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Tonal Shifts
Every episode covering Tonal Shifts.
"Sometimes there’s such a huge emotional impact that you might overstate how big the tonal shift is in memory."
— Mel Killingsworth | DZ-117: Pulling Off Tonal Shifts
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DZ-117: Pulling Off Tonal Shifts
How can we teach our audience new storytelling rules in the middle of our story?
AI✦Mel and Chas teach you how to execute a tonal switch on the page without relying on directorial tools, using rhythm of action lines and contrast as your primary weapons.✦
Listen if you want to write tonal pivots that land on the page without a director's toolkit.
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Following on from our episodes on establishing tone through action lines and through character, this is what we have been building up to: how to pull off a tonal switch… that does NOT throw the audience out of the film. And, in particular, how to pull that off on the page when writers don’t have framing, lighting, music, editing, etc. at our disposal… →
Even More
DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!
What can screenwriters learn from the storytelling techniques used by stand-up comedians?
AI✦Hannah Gadsby and Bo Burnham use tonal shifts to build emotional arcs that culminate in thematic power, and Stu and Chas examine how the rhetorical triangle--logos, ethos, and pathos combined--lets you engineer those shifts for resonance rather than just laughs.✦
Listen if you want to understand how stand-up comedians grip audiences and build emotional arcs (and what narrative tools screenwriters can borrow from comedy)!
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Standup comedians can keep audiences gripped to their every word for over an hour, and often bring them to emotional climaxes by the end. So how do they do it and what tools can apply to scripted narratives… →
DZ-105: Establishing Tone through Big Print
How can we teach the reader to find the humour in our darkness?
AI✦Future episodes promise to explore establishing lighter or quirkier tones and shifting tone within sequences, establishing this series as a toolkit for writers who want to move between emotional registers intentionally.✦
Listen if you want to use an unusual tone in your screenplay.
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Chas and Stu finally start their long-mooted exploration of tone with a series that examines films and shows with unusual tones and dives into how the writers establish those tones in the first 5 pages… →
Shows:
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