Film Formally (Will Ross & Devan Scott)

How do you establish a sense of space through sound, not just as a means of describing a physical space, but the inner state of a person? Filmmakers Nisha Platzer and Nayuribe Montero Jimenez join us to discuss how they pulled that off when they sculpted the sonic shape of both the Cuban landscape and a silent, train-fixated boy within it in their short film Vaivén.

Geez, it’s been a while since we got spooky on the show, hasn’t it? High time we brought back Mike Thorn to talk about how Wes Craven fused meta storytelling and horror in two franchises: A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. We’ll permeate the membranes of reality, disassemble Craven’s views on horror’s social and political value, and laugh about how Matthew Lillard yells “BOO-GAH” when he imitates a gunshot.

Mike has a terrific new horror novel, Shelter for the Damned, that you can check out in print or e-book format directly through Journalstone, or you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Walmart.

FILM FORMALLY is back! This month, friend of the podcast Sophy Romvari’s films are premiering on the CRITERION CHANNEL and to mark the occasion we’ve recorded a set of commentaries for six of these films - NINE BEHIND, IT’S HIM, PUMPKIN MOVIE, NORMAN NORMAN, IN DOG YEARS, and STILL PROCESSING. We’ll be releasing one per week for the next six weeks.

Two women trade stories of misogyny while carving pumpkins over Skype as part of a Halloween tradition.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The film’s extremely truncated pre-production and production timelines.

• Ultra low-budget filmmaking and unconventional production methods.

• Structuring 45-minute conversations with editing.

• Documentary, fiction, and the way that PUMPKIN MOVIE inadvertently became a hybrid of the two.

Sophy’s films can be seen on the CRITERION CHANNEL - feel free to sign up for a free trial if you aren’t a member.

Colour grading, the art of manipulating the colour of a film digitally in post-production, is as omnipresent as it is misunderstood. To help demystify the process, we’ve invited supervising colourist Andrea Chlebak (Mandy, An American Pickle, HBO’s The Watchmen) to discuss the art of colour grading with us.

• Where does the colour grading process begin? Pre-production? Production?

• Development of multiple palettes within individual films.

• Digital and celluloid image capture and the implications on the colour grading process of each.

• The future of colour grading and digital imaging.

• The limits of colour correction: what can we change in post? What can’t we change?

• Exposure ideologies for fun and profit.

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

Works discussed during this episode:

Andrea’s Work:

An American PIckle

Mandy

Watchmen

Hello Destroyer

Elysium

Other Work:

Hekademia

Traffic

Game of Thrones S8e03: “The Long Night”

Blade Runner 2049

How do we light our movies? The answer for many starts with the idea of motivation. What, within the world of our film, justifies the light illuminating our stories? In this episode we once again sit down with Paige Smith to discuss the ins and outs of lighting ideology. Most films circa the 21st century are lit in a way that prizes ‘naturalism’; we delve into the reasoning behind this as well as other ideologies, including the theatrical lighting methods that dominated early and mid 20th century cinema.

• Lighting ideologies and how they can influence our creative process.

• The dangers of using the words “Key”, “Fill”, and “Backlight.”

• The evolution of lighting linguistics, from the birth of cinema through the era of classical hollywood realism to modern-day realism.

• Gendered lighting techniques and other broken methodologies.

• Gregg Toland’s groundbreaking candlelight in The Grapes of Wrath.

• Janusz Kaminski’s use of ‘documentary’ lighting in Schindler’s List.

• Ellen Kuras’ use of broken lighting motivation in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

• James Wong Howe and Roger Deakins’ lighting seminars.

Welcome to season 3! To kick things off, we’ve brought Duplitech Film Services Manager Blake Blasingame in to discuss film preservation and mastering for home video. Are you ready for 88 minutes of unadulterated shop talk about grain structure, bit depth, oversampling, color grading, and vinegar syndrome? Of course you are! This is Film Formally, after all.

