Independent filmmaker Gloria Mercer joins us 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.
Read MoreWe’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.
Read MoreToday 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.
Read MoreToday 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 style and evolution of Hu's editing style, an aesthetic marked by an extraordinary evocation and emphasis of motion.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreFilmmaker Paige Smith joins us to talk about the animated psychological horror film Perfect Blue and the 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.
Read MoreWalter Murch’s revolutionary sound design technique worldizing aesthetically defines George Lucas’s 1973 film American Graffiti. Worldizing tries to emulate how a sound would be heard in the particular location of each scene. In this episode of Film Formally, Devan and Will discuss the technique and how Murch uses it to emphasize the narrative needs of American Graffiti.
Read MoreIn this episode of Film Formally, 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. Together, we talk critically about the widespread perception that a film’s quality is defined by its “production value”, the complexity of its shoot, and the pain endured in making it.
Read MoreIn 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.
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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.
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