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Posts tagged as “Lost”

If you don’t listen to the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast, you’re a bad writer

If you don’t listen to the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast, you’re a bad writer

It has been well established that I’ve considered Breaking Bad to be the best show currently on TV for a while now. As a professional hipster, I’ve been following the show since it first aired (the days of yore, 2008). Before it got all mainstream and everything.
Anyways.
When Season 2 started, Kelley Dixon, one of the show’s main editors, began making 1-hour podcasts for every episode, featuring pretty much everyone from the show.

I’m not prone to hyperbole (*cough*), but this is pretty much the best behind-the-scene discussion about a TV show in the history of everything. Especially on such an episode-by-episode basis.

Let’s think for a second about what has come before this.
The closest equivalent I can think of is Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica commentaries online. However, they were mostly just that: basic commentary tracks. It was (almost always) only him, and they were limited by the episode’s length.
The Meltdown/Nerdist Writers Series podcast is one of the best resources about the craft of TV writing, but as the time is split between three to five different writers, you can only have so much nitty-gritty discussion/content.
Damon Lindelof/Carlton Cuse’s Lost “podcasts” couldn’t have been farther from what they were supposed to be about.
And don’t you dare mention Talking Bad/Talking Dead/Talking Crap, or what can only be described as fluff pieces and waste of (air)time.

On the other hand, the Breaking Bad Insider podcast doesn’t have any such limitations.
In fact, here are the four main reasons why it’s the best BTS discussion I’ve seen (or rather heard) about a TV show, in like ever:
1. It’s done for every episode. For real. When do you get a writer– hell, anyone talking about a specific episode for more than a few minutes? Seriously, name one show that has done hour-long discussions about their individual episode. Even The Simpsons have only 25-minute commentary tracks on the DVDs (see point 3).
2. The podcasts have all the relevant creative people talking about their own episodes. That means the Breaking Bad writer, director, cast, editor and producers (plus other misc. guests). Vince Gilligan is also always present (with Bryan Cranston a close second).
3. As pointed out above, unlike usual commentaries (on DVDs and such), they’re not limited by time. Any standard commentary track is usually “synced” with the content, meaning you only have that scene’s length of time to talk about it, or at the very least the length of the episode (20-40 minutes). No such problem here. They go on as long as needed, usually around 60 minutes. This week’s Breaking Bad podcast, for 5×09, ran about 75 minutes. It’s much more than just a “Breaking Bad commentary”: it’s a deep-dive discussion.
4. The most important point: they talk about the craft. And I’m not only talking about the writers. The guests are always very candid about their own production perspective of the episode, everything from the page to the screen. It is informative, and truly inspiring. It also pretty much confirms my pet-theory that Breaking Bad is one of the most thought-out shows on television.

At this point, you must already be rushing to download and listen to one (assuming you watch the show). Hopefully, I don’t have to explain why you should be interested in how the sausage is made, especially if you want to work in this medium.

The bottom line is simple: learning how one of the best shows on TV is being written, directed, acted, produced and edited is something you should (already) be doing.
You know, for science.

Follow this link to stream the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast:
http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad/insider-podcast-season-5
You can also subscribe to to podcast on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-bad-insider/id311058181

Tread lightly.

Screenwriting lessons from Six Feet Under – Part One

Screenwriting lessons from Six Feet Under – Part One

A key part of writing for television is watching television. And learning from it.
Screenwriting lessons from tackles series past and present, analyzing them through the prism of screenwriting.

Ten years ago, one of the greatest American series debuted on television: Six Feet Under.
Concluding in 2005 with one of the best finales in TV history, the show broke new ground with its emotional and riveting stories. The series dealt with many day-to-day issues, including family, sexuality, relationships, and of course life & death. These are some of the lessons learned from this amazing character drama.

[Since I’ll be talking about Six Feet Under as a whole (including the series finale), I highly recommend you watch all five seasons of series before reading this post — it’s worth it.]


Lesson 1: Life is a prism

Never will your neighbor, your friend or even your brother think the same thing as you since each person has a different life experience. This translates directly into the way you, and your characters, view the world.
Different characters have different viewpoints, and the money in character relationships is where characters are trying to convince each other to change their mind.
When we meet them, Nate and David couldn’t be more different in their views of the family business. The former tried to escape this world as soon as he can, the latter abandoned his lawyer dream to be a mortician. During the life of the series, Nate is, despite himself, transforming into his father while David searches for his own identity. Both disagree on what death and the business is/should be, but they’re still brothers at the end of the day.
Beyond characters, the “prism” aspect of life also directly translates into the story. Each episode of the show centered on a different death, and more importantly how the funeral home dealt with it (and how it resonated through them).
When a grieving widow confides in Rico that she barely remembers her (now dead) ex-husband, Rico (and the audience with him) immediately think of his own fragile marriage on the brink of a divorce, slowly being erased from his family.
We’re all humans and therefore see the world in our version, our own “first-person POV.” It is vital that you represent that kind of polarizing diversity in your characters since no one is a clone of another person. Note that diversity and polarizing viewpoints do not mean a Manichean black/white division of your world.

