How film music tells you what to feel before you know it
A recurring melody can announce a character before they appear. Composers have used the trick for more than a century, borrowed from opera.
Articles by Leila Haddad
From pitch to premiere: how a TV series gets made
Most scripted shows pass through a pitch, a pilot, a writers’ room and months of production and editing. Here is who does what.
The strange history of the laugh track
Recorded laughter was added to many 1950s sitcoms by a machine operated by one sound engineer. The debate over it has never quite ended.
What makes a great mystery novel? The rules writers keep breaking
In 1929 the crime writer Ronald Knox published ten rules for fair-play detective fiction. The best mysteries since have bent them on purpose.