Classiq - An online journal that celebrates cinema, culture, style and storytelling.

24 August 2020

Creating a New Visual Reality: Interview with Illustrator Katherine Lam

Cover art by Katherine Lam for The Criterion Collection release of “Toni”, 1935, directed by Jean Renoir

It was Jacques Tourneur’s film I Walked with a Zombie that sparked illustrator Katherine Lam’s interest in the history of cinema, the gate that lead her to the films of the likes of Hitchcock, Bergman, Kurosawa and Tarkovsky. Classic cinema opened up a new visual world and the possibility to experiment with art in ever changing ways, and, most importantly, in ways that are specific to the medium of illustration – because artists who choose to create in a visual medium should accept and pursue the challenges of form-creating work, Katherine believes. Bernie Fuchs, whose creative restlessness was one of his biggest assets, and Edward Hopper, the visual bard of American solitude and a masterful painter of light and shadow, are two other big influences on her work.

An element of surprise permeates Katherine Lam’s art. Her illustrations have a distinctive mood, she has a way of working suspense and voyeurism into her pieces, beautifully contrasting dark corners and streaks of light. Hitchcock comes to mind again – his suspenseful visual narrative tactics remain unmatched to this day. Katherine invests her pieces with a sense of suddenness in sights that compress time, her subjects feel taken by surprise, and we, the viewers, are too, from afar. It’s as if we are waiting for something to happen and the moment keeps being prolonged. And it all happens in a single image. That’s the work of a true visual storyteller.

In our interview, I am talking with the artist about her timeless cover art for this week’s Criterion Collection release of Jean Renoir’s Toni, about what fostered her creativity as a child and, naturally, about Hitchcock.

Illustration by Katherine Lam

I rewatched Toni for our interview and I am glad I did because there were certain details that I didn’t remember well, like the bee sting sequence. It’s a key moment in the film, the moment that unleashes all the events that follow, and one that you beautifully used to illustrate the Criterion cover art. But I find that these key moments that can capture the essence of a film are not necessarily easy to land, and it requires tremendous talent from the illustrator, especially in this case, when your design grabs the viewer’s interest by showing restraint rather than making it more explicit. What was the process behind your work on Toni?

Most of the credit for using the bee sting scene as the cover will have to go to my art director, Eric Skillman. He came to me with this project and asked me to center the piece around that scene. I wouldn’t have been able to conceive the cover without him. His idea was that the bee sting scene, where she flirtatiously lowers her dress for Toni to suck out the poison, and a later scene, where she lowers her dress to show Toni the abuse that she had faced at the hands of her husband, was a nice visual rhyme that showed the stark contrast of the first half of the movie and the later half.

The scene in the film was flirty and cute, but later, the film takes a dark turn, and I wanted to make sure the cover showed the ominous overtones of the film, even if the subject matter is innocuous and light.

Do you ever seek for inspiration outside the film itself?

Yes! I was looking at Edward Kinsella, who makes a lot of portrait work that is a little eerie, and I believe this is achieved by his mostly dark monochromatic colour palette. I decided with a sepia-toned colour scheme to get that old, dramatic look. I was also looking at Hammershøi a lot for this cover. Hammershøi’s work is quiet, still and also a little eerie, and most of his subjects aren’t facing him. His soft rendering of shadows and light makes his subjects and rooms look like they’re glowing. Usually my work is flat, but I like the soft glow effect in his work, so I was inspired to render the piece out more.

Besides its subtle and defining references to the film, there is something more about your cover art for Toni. It has a timelessness to it, the kind of artwork you want to frame and put on your wall, that has a lasting life of its own, regardless of the film’s. Is it important for you that a film cover can stand as artwork in its own right?

Definitely! As an illustrator, my work tends to be more artwork-centric and I enjoy creating poster artwork that doesn’t depend on familiar faces or typography. One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing film posters where the poster was treated as a placeholder for a celebrity’s face. Posters can draw viewers in just as well as a trailer or a familiar celebrity. They are meant to be eye-catching and informative. You can get creative with them and make some really great pieces.

”I think people tend to get caught up in telling a good story
or having great visuals – a book can tell a great story,
a photograph can have great visuals – I want to see
something that only film or illustration can do.”

