celebrate with Tidwell, we first have to fear the worst. The film makes this moment even more complex, however--it gives us the wife's hysteria at the sight of her husband down on the field; it gives us Maguire's (possibly empty) promises to her, raising the stakes that Tidwell must be all right; it also, smartly, gives us targets for anger--we're upset that Tidwell is hurt--it's not fair, we think, that Tidwell and Maguire should have come so far and then lost everything. We're pissed off and the film focuses that anger, in two places. First, at 45 seconds into the segment in which Tidwell lies on the ground, Monday Night Football cuts away to a commercial. Tidwell's wife gives voice, here, to our frustration--we want to see Tidwell, we want to see if he's all right, but for 45 seconds, the film does not show him to us. It shows the insipid commercial; it shows Tidwell's wife, hysterical; it shows Maguire assuring her. But what's really going on here, what's important, is the film's frustration of our desire, taken to a higher level--we want to know what happened to Tidwell, and we want to see Tidwell. So, when MNF cuts to a commercial, we are angry at the commercialization of the moment of tragedy. Immediately, as well, Tidwell's brother makes a smart remark--I knew he was too small for the NFL. Tidwell's wife explodes in anger, but she just gives voice to our own anger at his insensitivity. The film is shrewd here--it makes our emotional response more complex by focussing our anger, but it's also, in a way, refocussing our anger, away from the cinematic event and toward an object in the film, the commercial, the brother. Which brings us to another point--layer the emotional response you want to generate, make it complex, a kind of Chinese restaurant menu of responses, one from column one and one from column two and so on. We see the same principle at work in the scene that immediately follows Tidwell's rising from the turf, unhurt, triumphant. In the corridor outside the locker room, Tidwell is exultant, and he shares that with his wife--but here's poor Jerry, all the more alone, and the moment is bittersweet for him, and for us--and the film then allows us to accept Maguire's about face. He's now ready to tell his wife he'll give his soul to her, and we accept this, because his forlornness and ours at the fact that he doesn't have her at this moment of triumph means that, when he runs back to her, he's exercising our desire, not only his.
5. Conventional films generally give us a loser we despise to contrast with the victorious protagonist we like, and generally that loser appears in the scene in which the protagonist achieves his ultimate victory.
Think about the end of nearly any conventional film, one in which the protagonist succeeds in his/her quest. Generally, the film increases our emotional response-that of feeling jubilation at the protagonist's victory-by allowing us to feel, at the same time, that all of the injustice suffered by the protagonist is avenged by the humiliation, death, loss of another character-it's love touched with hatred, hatred touched with love. Clearly, sometimes this figure is the chief antagonist-Luke Skywalker's destruction of the Death Star v. Darth Vader's spinning off, impotently, into space in Star Wars; John McClane's tearful reunion with his wife v. Hans Gruber's plummeting to the Los Angeles street in Die Hard; Ed Exley's triumph vs. Dudley Smith's death in L.A. Confidential (and note that our feeling of satisfaction for Smith's death is increased because we believe he has just cold-bloodedly murdered Bud White); William Munny's redemption/victory vs. the death of Little Bill Daggett in Unforgiven, and so on. In Erin Brockovich, we need the characters of the slick lawyers, particularly the female lawyer who stands in contrast to Errin's earthiness. In Jerry Maguire, as in many films, the relationship between protagonist and antagonist is not so black-and-white. Sure, there is a figure who tries to prevent Maguire from succeeding, his former protégé, Bob Sugar, who fires him and takes away nearly all of his clients, but the film does not center on the relationship between Maguire and Sugar, in the same way that it's Gruber v. McClane in Die Hard. Yet, near the end of Maguire, when he has his moment of triumph, when Tidwell makes his catch and his big contract is assured, and Tidwell publicly acknowledges Maguire and their friendship, one of Sugar's clients (I think it's Troy Aikman) asks him why they don't have a relationship like that. Maguire's victory is not so much a defeat for Sugar, yet the film exploits our hatred of Sugar and his small comeuppance to increase the emotional impact of that scene.