• The process of preserving and restoring films for Blu-Ray and DVD releases.

• Scan resolutions - 4k, and the value of oversampling.

• Vinegar syndrome: the silent killer.

• How film elements are sourced for scans - negatives, IPs, IBs, and release prints.

• Robert Richardson and revisionism.

• William Peter Blatty and the restoration of the lost Legion cut of The Exorcist III

• More audio restoration!

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

Works discussed during this episode:

Snow Falling on Cedars

The Exorcist III / Legion

The Thing

The French Connection

The Big Lebowski

Blade Runner 2049

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Heartbreak Kid

Playtime

Tree of Wooden Clogs

Army of Shadows

Ran

The works of Wong Kar-Wai

This time around we’re using our personal experiences to shed light on one version of how post production on an independent film can play out, discussing how we helped Daniel Jeffery and Mackenzie Warner finish the short film they co-wrote, A New Leash on Life. The four of us discuss our respective roles of editor, composer, colourist, and sound designer, sharing anecdotes and our personal theories of the craft along with our fair share of silly tangents.

Walter Murch’s sound technique worldizing defines George Lucas’s American Graffiti, emulating how a sound would be heard in the particular location of each scene. In this episode, Devan and Will discuss the technique and how Murch uses it to serve the narrative needs of American Graffiti.

An Anti-Masterpiece is, as defined by our own Will Ross, is “an astonishing, essential work of art in spite of a distinct lack of conventional competence on the part of its makers”. After Last Season by Mark Region is one such film, and we’ve invited filmmaker Bram Ruiter to discuss it with us. In what is very much not a “bad movie” episode, we attempt to grapple with the nature of outsider art.

• The value of different competent cinema.

• The many, many mysteries behind the production of After Last Season

• More realism in cinema: Mark Region’s seeming insistence on pushing the boundaries of acceptable cinematic ‘reality’.

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

Jason Coffman’s Article on After Last Season

Jason Coffman’s Follow-Up Oral History with the Cast and Crew

Filmmaker Magazine’s interview with director Mark Region

Works discussed during this episode:

After Last Season (2009)

The Room (2003)

Street Fighter: The Movie (1994)

Inland Empire (2006)

The Treasure Planet (1982)

Ever seen the original Star Wars trilogy? Which versions? Multiple new “official” editions of the films have emerged since 1997, with the original films as seen in the 70s and 80s left without any official release. The work of tracking all these changes and preserving the originals has largely fallen to fans, one of whom, Drew Stewart, runs Star Wars Visual Comparisons, a compendium of every visual alteration to the original trilogy. Drew dropped by to talk about how and why all this happened to Star Wars, and how communities rise up when studios fail to protect the legacy of their films.

We're doing two episodes on truth in cinema, starting with one on standards of reality in narrative films. Whit Stillman (The Last Days of Disco, Love & Friendship) joined us, largely to register his animosity towards the idea of making stylistic decisions based on realism, and shared his thoughts on aesthetic decline, pretension, and the meowling cat sound in Damsels in Distress.

There’s a new concert film out! It’s called David Byrne’s American Utopia, directed by none other than Spike Lee and shot by none other than Ellen Kuras. It documents David Byrne’s most recent tour-turned Broadway show, and it’s drawn much discussion: in particular, to David Byrne’s previous high-profile concert film, Stop Making Sense. We took this release as an opportunity to delve into the entire genre of concert cinema, and the difficulties that arise when one must turn a stage-bound show intended for a live audience into a film object. 

