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Fourth Wall
Every episode covering Fourth Wall.
"It opens very quickly into Rob talking to us. And then it interrupts it as Mac finishes breaking up with Rob."
— Mel Killingsworth | DZ-112: Breaking the 4th wall
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DZ-112: Breaking the 4th wall
How is the effect of breaking the 4th wall different to voiceover?
AI✦Mel, Chas, and Stu examine breaking the fourth wall as the most blatant tool of direct audience communication, analyzing how characters looking directly at the camera create a fundamentally different effect than voiceover.✦
Listen to understand how breaking the 4th wall directly involves the audience in a character's emotional present.
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As part of our series on how filmmakers can directly communicate to the audience, we finally examine the most blatant tool of them all: when character look directly down the barrel of the camera… and thus look directly at us, the viewer. Chas, Stu and Mel take the craft tools/levers they identified in previous episodes and use them to examine the tv-version-of HIGH FIDELITY (“Top Five Breakups”), ABBOTT ELEMENTARY (“Attack Ad)”) and - of course - FLEABAG… →
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DZ-109: Talking DIRECTLY to your audience
What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience?
AI✦Stu and Chas trace the spectrum from complete fourth-wall breaks in Fleabag to the diegetic awareness games in Zombieland, showing how character consciousness of the audience changes the effect entirely.✦
Listen if you've wondered what a character actually wants when they're talking directly to the audience!?
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What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience… →
Films:
Fight Club (1999)
, Fleabag (2016)
, The Big Short (2015)
, F for Fake (1973)
, Star Wars (1977)
DZ-53: Antagonists! 5 - vs Audience
What if there is no antagonist?
AI✦The episode identifies direct address to the audience as a specific technique these films deploy to become antagonists themselves, collapsing the boundary between film and viewer.✦
Listen to turn narrative uncertainty itself into the engine that keeps viewers compelled.
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It’s time. The Epic Deep Dive(TM) into Antagonists has reached its shuddering conclusion. And for this Part V - by choosing films that have no obvious singular antagonist (and in some cases no obvious narrative either) - Stu and Chas realised there was indeed a final category of antagonists: the films themselves. Where the film (and the filmmaker) are engaging directly with the audience. Where the films are... VERSUS AUDIENCE… →
Films:
Ocean's Eight (2018)
, The Second (2018)
, F for Fake (1973)
, Sans Soleil (1983)
, Forrest Gump (1994)
DZ-113: Tools For Filmmakers To Talk To The Audience
What tools help ensure that you as the filmmaker are not misunderstood?
AI✦All three films analyzed use techniques that acknowledge or break the fourth wall as a means of making the filmmaker’s presence felt and their thematic concerns transparent to the audience.✦
Listen if you want to explore how you can make your creative hand visible through meta-storytelling and structural choices!?!
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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… →