DZ-113: Tools For Filmmakers To Talk To The Audience

Listen if you want to explore how you can make your creative hand visible through meta-storytelling and structural choices!?!

In our final (ha!) episode looking at Talking Directly to the Audience, we turn away from character-and-text based craft tools to look at other ways that filmmakers - whether they be directors, writers, editors, or anyone else - can make the audience feel their 'hand' more. To that end, Mel, Stu and Chas dive into ADAPTATION, STORIES WE TELL and THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION.

We discuss structure (in particular how to structure more meta stories), the influence of TikTok and YouTube in portraying character authenticity, how to set up scenes where your characters can actually debate what your story is really about., and get into the gritty of where "in the story world" the communication from the filmmakers is.

Ultimately, in exploring these three powerful films through this lens, we discover that these tools give filmmakers more control in conveying their theme. Quelle surprise.

This episode brought to you by (drum roll) ArcStudio: go to https://www.arcstudiopro.com/draftzero for $30 off a pro subscription!

Thanks to Chris Walker for his excellent editing this episode.

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

I would guess that some of the most watched content in the world has people talking directly to the camera and that's stuff that people watch on YouTube.

— stu

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→ Read the transcript for this episode.

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CHAPTERS

• 00:00:00 – Cold Open
• 00:00:28 – The Meta of Meta
• 00:11:01 – Adaptation
• 00:36:43 – Sponsor: Arc Studio Pro
• 00:39:40 – Adaption (Part 2)
• 00:42:23 – Stories We Tell
• 01:12:13 – The Forty Year Old Version
• 01:48:14 – Wrap Up & Key Learnings
• 02:01:24 – Many thanks to our Patreons <3

FILMS

• ADAPTATION (2002) — (w) Charlie Kaufman, Susan Orlean (d) Spike Jonze
• STORIES WE TELL (2012) — (w) Sarah Polley
• THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION (2020) — (w) Radha Blank

EPISODES IN THE TALKING DIRECTLY TO THE AUDIENCE SERIES

• DZ-109: Talking DIRECTLY to your audience
• DZ-110: Voiceover
• DZ-111: Unreliable Narrators and FIGHT CLUB
• DZ-112: Breaking the 4th wall
• DZ-113: Tools For Filmmakers To Talk To The Audience

RELATED EPISODES

• DZ-53: Antagonists! 5 - vs Audience
• DZ-109: Talking DIRECTLY to your audience
• DZ-110: Voiceover
• DZ-111: Unreliable Narrators and FIGHT CLUB
• DZ-112: Breaking the 4th wall

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Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2024/dz-113/