Film Formally

Ep 10 - Pre-Code Montage feat. Peter Labuza

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.

Ep 9 - Hallmark Movies feat. Gloria Mercer

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.

Episode 8 - Long Takes feat. Kathleen Hepburn & Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

 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.

Episode 7 - The Hunger Games and Cinemascope

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.

Episode 6 - King Hu's Kinetic Editing in Dragon Inn and Legend of the Mountain feat. Ryan Swen

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.

Episode 5: Robert Altman, Zooms, and the Camera's Point of View

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.

Episode 4: Self-Reflexivity and Perfect Blue feat. Paige Smith

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.

Episode 3: Worldizing Sound and American Graffiti

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.

Episode 2: Small Crews feat. Sophy Romvari

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.

Episode 1: Contagion and Steven Soderbergh's Digital Cinematography

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.