Poster art by Katherine Lam for The Criterion Collection release of “Panique”, 1946, directed by Julien Duvivier

Your work with The Criterion Collection includes Julien Duvivier’s Panique and Yasujirō Ozu’s The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice, another two classics. What would you say is the biggest difference between contemporary and classic cinema?

I think a lot of contemporary cinema has reflected the change in the industry where movies are made quickly to appeal to as many people as possible with the purpose of generating revenue. Obviously, this is not the case for all contemporary films, but for me, the difference between contemporary and classic cinema is that one tends to care more about revenue and one tends to care more about wanting to say something. Classic movies are timeless and everybody of all ages and eras will be able to resonate with that, even if the time period or culture is different from the one that we’re used to, like Citizen Kane, Seven Samurai, Roma, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, etc. It’s a movie that leaves you with more questions than answers, that starts a conversation rather than ends one.

If you could choose one classic film to make the official poster art for back in the day, which one would it be?

I would love to make a poster for the horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I love working with anything that has an atmosphere of suspense, and the film is so stylish and abstract, I think trying to capture its essence in one poster would be exciting.

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it is a dark and visually striking cinematic experience that uses sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. And the original poster art for the film, some of it by Otto Arpke and Erich Ludwig Stahl, is a visual experience in itself. Is there any artist who has had a defining influence on your work and style of illustration?

Edward Hopper is definitely the biggest influence on my work. His work has always stood out to me because of the mood and atmosphere he creates in his work. I am drawn to the fact that his work looks like the world has stopped, as if time froze and everybody is stuck where they are and we are only spectating them from afar. I see a lot of art that is very immersive and tries to make it so that the viewer feels like they are a part of the action. I find that Hopper’s intentionally distanced work to be an interesting diversion from that and I try to incorporate that into my work.

”Illustration can create a whole new reality of its own.”

What is your first drawing memory?

My first drawing memory was when I was a kid, about 6-7. My mom had signed me up for an art class, and the first assignment I had to do was to draw some cartoon fish. I still remember pretty vividly how confidently I drew those fish, and how sloppily I scratched on the blue colour of the ocean around it! I actually didn’t like drawing at all at that point and it wasn’t until later in my life when I drew in my free time that I gained an interest towards it.

What was it that ultimately fostered your creativity as a child? In his autobiography, Kurosawa wrote that in his school days “art education was terribly haphazard. Some tasteless picture would be the model, and it was simply a matter of copying it. The student drawings that most closely resembled the original would get the highest marks,” continuing with praising his art teacher, “but Mr. Tachikawa did nothing so foolish. He just said, ‘Draw whatever you like.’” Do you find it important for an artist to have formal education in art?

I definitely agree with Kurosawa. When I was young, being able to draw whatever I wanted was what got me interested in making more art in the first place. I had a pretty active imagination as a child and I had a bunch of crazy ideas, and drawing for me was a way to materialise those ideas into a reality. Trying to make me copy something that already exists exactly the way it is has never really interested me and, more often than not, hindered me. The class that my mom had put me in when I was younger was similar to that – she would give me a copy of a still life that she had drawn and asked us to copy it. My interest in art came from trying to draw fanart for my favourite shows and books.

I personally don’t find a formal education in art to be necessary in becoming an artist. While it can be very beneficial to learn from veteran artists and be among other creatives, art is one of those things where you can learn a lot from self-study. Art is also one of those things (as with most things) where your portfolio matters more than which school you went to. And especially these days, where a formal four-year art education is synonymous with a lifetime of debt, it’s no longer the one and only way to being a “real” and professional artist. There are so many resources online that are free or cheap that will give you more than a BFA ever will.

Illustration by Katherine Lam

You also do editorial illustration and you have collaborated with some great print publications. What does an illustration bring new to an editorial in comparison to photography?

I think illustration can bring so much to editorial in terms of trying to depict certain concepts or trying to depict a mood that photography can’t capture. Photography has to work with reality, while illustration can completely dismiss that and create a whole new reality of its own. It’s better for depicting concepts, or things that can’t necessarily be seen, while photography tends to be better for more factual depictions such as portraits or news events.

I think editorial illustration can only be successful once you’ve done a good amount of research and gained some knowledge on the topic at hand. Most of the articles I get are about social issues, so it is usually expected that I already have some knowledge about the topic, and if I don’t, read up on it on my own time to help get a better understanding of the topic. Conceptualising takes up most of my time, because I essentially need to boil the article down to its main point, and find a way to portray that in a visual metaphor that is easy to understand.

