§ PODCAST / EPISODES
Talking Directly to the Audience
5 episodes · May 2024 – Sep 2024
"we need to know the same ways veronica needs to know that it’s a fact. So when we hear his voiceover, the fact that we see it is not just the audience is being told this, but Veronica believes this."
— Mel Killingsworth | DZ-110: Voiceover
DZ-109: Talking DIRECTLY to your audience
What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience?
What are the different ways a filmmaker can ask something of the audience… →
Listen if you've wondered what a character actually wants when they're talking directly to the audience!?
DZ-110: Voiceover
How can you use voiceover without it feeling like a cheat?
How can you use Voiceover without it feeling like a cheat?… →
Listen to explore how voiceover can set tone, reveal character, enhance empathy, and create tension.
DZ-111: Unreliable Narrators and FIGHT CLUB
How does the unreliability of a narrator impact the way a story is told?
In this episode, Stu and Mel (sans Chas!) take a deep dive into FIGHT CLUB and its use of the unreliable narrator. This is a bridging episode between our previous episode on VOICEOVER and our forthcoming episode on TALKING TO CAMERA as Fight Club does both.… →
Listen to learn how unreliable narrators shape storytelling through voiceover, structure, and control.
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DZ-112: Breaking the 4th wall
How is the effect of breaking the 4th wall different to voiceover?
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… →
Listen to understand how breaking the 4th wall directly involves the audience in a character's emotional present.
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DZ-113: Tools For Filmmakers To Talk To The Audience
What tools help ensure that you as the filmmaker are not misunderstood?
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… →
Listen if you want to explore how you can make your creative hand visible through meta-storytelling and structural choices!?!