Home Podcasts Required Watching
Required Watching

Required Watching

Required Watching 186 episodes Oct 2, 2026

Required Watching is a filmmaking and screenwriting podcast that explores the craft of cinematic storytelling. Host and film analyst Tray Epps leads practical "Toolkit" episodes on topics such as dialogue, sound design, and other production skills. The show also features in-depth interviews with directors, editors, composers, and other industry professionals. New episodes are released weekly, with additional video essays and written guides available at requiredwatching.com.

Episodes

The Technical Flex (The Revenant and Tangerine)
The Technical Flex (The Revenant and Tangerine) Oct 2, 2026 11:25 Two films, one lesson: the gear was never the flex. Tangerine was shot on three iPhones and a $8 anamorphic adapter — and it played Sundance. The Revenant was shot on one of the most expensive cinema camera bodies ever built, in natural light only, in brutal cold. Same argument, opposite budgets: the discipline to fight a tool's defaults is the only technical flex that was ever real.
Film School is a Scam. Here's the Real Curriculum
Film School is a Scam. Here's the Real Curriculum Sep 11, 2026 09:36 Eighty thousand dollars buys you the 180-degree rule and four years of fear. It doesn't buy you the three things every great film runs on: the Blueprint (how it was built), the Ghost (why it haunts you), and the Echo (what it changed). This is the real curriculum — through Kurosawa's power geometry in High and Low, the ending of Memories of Murder, and the reason Japanese sentence structur
Why Modern Actors All Sound Like They're Whispering
Why Modern Actors All Sound Like They're Whispering Sep 11, 2026 11:44 There's a performance style that's taken over prestige cinema. Quiet, internal, barely-there. And everyone's blamed the actors. Wrong call. The whispering isn't coming from the performance. It's coming from the camera. This is a breakdown of the specific technical shift that changed how actors perform, why sound designers are furious about it, and what three films did different
For Glen - A Tribute to Glen Hansard
For Glen - A Tribute to Glen Hansard Aug 4, 2026 06:51 A personal audio essay on Glen Hansard, Once, and twenty years of chasing the feeling of that first screening. Recorded the week the world lost him.Required Watching is your curriculum for cinematic literacy. We deconstruct the art and craft of filmmaking to help you become a sharper storyteller.▶️ Subscribe for new video essays every week: ▶️ Website▶️ Twitter/X▶️ Instagr
EPiC: Baz Luhrmann Found 68 Boxes of Lost Footage and Made the Film He Actually Wanted to Make All Along
EPiC: Baz Luhrmann Found 68 Boxes of Lost Footage and Made the Film He Actually Wanted to Make All Along Jun 29, 2026 13:26 Baz Luhrmann has made six feature films. Every single one is about the same thing — a person of extraordinary natural talent trapped inside a world that wants to commodify and contain that talent, expressed through maximalist visual language and music as emotional truth. EPiC, his first documentary, is the purest version of that argument he's ever made — because this time the subject is real, the
Kokuho, EPiC, and the Biopic Problem: Why the Best Films About Artists Aren't Biopics
Kokuho, EPiC, and the Biopic Problem: Why the Best Films About Artists Aren't Biopics Jun 29, 2026 16:18 Ten days. Ten episodes. This is the one where everything lands. Kokuho is a fictional film about a kabuki performer that tells the truth about what becoming an artist costs. EPiC is a documentary that refuses to be a documentary and presents Elvis at the peak of his powers with no mediation. The 2022 Elvis biopic has Austin Butler giving a career-defining performance inside a form that couldn't co
Kokuho: The Highest-Grossing Japanese Film Ever Was Made by Someone Japan Doesn't Fully Claim
Kokuho: The Highest-Grossing Japanese Film Ever Was Made by Someone Japan Doesn't Fully Claim Jun 28, 2026 12:29 In October 2025, I was alone in Hiroshima. I wandered into a kabuki theater not knowing what kabuki was, and watched a performance of Princess Takiyasha. I didn't speak the language well enough to follow the dialogue. I followed every second of it anyway. Months later I watched Kokuho — Lee Sang-il's three-hour epic about kabuki's bloodline system, the outsider who transcends it, and what it costs
Memories of Murder: Bong Already Told You Everything in His Second Film. We Just Weren't Ready
Memories of Murder: Bong Already Told You Everything in His Second Film. We Just Weren't Ready Jun 27, 2026 13:35 Everyone came to Bong Joon-ho through Parasite. Which means almost everyone is watching his career backwards — and missing the blueprint. Memories of Murder, his second film, contains every formal and political move he would spend the next seventeen years refining. This episode goes deep into the film most Western audiences still haven't fully understood: the political satire hiding inside the pro
Why J-Drama Structures Its First Episode Like a Short Film and What That Does to the Rest of the Series
Why J-Drama Structures Its First Episode Like a Short Film and What That Does to the Rest of the Series Jun 26, 2026 12:33 Yesterday's episode made the case that Western TV pilots lie — that they're persuasion documents built for commissioners rather than honest first chapters built for audiences. Today is the answer. J-drama structures its first episode like a complete short film — establishing emotional register before plot, tone before event, the specific texture of who these people are before anything happens to t
The Pilot Episode That Lied to You: TV's First Impression Problem
The Pilot Episode That Lied to You: TV's First Impression Problem Jun 25, 2026 12:19 The TV pilot has one job: make you come back. The problem is that job has become structurally disconnected from the show that follows. Pilots front-load everything — spectacle, mystery, emotional hook — in ways that make for compelling first hours and then have nothing left to sustain the series behind them. This episode makes the structural case for why the pilot format is lying to you, which pil
Shoplifters Won the Palme d'Or and Western Critics Still Couldn't Explain What It Was About
Shoplifters Won the Palme d'Or and Western Critics Still Couldn't Explain What It Was About Jun 24, 2026 09:57 Shoplifters won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2018. The reviews were glowing. The words "found family" and "poverty" appeared in almost all of them. And most of them described a film that is significantly less interesting than the one Kore-eda actually made. This episode makes the case that Western criticism landed on the warmth and missed the argument — and that the argument, which is cold and spec
The Black Filmmaker in the British Industry: What the Statistics Don't Say
The Black Filmmaker in the British Industry: What the Statistics Don't Say Jun 23, 2026 12:30 The British film industry produces diversity reports. It has standards, targets, tick-box initiatives, and annual announcements about progress. And the structural situation for Black filmmakers — in development, in commissioning, in creative control — has barely moved. This episode isn't another recitation of the numbers. It's about what the numbers can't capture: the specific texture of how exclu

Recommended