Your print magazine work and movie cover art translate into a physical connection with the audience. Is it important to you, as an artist, to have this tangible relationship with the public?

I’ve never really thought about that, to be completely honest. Most of my work is done digitally and meant for digital spaces. I do think that artwork in a physical form allows you to appreciate more than artwork that you see on a computer because it feels more like an item than an image. It’s always nicer to hold a book or a print and have it exist in the same space as you.

In this time and age, what do you wish people appreciated more?

I wish people appreciated the medium of art and film more, rather than the story or the content, if that makes sense. With film, for example, I love seeing filmmakers experiment with elements that are only specific to film, like time or camera movements, like how 1917 looks like it’s only one shot. For art, I love seeing artists manipulate the canvas, such as Sergio Toppi playing around with comic panels. I think people tend to get caught up in telling a good story or having great visuals – a book can tell a great story, a photograph can have great visuals – I want to see something that only film or illustration can do.

It makes very much sense. That’s why I love Hitchcock’s films so much. His films belong to cinema.

I love Hitchcock! He is definitely one of my favourite filmmakers of all time. All his films feel smart and refreshing no matter when I watch them or how many times I watch them. You can probably tell from my work, but I love suspense and tension, which he does so well. I think the way he taps into our deep inner fears and makes us wait the whole length of the film to get any closure is so effective and smart. Most horror and thriller films these days can barely get under my skin the same way his films do. And as you said, his stories can’t really be told in any other way. I can’t imagine getting the same kind of suspense if I read Psycho in book form or as a comic. A lot of his work inspired a lot of the way I approach my work, especially with the voyeurism aspect.

Illustration by Katherine Lam

Website: katherinelam.com | Instagram: @katherinelams

On and Off Set with Unit Still Photographer Merie Weismiller Wallace

Posted by classiq in Art, Film, Film poster design, Interviews | | Comments Off

19 August 2020

From the Period Authenticity of “Meek’s Cutoff” to the Contemporary Realism of “Boys Don’t Cry”: In Conversation with Costume Designer Vicki Farrell

Michelle Williams in “Meek’s Cutoff”, 2010, directed by Kelly Reichardt | Evenstar Films, Film Science, Harmony Productions

A film is as good as the sum of its crafts, crafts that must seamlessly wove the threads that spun the illusion that is the story we watch so earnestly. That is why I find that it is fascinating to talk about a film from the point of view of each craft, such as costume design, because it opens up wider ways of interpretation of and interconnectivity with the film.

Kelly Reichardt has carved out a distinctive universe with her films, especially her westerns. It is a different kind of West that her characters are part of, a West they do not conquest, maybe do not even inhabit, but survive: quiet, spare, rendered through a visual naturalism and a realistic, subdued approach, but with more provocative messages running underneath. In Meek’s Cutoff (2010), the director builds drama with endless landscapes and endless days and an endless journey and characters gradually lost in front of the wilderness. Watching the film, you get the grip of the reality of the wagon trains going West, and of so many broken American dreams – there’s nothing spare in that. The landscape is so vast, but the characters’ world is so confined that you come to inhabit their world, aware of every single sound and fact about their everyday life, about their moves, about their manners, about their clothes.

Their clothes in fact are so much part of the story, every little detail sewn into the characters, that I reached out to the costume designer, Vicki Farrell, to talk at length about the costumes for the film. We have touched on other films as well, from the realistic contemporary design for Night Moves (2013), to cross-dressing Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and the colourful costumes made in-house for the television series At Home with Amy Sedaris. An incursion into the very many universes that a costume designer’s work is paramount in creating.

Bruce Greenwood in “Meek’s Cutoff”, 2010, directed by Kelly Reichardt | Evenstar Films, Film Science, Harmony Productions

Meek’s Cutoff is at its 10th anniversary this year. It is a world so beautifully and skillfully crafted in a certain period of time and place that, regardless of the decade when you are watching it, it simply draws you in, reminding us once more that cinema is primarily visual. The hooded sun bonnets the women wear, for example, hide their faces, casting deep shadows, and it’s hard for the viewer to see into them, the face of the women wearing them, and I expect this is a very accurate depiction of 1845, when the action takes place, that these hooded sun bonnets were meant to serve their purpose. Clothes that speak about the character, the story, and which are not concerned to make visible the actress wearing them. How rigorous was the historical research you underwent for the film and what was the most challenging part for you, as a costume designer?

