Today is Friday the thirteenth, because of course it is. The world is falling apart and there's a lot of fear and worry in the air. So let's, just for a moment, set all of that aside and focus on a fun story written by a fun dude. In this video from Behind the Curtain,... Continue Reading →
Video: How Noah Baumbach Wrote a Love Story About Divorce
Nehemiah Jordan over at Behind the Curtain has put together another great video about Noah Baumbach's writing process for Marriage Story. Through interview clips and footage from the film, Baumbach explains how he conceptualized the story, how he crafted that opening, that fight scene, and how he fully utilized the audience's tendency to align with... Continue Reading →
Lessons from the Screenplay: The Unifying Theory of 2+2
This video by Michael Tucker of Lessons from the Screenplay is an excellent class in characterization, subverting expectations, and minimalism. It explains Andrew Stanton's Unifying Theory of 2+2 through the context of No Country for Old Men. For more masterclass videos like these, be sure to subscribe to Lessons from the Screenplay on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KADoPXknQCI
Video: How Christopher Nolan Created His Joker
With all the conversations going on around Joker this weekend, it seems like an apt time to revisit the version of the character acted by Heath Ledger and written by Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David S. Goyer in The Dark Knight. N.T. Jordan has done an excellent job pulling together interview clips from the... Continue Reading →
Video: How They Wrote Parks and Recreation
Parks and Recreation is one of my favorite comfort shows. It's something I can put on to brighten my mood, and it never fails. On his YouTube channel Behind the Curtain, N.T. Jordan, pulled together some of the best interview clips of co-creator Michael Schur (also the creator of The Good Place) and others discussing... Continue Reading →
Lessons from the Screenplay: Getting Exposition Out, Matrix Style
The latest video from Michael Tucker's wonderful YouTube channel, Lessons from the Screenplay, delves into the always tricky topic of exposition. Exposition is information that you need to get across to the audience, but simply telling the audience a bunch of background info rarely goes well. So Michael takes a look at how the Wachowskis... Continue Reading →
Video: How They Wrote ‘Fight Clubâ
Behind the Curtain has posted a new video essay on the writing of Fight Club, and it's pretty friggin amazing. In the video, author Chuck Palahniuk shares his real life inspiration for this story -- which is fascinating -- then screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher weigh in on how the story adapted to... Continue Reading →
Video: How they Wrote ‘Game of Thronesâ
Whether you were adequately satisfied by the end of Game of Thrones, hated it, or found it straight-up offensive, there's no denying that this show got into the psyches of a whole heck of a lot of people with some exceptional writing in the first few seasons. It dug it's claws in deep enough that... Continue Reading →
Video: How They Wrote ‘The Officeâ
N.T. Jordan (@ntjrdn) has started a new YouTube channel called Behind the Curtain, and we are already big fans. With these videos -- so far one on Game of Thrones and one on The Office -- N.T. is digging through hours of interviews to find clips from showrunners and core writers regarding the actual writing... Continue Reading →
Lessons From the Screenplay: How and When to Reveal Story Information
This is one of my favorite Lessons from the Screenplay. In it, Michael Tucker uses Ex Machina as a prime example of how to control the information that you reveal to audiences/readers of your story. This is just one of more than forty videos in this series. Head over to YouTube to check out all... Continue Reading →