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Posts tagged as “Music”

Visual TV Storytelling in Buffy’s “Hush” & “Restless” ft. Evan Schmitt (PT37)

Visual TV Storytelling in Buffy’s “Hush” & “Restless” ft. Evan Schmitt (PT37)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:57 — 55.1MB)

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Alex and Nick are joined by Buffy the Vampire Slayer expert Evan Schmitt to discuss visual storytelling in television writing through the prism of two episodes, “Hush” and “Restless”.

How do you convey information visually? How can you use imagery to illustrate story and character? What does exposition look like without dialogue? How creepy are the Gentlemen? What was the Cheese Man all about?

The Paper Team invokes the First Slayer…

SHOWNOTES

Content

1 – About “Hush” and “Restless” (01:39)
2 – Narrative structures of “Hush” and “Restless” (11:08)
3 – Visual storytelling in “Hush” (18:33)
4 – Visual storytelling in “Restless” (40:53)
Takeaways and Resources (56:37)

Announcement

Paper Team is going to WonderCon 2017! Join our panel “Writer Versus Fandom: TV Writer’s Rooms and Fan Interaction” on Sunday, April 2 at 4:00PM in Room 209.

Links

Evan Schmitt on Instagram
Paper Team panel at WonderCon 2017
Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD
“Hush” (4×10 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
“Restless” (4×22 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Shooting script for “Hush” (dated November 3, 1999)
Shooting script for “Restless” (dated April 8, 2000)
The Ascension
“Primeval” (4×21 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
“How Joss Whedon and the Buffy writers’ room broke episodes” – TV Calling
The Gentlemen
Cheese Man
“Beer Bad” (4×05 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
“Ozymandias” (5×14 – Breaking Bad)
Christophe Beck
Saint-Saëns’ “Danse macabre”
“The Zeppo” (3×13 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Ethan Rayne
“Band Candy” (3×06 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Ripper
Maggie Walsh
“Graduation Day” (3×21-22 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
“This Year’s Girl” (4×15 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Dawn Summers
Joyce Summers
Mr. Pointy
“The Gift” (5×22 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Resources

Buffy World’s episode index with shooting scripts
“Tough Enough: Female Friendship and Heroism in Xena and Buffy” – Dr. Sharon Ross
Dr. Sharon Ross (Columbia College Chicago)

Special thanks to Alex Switzky for helping us edit this episode.

If you enjoyed this episode (and others), please consider leaving us an iTunes review at paperteam.co/itunes! :)

You can find Paper Team on Twitter:
Alex – @TVCalling
Nick – @_njwatson
If you have any questions, comments or feedback, you can e-mail us: [email protected]

Ancient Voices

Someone on YouTube (courtesy of r/Survivor) made a piano cover of Russ Landau’s Survivor theme song (also known as Ancient Voices).

It’s barely a minute long, but it’s fantastic.

If you’re not aware, composer Russ Landau used to make his own variations of the theme in every season. He would use local instruments and various thematic elements specific to that Survivor.
I’m using the past tense here because sadly Landau left the show after season 27.

Survivor: Palau had a militaristic theme (specifically the WW2 Pacific Theatre), which you can definitely infer from the full theme.
Survivor: All-Stars combined elements of the prior seven games to convey the return of past players.
And much like the season itself, I’m a big fan of the Survivor: Pearl Islands theme.

If you’re curious (or a fellow Survivor fan), you can listen to all 27 themes (and some fan-made versions for recent seasons) in this great playlist.

10 years since Six Feet Under

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the series finale of HBO’s groundbreaking Six Feet Under.

Wow.

I remember like it was yesterday, staying up all night in Paris, waiting for the episode to air so I could watch it.
If memory serves me right, I was able to appreciate it around 6AM (Paris time).
I am glad I was able to experience it “live”.
“Everyone’s Waiting” is truly one, if not the greatest series finale of all time.

As I’ve previously mentioned, many manly tears were shed on that day.

If you haven’t read them yet, I dedicated two articles to Screenwriting Lessons from Six Feet Under back in 2011.
The amazing writing of the show, and what can be learned from it, is still relevant today more than ever.
A must read for any screenwriters!

I also recommend reading the The Oral History of Six Feet Under over at Rolling Stone.

And while you do all that, put Sia’s Breathe Me in the background.

Maybe you’ll tear up like me just now.

Everybody’s waiting.