Learning how to tell a story isn't as easy as it looks once you go from "Dude talking about his fishing trip." to "Entertaining people as a means of making a living." While I--like many of you reading this--deal in the written word (short stories, novels, etc.) we are unwise to not pay attention to other storytelling media.
Today, as part of a month-long retrospective on the franchise, Razorfist revisits the most meme-worthy entry of the Mad Max series: Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
For a writer of fiction, the reason to study film, television and comics as storytelling media is to see and hear what good storytelling looks and sounds like. You'll pick up characterization, pacing, plot construction, narrative threading, etc. faster by putting that analytical eye to more than the written word- and you'll be ready to learn how to write scripts for them in doing so. (You do want more means to make money by writing, right?)
You'll also see how to make an entertaining critical review, something Razorfist is competent--approaching mastery--at doing. Use of language, sentence structure and phrasing, use of emphasis for effect, and so on are all things you can--and should--learn from watching Razorfist's videos. That's incredible value for your time spent watching them, so if you're still learning you will benefit from doing so; if you're already up to speed you can still benefit by seeing how his style can inform yours, something that can only make you better.
So don't just read. Watch. Listen. This is not a world of pure written media anymore, despite what some writers want to believe. Learn from the storytellers in all media if you want to write as well as your talent allows.
That one in particular is so great because he spends most of the video talking about how much fun that film is, and then in the last few minutes stops and points out the glaring lack of a real villain. Even when discussing a film he clearly loves, he has no compunction about pointing out how it could have been made better.
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