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Game Night (2018)
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DZ-116: Writing Physical Comedy
How do you make extended technical scenes funny on the page?
AI✦Analyzes the screenplay’s use of whitespace, capitalization, and paragraph length to telegraph visual gags and geography on the page, demonstrating how writers signal physical comedy before actors and directors realize it.✦
Listen if you're writing physical comedy and have no idea how to make it work on the page
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Mel joins Chas to tackle physical comedy. We limited our homework selection to extended scenes (as opposed to moments and sight gags) in live action projects and – with the help of our Patreons – selected early sequences from BRINGING UP BABY, the pilot for HAPPY ENDINGS and that wonderful food poisoning scene in BRIDESMAIDS… →
Shows:
Happy Endings 1x1
"By doing all the gifts and setting that up, I am seeing those gags and I’m laughing at them as he uses and abuses each of these wedding gifts one after another."
— chas | DZ-116: Writing Physical Comedy
DZ-55: Character Motivations 1
What to do when a reader says "I don't buy that he/she would do that"?
Chas & Stu look at examples of good character motivation. We’ve all watched movies where we don’t believe the motivation of a character or characters. We may have even written scripts where readers don’t buy the character’s choices. And that’s often a real problem because most of these choices coincide with key structural moments — e.g. the moments where the characters decide to do something “out of character” in order to progress to the next part of the story. To help us solve the problem of how to improve our character motivations, in this episode we explore great examples of character motivation and how they have helped the audience believe a character’s decision… →
Listen if you're writing a scene where your character does something 'out of character' and your readers to buy it.
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Chas & Stu look at examples of good character motivation. We’ve all watched movies where we don’t believe the motivation of a character or characters. We may have even written scripts where readers don’t buy the character’s choices. And that’s often a real problem because most of these choices coincide with key structural moments — e.g. the moments where the characters decide to do something “out of character” in order to progress to the next part of the story. To help us solve the problem of how to improve our character motivations, in this episode we explore great examples of character motivation and how they have helped the audience believe a character’s decision… →
Films:
Arrival (2016)
, Notting Hill (1999)
, Blockers (2018)
, The Matrix (1999)
, Star Wars (1977)
, Game Night (2018)
Shot Zero Deep Dives
How is this oner from GAME NIGHT so seamless?