Lesson 2: Less is more

If there is one thing Six Feet Under does better than any other show on television (besides Breaking Bad), it is to play up the silence. The “moments in between” are the moments of the show (arguably another big difference between film and TV in general). Continuous action is not needed to hold continuous interest from the audience (you don’t see a car explosion every episode, let alone every act).
It can be good to have an explosive monologue you build up to where a character pours out all of his/her emotions, but how often does that happen in real life? People rarely say more than a few words at a time, and most of life happens without words.
In one of the finest scene from the series finale, Ruth calls Maggie to get closure on her son’s death, asking her if he was happy in his last moments. The crux of the exchange doesn’t come with Maggie’s answer but by Ruth’s gasp for air, more indicative of her relief than anything else. Sure, a lot of it is due to the actor’s performance, but it also means the writer trusted his writing enough to write less. He knew it was the best option instead of doing a tedious/on-the-nose remark.
The old expression still holds true: Silence is golden.

Lesson 3: It’s about what is happening, not why

In other (canned) words: “it’s about the journey.”
Don’t get me wrong, you need to have reasons for putting X character in Z position, and you should be able to track your story’s progress plus ram up the tension at the end of your third act. Yet, a show isn’t a logical math problem with a solution. There should be some kind of reason for your madness, but all of this is for you, the writer, not the viewer. Your audience isn’t made up of robots analyzing and deconstructing beat by beat your show to determine why you put this and that there (at least not subconsciously). A show needs to not only live and breathe but more importantly be emotionally engaging.
So what does that have to do with “what is happening”?
Well, when you’re in the world, you (almost) never ask yourself “why is this happening?!” (unless you’re in Lost or a philosopher).
Your characters can question the “what” and do a spiritual search to get answers to “why” (after all, that’s the central question around life/religion itself), but unless you want to alienate your audience, it is never a good idea to remove any shred of mystery and actually answer the mysterious question.
Why do you think the Six Feet Under series finale is not only considered the pinnacle of the show but one of the best finales ever? The characters’ lives are (literally) concluded, but everything in between is left open-ended. We were only privileged to a slice of their lives, part of their journey. You cared about the characters and you lived with them. The show offered the perfect amount of closure.
Think of it this way: Life doesn’t have a point, it is the point.

Lesson 4: Unknown is better than known

Continuing on the “less is more” philosophy, no one is omniscient, which means you know next to nothing besides your limited point of view (no offense).
This directly translated on screen in the show with Lisa’s terrible, unknown, fate.
For the second half of the third season, Lisa, Nate’s wife, goes missing. Little by little, Nate worries and pretty much goes insane not knowing what happened to his wife. All of this builds up to somewhat of a closure to the arc that won’t happen until a season later. I say “somewhat of a closure” since even then, it isn’t really a closure. Just like in life, you don’t know what really happened to Lisa, simply the consequences (i.e. death).
Dread is a powerful emotion oftentimes ignored. Fear of the unknown is also a great motivator for people to take action (no one wants to see a hero wallow in self-pity).

What to take from the show (Part One)

Before mythology or adventures, a show needs to be about people true to life. No one is one-dimensional and no two people share the same exact limited point of views. Treat your characters as such.

Click here for Part Two

Tips and stories from around the Web, Part 4

Let’s take a breather from all the heavy stories going on around by looking at a few (very interesting) entertainment and writer-related articles and interviews.

First, in case you missed it, The Futon Critic has a minute-by-minute rundown of the anticipated Freaks & Geeks/Undeclared reunion that went on at the Paley Festival a few days ago.

We also have an article from the LA Times about the broadcast of “enhanced” version of serialized series; meaning an old episode with subtitles supposedly clarifying past plot-lines for the viewer.
A great lesson on how to destroy any subtext and condescend to the max everyone involved.
And it becomes pretty ridiculous when it hampers the enjoyment of the current episode. Following ABC’s tries (with Lost and Ugly Betty), DirecTV has now decided to use the same tactic for none other than Damages. Summing up a season’s worth of mythology, one sentence at a time. Lovely.

On the writing side of things, Jen Grisanti, who many may know from the NBC “Writers on the Verge” program, released a couple of weeks back another great one-hour podcast interview, this time with Matthew Salsberg, writer and executive-producer on Showtime’s Weeds. A must-hear.

Finally, it’s always nice to hear personal experiences from fellow (television) writers, and John August’s regular segment, “First Person,” provides just that with amazing in-depth guest articles. Allison Schroeder continues the trend by writing about her “big break,” from being a PA on Pineapple Express and Smallville, to moving up the ladder as writer’s assistant, and then followed by becoming a staff-writer on 90210.