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Climax
Every episode covering Climax.
"In these final few pages, all the choices are with Patrick and Art."
— Chas Fisher | DZ-114: Climaxes in CHALLENGERS
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DZ-114: Climaxes in CHALLENGERS
How does ending your story on the climax affect audience experience?
AI✦Mel and Chas examine what it means structurally and thematically when filmmakers choose to end their story at the climax rather than after it, using CHALLENGERS as a case study in how that choice reshapes audience experience.✦
Listen to understand how withholding resolution can make your story great!
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While Stu is on show, Mel and Chas sit down to analyse the meaning behind the ending of 2024’s CHALLENGERS, especially when - upon reading the script - the most impactful moment of the ending on screen (for Chas in particular) is not written on the page… →
Films:
Challengers (2024)
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DZ-24: Forging story rules in TV pilots
Are your story rules in your pilot strong enough to play out over the life of your show?
AI✦Chas and Stu pay particular attention to the final acts of these pilots, examining how the climactic moments crystallize the dramatic, literary, and cinematic rules that will sustain the entire series.✦
Listen if you wanna know great television pilots establish the dramatic, literary, and cinematic rules that sustain their entire run.
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Stu and Chas move away from the world of features and dive into the Pilot Episodes of some (New) Golden Age Television: THE SHIELD, THE WIRE, BREAKING BAD, and MAD MEN. And we sneak in some discussion about ANGEL, THE SOPRANOS and GAME OF THRONES… →
DZ-119: Final Character Choices & Great Endings
How do you dramatise a protagonist's internal journey through their final decision?
AI✦Michael Arndt’s framework that a character must make the most difficult decision where each alternative poses both loss and gain is what transforms a climax into a crisis, and Stu traces this structure across all five examples.✦
Listen if you want to understand how to better dramatise a character's internal journey
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In this episode, Stu and Chas focus solely on the final choices made by protagonists and how that reflects their character journey and successfully, or not, dramatises the internal… →
Films:
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
, Finding Nemo (2003)
, Michael Clayton (2007)
, Promising Young Woman (2020)
, Talk to Me (2022)
DZ-59: Avengers Endgame - Ending Character Journeys
Do you want your audience feeling with or for your characters?
AI✦Chas and Julio specifically examine the characters’ ‘big finale’ as the site where character change should crystallise, making the climax the proving ground for their opposing readings.✦
Listen if you're interested in how to dramatise character change, position your audience in relation to characters, and explore the difference between empathy and sympathy in screenwriting
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One day, Chas saw Avengers: Endgame for the second time and wrote a review on Letterboxd. In particular, he had issues with how little he perceived the characters of Cap and Tony changed within the film, their big finale (spoiler). Then friend and patron of the podcast Julio Olivera vehemently disagreed in the comments. He was egged on by Stu. And there in the comments began a debate that looked a lot like an episode of Draft Zero. So we decided to make it one… →
Films:
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
DZ-4: Catharsis and the Post-Coital Cigarette
How does the end of certain films make your soul shudder?
AI✦By examining the final sequences of these films, the hosts show how the climactic convergence of character, stakes, and theme creates the conditions for catharsis.✦
Listen if you want to make you endings great!
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Stu and Chas are joined by their first guest – illustrious script developer and producer Stephen Cleary – to explore how certain films can trigger an outpouring of emotion from the audience. Turns out that Aristotle may have figured it out a few thousand years ago and called it Catharsis… →