We also discuss Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme), Jazz on a Summer’s Day (Bert Stern, Aram Avakian), Monterey Pop (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967), Gimme Shelter (Chartlotte Zwerin, Albert & David Maysles, 1970), Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970), The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978), U2: Rattle and Hum (Phil Joanou, 1988), Bjork: Biophilia (Peter Strickland & Nick Fenton, 2014), Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!  (Adam Yauch, 2006), Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse (Julian Schnabel, 2008), Heart of Gold (2006), Trunk Show (2009), Journeys (2011) (Jonathan Demme), and Shine a Light (Martin Scorsese, 2008)

FILM FORMALLY is back! This month, friend of the podcast Sophy Romvari’s films are premiering on the CRITERION CHANNEL and to mark the occasion we’ve recorded a set of commentaries for six of these films - NINE BEHIND, IT’S HIM, PUMPKIN MOVIE, NORMAN NORMAN, IN DOG YEARS, and STILL PROCESSING. We’ll be releasing one per week for the next six weeks.

Old dogs are celebrated in ten short stories about love, loss, and letting go.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why the CBC hired Sophy to make a dog documentary.

• Cinemascope as a canine-friendly aspect ratio.

• A talking head documentary without talking heads.

• Documentary structure.

• Will and Sophy’s correspondence editing style.

Sophy’s films can be seen on the CRITERION CHANNEL - feel free to sign up for a free trial if you aren’t a member.

There seem to be as many meanings for the word “cinematic” as there are people who use it, so we enlisted the help of our listeners to provide their own definitions, all of which we read and respond to in this episode. With help from some of our oldest filmmaking friends, we worked to see where everyone was coming from with their takes — from camera bros to arthouse advocates to jaded skeptics — and try to come to terms with what the word signifies for our personal relationships to cinema. We also discuss a few bits of important news about the podcast at the start of the episode.

There are a million ways to make an independent movie, and today Dan Sallitt came on the podcast to tell us about the one he chose to make Fourteen. The film's story spans many years, and was shot in several separate periods in 2018 and 2019 — yet it was precisely planned and plotted from the start.

That topic winds up leading us to personal discussions about how our own personalities, anxieties, and circumstances dictate how we make movies and how we compare ourselves to other filmmakers. Dan winds up offering a pretty candid portrait of his feelings and personal philosophies, a great example of the personal side of production methods.

It’s our second SEASON BREAK SPECTACULAR! You sent us some great questions, and we answered them.

Per our answer early in the pod, you can check out https://native-land.ca/ to see which indigenous territory you might live on (bear in mind it’s not comprehensive or “official”). There’s a good explanation of land acknowledgments there, too. If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

In this episode we chat with Toronto-based filmmaker (and one of our favourite collaborators) Sophy Romvari about why she scales down her films’ budgets, crew sizes, and production length.

Today we jumped into one of our favourite topics — the overuse of super a super-wide frame, i.e. cinemascope, in contemporary movies. The Hunger Games is our unfortunate case study today, but the conversation touches on everything from the ratio’s rise to multiplex dominance to whatever the heck Michael Bay is doing with aspect ratios in his Transformers movies. Seriously, what is going on there.

Author and critic Mike Thorn swings by to talk about Prince of Darkness, John Carpenter's 1987 horror film, and how it both expresses and interrogates the subject of epistemophobia — the fear of knowledge. It’s a great movie to go into knowing little, so be aware that we spoil the entire plot in this episode.

We get into how the film withholds or ambiguates information for the audience, the film's balance between pessimism and intellectual humility, and its place in Carpenter's "Apocalypse Cycle" of movies.

What does it mean to write for documentaries? Alison Duke of Oya Media Group takes us through her experience co-writing the television documentary Mr. Jane and Finch — a process that netted her the Canadian Screen Award for Best Documentary Writing. 

We went in-depth into her commitment to honoring the truth of her subjects, the challenges of structuring a story as it unfolds in front of you, and some of the ethical quandaries that come with non-fiction filmmaking.

In this intro episode we offer a taste of our podcast, with a quick rundown of our format and a few samples from upcoming episodes. If you're tired of movie podcasts that reach a mile wide and an inch deep, we've got just the thing for you, with focused and lively conversations that stick to specifics — one episode, one technique.

