Admiring Rod Serling - the Twilight Zone

Weekend June 23, 2013

We are in a transition period a to what constitutes academic research.'  Movies have moved to digital effects. Now HD video is available inexpensively for most anyone wanting to create their own video. Other mediums offer themselves with enhanced still photography via Power Point. Digital Audio offering podcasts is yet another medium. 

but no matter what medium one chooses, the story is key. I have been watching the original Twilight Zone series on Netflix. These are now available sans commercials. Each segment complete with Creator Rod Serling's intro and conclusion narrative are a mere 25 minutes long This leaves about 22 minutes to set the scene, develop the story, and then conclude with the usual paranormal question. 

If you read the wikipedia link above, you will learn that Serling was frustrated writing about real events which got sliced and diced on television for various reasons. He turned to science fiction as a way to distance himself from other wise real events. In that regard he was way ahead of Stephen King who would eventually follow in the same genre. In fact I have to wonder if King did not get the inspiration for his novel Needfull Things from one of the first Twilight Zone storie, What You Need #12.  In it an elderly man provides just what a person needs. 

At any rate the stories, like I Love Lucy, are incredibly well written. Whether you are doing video, or stills, or audio, or voice over for other scenes, can you 

• set up a scene
• develop the characters and the plot challenge in the next few minutes
• demonstrate the dilemma of the central character
• wrap it up for the viewer to thing about in the last few minutes

Well Serling could and did. The series is also remarkable in featuring seasoned actors like Burgess Meredith as well as a host of newcomers from Robert Redford to James Franciscuss to Rod Taylor. 

We learn to be better writers by reading great literature. We can learn about multi-media by studying some of the best. Decades later, these stories stand the test of time. They are well written and well acted. The fact that they are in black and white adds I think to the starkness of the dilemmas. 

Give a few  whirl, I think you will enjoy what you find. 

 

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call theTwilight Zone.

—Rod Serling