644 - The Power of the Cold Open
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 May 2024
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Craig explore one of the most powerful and versatile tools in episodic television: the cold open. But how does it work? What kind of scenes does it showcase best? How can it play with point of view, perspective and time? What makes it memorable? And how do you make it work for your story?
We also discuss new requirements for loan-out corporations, follow up on streaming ads and AI-generated coverage, and answer listener questions on titles, exposition and disabled representation.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig check out OpenAI’s flirty new chat capabilities and ask, do they have any love for talking to human-like AI’s?
Links:
- Scriptnotes hats and drinkware!
- John jumps out of a plane on Instagram
- Corporate Transparency Act: An Overview of Impending Reporting Obligations
- MoviePass, MovieCrash | Official Trailer from HBO
- The Film Fund and the Reddit thread
- LOST – Desmond in the Hatch
- Suwada Nail Clippers
- Song Exploder – Madonna’s “Hung Up”
- The Ladder by Hatch Escapes
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by Eric Pearson (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at [email protected]
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and |
| 0:03.0 | this is John August. |
| 0:04.0 | My name is Craig Mason. |
| 0:06.0 | And this episode 644 of script notes, a podcast about screenwriting |
| 0:11.0 | and things that are interesting to screenwriters. |
| 0:13.0 | Today on the show we will sing the praises of the cold open, those scenes that occur at the beginning |
| 0:18.3 | of an episode often before the opening titles. We'll discuss how they work and how to make them work for you. We will also |
| 0:24.0 | check out new requirements for loan out corporations and answer the listener questions on exposition, |
| 0:28.4 | motivation, and agents. Finally, Craig and I have both discussed our love for the 2013 |
| 0:33.6 | Spike Jones movie Her. We love that movie. So good. |
| 0:36.4 | Love that movie. |
| 0:37.4 | In our bonus segment for premium members, let's talk about how open AI's new |
| 0:40.8 | chat capabilities might have us talking to human like AI's and how we feel about that. |
| 0:45.5 | Okay well I don't want to fall in love is all I'm saying. |
| 0:50.3 | It's it's going to be up to you whether you fall in love. |
| 0:53.0 | First rules, never fall in love. |
| 0:55.0 | Yeah. |
| 0:56.0 | Oh, I see what's coming next and boy do I like what I'm looking at. |
| 0:59.0 | All right, I'll let you do the honors here. |
| 1:01.0 | Tell us what we now have for our |
| 1:02.9 | listeners well we now have official script notes hats so these are |
| 1:07.2 | baseball style hats and they've got the name script notes written across the |
... |
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