In this episode, Devan and Will discuss Steven Soderbergh’s pioneering use of digital image capture in his remarkable run of films that followed his transition away from celluloid-based filmmaking starting with Che in 2008. Focusing on his 2011 epidemic thriller Contagion, we cover his usage of the medium’s perceived ‘drawbacks’ for artistic purposes as well as wider myths and trends in modern digital cinematography, including film emulation.

FILM FORMALLY is back! This month, friend of the podcast Sophy Romvari’s films are premiering on the CRITERION CHANNEL and to mark the occasion we’ve recorded a set of commentaries for six of these films - NINE BEHIND, IT’S HIM, PUMPKIN MOVIE, NORMAN NORMAN, IN DOG YEARS, and STILL PROCESSING. We’ll be releasing one per week for the next six weeks.

Calling her grandfather in Budapest to learn about the Hungarian film industry, a woman instead finds the conversation shifting to her family’s history.

• Sophy’s early works leading up to NINE BEHIND.

• The influences and production of NINE BEHIND.

• The lessons learned on this set and how they informed Sophy’s next film, IT’S HIM.

It’s grievance time! Will and Devan take on the world of revisionist audio in film restoration. A niche subject? Probably. Something you should care about? Most definitely!

When you pop in the latest lovingly-restored 4k Blu-Ray release by a boutique label, you might expect that the soundtrack would be given the same faithful treatment as the video. Think again! The world of film restoration is rife with overly filtered audio, anachronistic foley decisions, and questionable surround sound mixes, and Will and Devan are here to explain.

Today film critic Ryan Swen joins us for a double header discussion of King Hu's Dragon Inn and Legend of the Mountain and how they reflect the evolution of Hu's editing style, an aesthetic marked by an extraordinary evocation and emphasis of motion.

This time around we tackle the way Altman's process and worldview effected his famous use of lengthy zoom-ins and zoom-outs. We touch on a glut of films and side-topics, (hopefully) befitting the master of meandering ensemble narratives.

For this episode our Associate Producer Paige Smith has relieved Devan and Will of hosting duties so that she can talk about Eighth Grade’s depiction and use of the Internet — and she’s brought on two friends who survived eighth grade with her, Bronwyn Henderson and Brietta Stewart. It's both a dive into how the film interweaves screens and scrolling with its characters and dramatic presentation, and a personal reflection on how strange and hard it is to grow up — and how much "growing up" has changed.

Filmmaker Paige Smith joins us to talk about the animated psychological horror film Perfect Blue and its copious use of self-reflexivity — when a work openly acknowledges itself, forcing the viewer to recognize the trappings and mechanics of the movie they’re watching.

How do prolific local filmmaking communities come about… and how do they slip away? Curator and film critic Josh Cabrita joins us as we take our own home of Vancouver as a case study for how creative and institutional stagnation happens, and what we can do to counteract it.

In part two of our Verite series we discuss truth in documentary filmmaking with returning guest Sophy Romvari. Sophy’s films have increasingly blurred the line between fact and fiction and are often classified as ‘hybrid’ documentaries. What can we learn from this type of fusion cinema? We go deep on the existential questions that inevitably ensue when one claims to be telling a ‘truth’ and explore the various ways different filmmakers have sought to build ideological frameworks for reaching their truths.

• Documentary, the genre: a contract?

• ‘Hybrid’ documentary and the mix of fact and fiction

• Cinema Verite and Direct Cinema: they’re different!

• The Ecstatic Truth and Werner Herzog

• Errol Morris’ epistemological meat grinder: is truth connected with style?

• Kirsten Johnson and Cameraperson

• Ethical representation of documentary subjects.

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

Media:

Werner Herzog’s Minnesota Declaration

FILM FORMALLY is back! This month, friend of the podcast Sophy Romvari’s films are premiering on the CRITERION CHANNEL and to mark the occasion we’ve recorded a set of commentaries for six of these films - NINE BEHIND, IT’S HIM, PUMPKIN MOVIE, NORMAN NORMAN, IN DOG YEARS, and STILL PROCESSING.

