Getting Period Right

John and Craig ask, how do you keep your period films from being a boring history lesson? They offer ten tips to keep your setting from taking over your story, defining the scope of your research, and how to balance the reality of the era with what’s relevant to audiences today. We also follow up on navigating industry connections and answer three period-appropriate listener questions on transitions across time, accurate dialogue, and how to handle historical sensitivities on the page. In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig get into some toil and trouble as they give their rankings of the most iconic witches. Links: Apply for a student license for Highland Pro! Interested in being our new UI/UX designer? More info here! Mel Gibson rant at Joe Eszterhas caught on tape by Ben Child for The Guardian Episode 129: The One with the Guys from Final Draft Episode 314: Unforgiven Episode 674: The One vvith Robert Eggers Marielle Heller’s Episode 212 and Episode 394 Standard Thermal (And a summary by CEO Austin Vernon) Panthalassa The Concept C Is the All-Electric Sports Car Kick-Starting Audi’s Design Future by Jason Barlow for Wired Countdown on Amazon Prime Video Rank these iconic witches! Preorder the Scriptnotes Book! Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt! Check out the Inneresting Newsletter Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube Scriptnotes on Instagram John August on Bluesky and Instagram Outro by Whit Morliss (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. UPDATE 9-25-25: The transcript for this episode can be found here. The post Getting Period Right first appeared on John August.