🪭 Inneresting #261 - Do you know your audience?

Each time I saw Barbie in the theater, one section always got the biggest laugh:

It was laughter of recognition, finding humor in feeling simultaneously seen and dragged. The filmmakers had a specific understanding of who was in those theater seats.

What can a story do with that strong, personal understanding of an audience?

Firewood Media peels back the layers of one example: The Teddy Perkins-focused episode of Atlanta:

The episode not only tells a frightening story, but interrogates the way audiences will excuse the abuse talented performers suffer during their rise as “the price of greatness.” It asks, how complicit is the audience in that abuse when they refuse to acknowledge that the suffering was not the source of the talent? The episode's allusions to Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye signal to the audience that the show's creators know what they're talking about and who they are talking to.

Only Murders in the Building features a group of genre savvy fans aspiring to join the ranks of creators of the type of true-crime show they love. Andrea Marks speaks with John Hoffman about the real life true crime podcast influences on the show and its characters. Adedoyin “Ade" Adeniji and Bria Massey take a deep dive into the show as a way to discuss how true crime podcasts act as an extension of the for-profit penal system, and how OMitB showcases some of the worst tendencies of “citizen investigators” and the fans who listen to them.

Barbara Twist talks with documentary filmmaker Jeanie Finlay about how finding the audience and building community can still be part of The Work, and the positive ways finding the community that will be most interested in the finished film can help make the film itself.

A panel on finding your audience hosted by WeTransfer features this moment from Janicza Bravo about not getting caught up in anticipating audience type or reactions too early in the process:

I don’t really think about the audience, which maybe is not a good thing. At the end of making work that comes up a lot [....] I have a sense of who I believe the audience is or who I would like the audience to be. But when it comes to writing or directing, no. I’m thinking first and foremost how to feed myself and how to take care of the people that I’ve invited into this world building experience. It’s how do we take care and nurture the thing we’re trying to make and hoping that it’s, you know, not shit. That takes a lot of energy…

Bravo reminds storytellers that they are their first audience member. Elizabeth Markevitch encourages artists to keep some space for themselves, so that they can create things where they are the only audience and keep the art from feeling performative:

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Scriptnotes Celebrates 700 Episodes

This week, John and Craig recorded a live episode on YouTube to celebrate this milestone episode. And you can still watch it at the Scriptnotes YouTube page if you missed it!

Topics include listener questions, a deep dive into details used in description lines, and revelations about Craig's facial hair. Also, joining John and Craig for this episode were several very special guests from the show's past and present: Stuart Friedel, Megan McDonnell, Megana Rao, Drew Marquardt, and Matthew Chilelli.

Previously on Inneresting…

In case you missed it, last issue’s most clicked link, Steph Balzer covers the value of good questions, and considering how to prompt others to share more of themselves.

What else is inneresting?

• Starring the Computer, a web 1.0 style site cataloguing the computers that appeared in films and TV shows.
• YLE News covers how Helsinki had zero traffic fatalities for an entire year, and how they plan to keep it up.
• Noel Casler on the value of the Kennedy Center and shares a transcendent moment on stage with Aretha Franklin.

And that’s what’s inneresting this week!

Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team. 

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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Bluesky @ccsont.bsky.social, or Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art