Please note that, due to sync necessities, there are a few gaps in the episode’s discussion: we’ve filled with with snippets of Will’s original score for the film.

A box of stunning family photos unseen for decades awakens lost memories as they are viewed for the first time on camera.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Hybrid documentary and fictional elements.

• Still Processing’s long production and post-production schedule.

• Photographic storyboards.

• Audience expectations and documentaries about grief.

• Composing the score.

• What did we learn?

Sophy’s films can be seen on the CRITERION CHANNEL - feel free to sign up for a free trial if you aren’t a member.

What does an image feel like? Is it smooth? Coarse? Soft? Sharp? Distorted? These are decisions that cinematographers, directors, and anyone else involved in the creation of a visual language for a specific film must grapple with. Christopher Blauvelt, the acclaimed cinematographer of such films as First Cow, Emma, Meek’s Cutoff, Certain Women, The Bling Ring, and Mid90s joins us to discuss the textures that define his work and how he collaborated with directors like Kelly Reichardt, Sofia Coppola, Gus Van Sant, and Autumn De Wilde to develop these images.

It’s an emergency, time for a podcast! This week, we’re discussing the sordid tale of the DC comics behemoth blockbuster Justice League. Initially released in 2017 to much disappointment after extensive Joss Whedon-helmed reshoots, it’s taken on a new life after a movement around releasing original director Zack Snyder’s preferred cut formed. What has ensued is a confusing stream of contradictory information, and we’re here to sort it out!

• The mysteries surrounding the mythical “Snyder Cut”: did it ever really exist? Why does the story keep changing?

• Aspect ratio revisionism and open matte versions of films.

• Brian Wilsom’s sMiLe and the impossibility of truly non-revisionist reconstructions of never-completed works.

• The “Black and Chrome” trend.

• Devan’s controversial Letterboxd review of Rise of Skywalker.

• What IS art, anyways?

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

Will’s Snyder Cut tweetstorm.

Works discussed during this episode:

Sully

Blade Runner 2049

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

The Mist

Mad Max: Fury Road (Black and Chrome Edition)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Parasite

Son of Saul

Brian Wilson’s sMiLe

Join us for a laid back discussion about internationally acclaimed animation director Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli and how he utilizes storyboards to plan and create his films. One of our regular hosts, Devan Scott, is away this week, so our associate producer and resident Ghibli enthusiast Paige Smith joins Will Ross to explore how Miyazaki works — and how that affects his films. 

Adapting literary works to the screen involves a certain amount of translation. There are certain things that are easily conveyed in writing that cannot be conveyed in a straightforward way onscreen; likewise, there are elements of cinematic language that open up new routes to expression. John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a useful case study in this regard: it has been the subject of two acclaimed adaptations that could not be more distinct in the toolkit each uses to translate book to screen. We’ve invited Tim Brayton, film critic at Alternate Ending, to discuss both the 1979 John Irving adaptation as well as Tomas Alfredson’s 2011 take.

• Literary accuracy versus formal expressiveness in adaptation.

• Focal lengths, zoom lenses, and the observational mode.

• 1970s BBC television house style: is it any good?

• Narrative obscurity.

• John Le Carre’s stylistic toolit as a writer and the challenges it poses for adaptations.

• The construction of performances through lighting and framing.

• Mark Strong: MVP?

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

Works discussed during this episode:

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979)

Smiley’s People (1982)

The Little Drummer Girl (1984)

The Tailor Of Panama (2001)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Extreme ways are back! In pog form! This week we’ve got a wonderful little discussion about the evolution of the Jason Bourne film series. In particular, we’re here to dissect how Paul Greengrass transformed it into the 21st century’s foremost example of Chaos Cinema. Handheld camerawork, fast editing, questionable focus? It’s all here, and we’re here to sift through the wreckage.

