DZ-05: Shifting audience point of view and heightened emotions

Listen to learn about the most powerful tool in screenwriting: narrative POV.

Stu and Chas delve into audience point of view - not character point of view! Does your audience know more, less or the same as your characters? And does changing this within a scene trigger or heighten the desired emotional response?

To test this theory, we look to the genre that changes the audience's point of view the most: thrillers. So we analyse scenes and sequences from THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, ZERO DARK THIRTY and ARGO. As usual though, we can't help ourselves and also consider scenes from GROUNDHOG DAY, PHILOMENA and - of course - Stu refers to STAR WARS.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

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FILMS

• THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004) — (w) Robert Ludlum, Tony Gilroy (d) Paul Greengrass
• ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) — (w) Mark Boal (d) Kathryn Bigelow
• ARGO (2012) — (w) Chris Terrio (d) Ben Affleck

SCRIPTS

• Study the script: THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004) — Robert Ludlum, Tony Gilroy
• Study the script: ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) — Mark Boal
• Study the script: ARGO (2012) — Chris Terrio

LINKS

• YouTube: Hitchcock on Mastering Cinematic Tension
• Read: Lumina: New Thoughts in Screenwriting Prompted by the Thriller by Stephen Cleary
• YouTube: Beach and Goa car chase from THE BOURNE SUPREMACY
• YouTube: The bomb goes off from ZERO DARK THIRTY
• YouTube: Third checkpoint from ARGO airport sequence

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We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2014/dz-05/