Film Formally – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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

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.