Join us as we open our ears to the stylized sounds of a bustling commercial existence circa the 1930s — that is, the way they sound in some of the more daring documentaries of the time. Tanya Goldman, a Cinema Studies PHD candidate at NYU, walks us through these films, how their radical soundtracks express their politics, and how the soundscapes of documentaries have shifted in the decades since. (All of the main films discussed are available to watch online for free, you can find links in our shownotes at filmformally.com.)

Film Formally is on hiatus, but that won't stop us from taking your questions! Take our quick survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Y7HV6CM to submit questions that we'll answer on our podcast in an upcoming episode.

Plus, Devan comes in with some HOT TAKES.

In which we discuss Agnes Varda’s final film, Varda by Agnes, and the questions it poses about the nature of cinema: is it simply a piece of lecture videography? The swan song from one of the greatest artists of our time? Both? The fundamentals of what constitute “Videography” and “Filmmaking” are put on trial as we interrogate Varda's late work. 

Today we're taking a trip through a few of the wild worlds of experimental animation, to get a sense of what makes these proudly bizarre shorts — which take on or even invent processes unheard of in mainstream animated films — feel so persuasive and affecting. We're joined by animator Gil Goletski, who came with an excellent program of shorts to watch (all of which you can see for free online), and who was happy to indulge (or initiate) some digressions into comedy and experimentalism, the shame of an unseen canon, and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (and we cut far more of the latter subject than you might suspect from what's left).

Independent filmmaker Gloria Mercer joins us on this one to talk about movies made for the Hallmark and Lifetime TV channels. The focus is on their best-known output, their romantic comedies, and we had a lot of fun chatting about how and why they’re made, their style and structure, their politics, and what we can learn from them. If you're curious to check them out for yourself, the two movies we dive deepest into are The Flight Before Christmas (Lifetime) and Bottled with Love (Hallmark) — both can be rented or purchased online.

 We’re excited to host filmmakers Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers & Kathleen Hepburn, who join us for a discussion about long takes — shots that last for an extended period of time without cutting — and, in particular, their groundbreaking use of an 90-minute long take in their 2019 feature film The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open. Shot entirely on 16mm film, Hepburn and Tailfeathers collaborated with cinematographer Norm Li to overcome the format’s limitations to achieve this aesthetic feat.

As season 1 comes to a close, Devan and Will take stock, answer your questions, and look forward to the new season. 

Okay, folks, it's time for blocking! The pre-planned arrangement, movement, and posturing of characters in a frame is one of a director's most artistically demanding on-set tasks, and nobody blocked a scene better than Sidney Lumet (whom we've already talked about once this season). Screenwriter and Lumet mega-fan Cameron Carpenter joined us to talk about the blocking in Lumet's swan song, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke. We also found time to talk about the film as an early example of digital cinematography, and chatted about how critics responded to the presence of a naked woman in the film (not well) and directorial batting averages.

FILM FORMALLY is back! This month, friend of the podcast Sophy Romvari’s films are premiering on the CRITERION CHANNEL and to mark the occasion we’ve recorded a set of commentaries for six of these films - NINE BEHIND, IT’S HIM, PUMPKIN MOVIE, NORMAN NORMAN, IN DOG YEARS, and STILL PROCESSING. We’ll be releasing one per week for the next six weeks.

An unexpected encounter during an afternoon at the cinema catapults a young woman into a confrontation with her own grief.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Creative geography.

• The learning process of collaboration.

• Working with actors on an indie budget.

• Remastering NINE BEHIND and IT’S HIM.

• Restructuring IT’S HIM in post-production.

• The transition from the relatively large production of IT’S HIM to the stripped-down minimalism of PUMPKIN MOVIE.

It’s our one-year, 43rd-episode spectacular, and we’re once again answering your questions! We go deep on the new WONG KAR-WAI restorations, our thoughts on Zach Snyder’s JUSTICE LEAGUE, the merits of handheld camera operation, film scores, not one but TWO aspect ratio rants from Devan, and more!

But first, some NEWS.

We’re going to be taking a bit of a hiatus, and we’re adjusting our Patreon to reflect this. In the interests of keeping the quality of this podcast high and sustainable, we’re going to take our time with the next season. It’ll be ready whenever it’s ready, but it will happen! As such, our Patreon will now be structured on a per-creation basis. Our previous tiers will be retired in lieu of $1 and $2 per-creation tiers.

• (04:24) Criterion’s THE WORLD OF WONG KAR-WAI box set, and our mixed feelings on the changes made to the films contained within.

• (29:11) Handheld vs Tripod: the final showdown.

• (33:58) Will opines on this year’s film scores.

• (40:43) Zach Snyder’s JUSTICE LEAGUE: it’s out! What do we think?

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon. We’ve also released a bonus mini-episode wherein we discuss PREFACE TO A HISTORY and THE MARTYR.

We kick off our second season talking about one of our favourite films, Fail Safe, and its extraordinary use of contrast not just as an aesthetic, but as the guiding philosophy behind the whole film. Sidney Lumet’s nuclear thriller employs endless contrasts: between dark and light, fast and slow, loud and quiet, abstraction and realism, and the life and death contrasts of nuclear war and its ideologies. All this contrast adds up to a one-of-a-kind nail-biting experience, and we’re here to walk you through how so much of the film’s construction centers on that one unifying concept.

FILM FORMALLY is back! This month, friend of the podcast Sophy Romvari’s films are premiering on the CRITERION CHANNEL and to mark the occasion we’ve recorded a set of commentaries for six of these films - NINE BEHIND, IT’S HIM, PUMPKIN MOVIE, NORMAN NORMAN, IN DOG YEARS, and STILL PROCESSING. We’ll be releasing one per week for the next six weeks.

A young woman grapples with the declining health of her beloved dog in this film about mortality, cloning, and Barbra Streisand.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Creative “Labour” and filmmaking.

• Cross-country collaboration.

• Norman’s TIFF pass.

• Conceptual cinema.

• The opportunities afforded by non-traditional modes of production.

Sophy’s films can be seen on the CRITERION CHANNEL - feel free to sign up for a free trial if you aren’t a member.

For our season 2 finale, we keep it simple and discuss none other than the use of colour across the works of Wong Kar-Wai. In particular, we discuss the use of colour to evoke emotions, mood, and symbolism in his 21st century masterpieces In The Mood For Love and 2046.

We’ll be taking a break for the holidays, but our regularly scheduled programming will continue in January 2021. And who knows, there might be some bonus episodes coming…

• The different ways in which colour is utilized and created in cinema: lighting, production design, grading.

• Wong Kar-Wai’s evolution as an artist and his highly instinctual and intercultural approach to colour.

• Cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s approach to colour.

• The new restorations of Wong Kar-Wai’s cinema, and the possible issues therein. AKA: “In the Mood For Love: was it always this green?”

If you’d like to support the show, here’s a link to our Patreon.

Works discussed during this episode:

By Wong Kar-Wai:

Days of Being Wild

Chungking Express

Fallen Angels

Happy Together

In The Mood For Love

2046

By Others:

Apocalypse Now

Dick Tracy

How an acclaimed director’s versions of a famous film be unavailable for decades — when there’s nothing stopping their release? How can a small group of fans gather the evidence and means to reconstruct those versions? How can they finally have a hand in its official release? Endless passion — and a lot of luck. It’s a subject and film as near and dear to our hearts as any, and we’ve brought on superfans Benji Heran and Jordan Krug to talk about the film prints, continuity scripts, and years of tireless, unpaid passion that they’ve put into preserving Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

USC Postdoctoral Fellow and Cinephiliacs host Peter Labuza joins us to dissect the history of montage. Specifically, we discuss the use of montages in Pre-Code Hollywood cinema.

In the brief period between the introduction of synchronized sound and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production [AKA Hays] Code, artists like Slavko Vorkapich pioneered the use of montages: sequences which condense time and space to convey story beats, emotional states, and break the rules of conventional realism.