So happy to start with Meek’s Cutoff! Wow… 10 years. I have such strong memories of that shoot. Kelly Reichardt and Chris Blauvelt are two of my favourite people. Meek’s was my first time working with Kelly and also the film that brought Chris Blauvelt into Kelly’s world. I clearly remember his first day (night!) on set.

I loved working with Kelly. She plans out her films, her locations, almost a year before production and shooting begins. I was exchanging research and sending fabric swatches to Kelly as she was scouting locations and she was sending me pictures of the fabrics in the actual locations in the eastern Oregon high desert. It’s not usual that I get to design the costumes so early in the process of working out the design of the film. In my experience, the costume designer is mostly hired and starts working and designing just a month or so before shooting starts.

I did lots of research on fabrics and colours and natural dyes and men’s and women’s and children’s everyday clothing in the time of the American settler’s journey west. Bonnets!!! Hmm … Yes, there was some discussion and concern about hiding actors faces. I wanted to make historically accurate bonnets that have very large brims to protect the wearer from the sun and dust. Kelly wanted this, too, and her producers were behind her, so in the end I wasn’t asked to shorten the brims. I sewed all three bonnets myself by hand. I knew Kelly was going to do some lingering close-ups and there weren’t machines for sewing around in the 1840s. I think having the pioneer women’s face covered makes you more able to see them, to look at them, to be aware of their reactions and their movements. There was so much hand work on the production. Our production designer Dave Doernberg and I were always proudly comparing our calloused and ragged working hands.

“The costume design has to bend and grow along
with the character and the actor playing the character
and the script changes and the director’s changing vision…
But I always have a strong design base early on
to keep referring to and to keep the costumes true.”

I think it’s important that you mention Chris Blauvelt, because the cinematography is a huge part of the costumes’ success in a film, as of course is every artistic department input, but I mention cinematography because how the DP (director of photography) shoots a film, using certain angles, or only shooting from the bust up, weighs heavily on the look of the film and on how a costume designer must focus on the clothes and on what exactly they want to be seen. Have there been times when you had to adapt to a certain style of filming?

There’s always the possibility on set of an unplanned close-up of shoes or a sleeve or another costume detail. I’ve learned not to trust the shot list one hundred percent and be prepared with every detail in place for when impromptu inspiration strikes. Also, it’s good to have backup options in case a costume doesn’t work for some reason once in the location. That has happened to me, but it has been mostly because the sound person couldn’t get clean sound quality with certain types of fabric and the body mics. In fact that happened in Night Moves. I had to give Dakota Fanning my own cotton jacket to wear in one scene of the film as we were ready to shoot and far from the costume trailer.

I’ve worked with some DPs and directors that have some colour restrictions or colour preferences and that design decision is worked out in the planning of the film.

The natural-light cinematography of Christopher Blauvelt envisages the film in sepia tones and the muted colour palette of the clothes, except for Meek’s red shirt, blends right in. Was that intentional or did people dress like that in those days?

I spent a lot of time in my kitchen testing out the aging and fading of the fabrics. The pink of the dress that Mrs. Tetherow (ed. note: Michelle Williams’ character) wears started as a stronger, more reddish colour. Another popular colour for a younger lady’s calico dress at the time was called cheddar cheese. That bleached and faded to a most beautiful golden shade. Early natural dyes wouldn’t have held up as strong colours in the sun and dust of the pioneers’ journey. That’s how the palette of the costumes became dusty and faded.

Meek wears red because he is that person that needs to be paid attention to. Red flannel shirts were popular and that red is close to the madder dyed red of the time.

Shirley Henderson in “Meek’s Cutoff”, 2010, directed by Kelly Reichardt | Evenstar Films, Film Science, Harmony Productions

Is that why Zoe Kazan’s character (Millie Gately) is wearing a yellow calico dress? She is the youngest female character.

Yes! That’s right. I chose that colour for Mrs. Gately because it said something about her age and her personality. A lot of the actual settlers that went west were young married couples. Teenagers.

All men wear hats, but Bruce Greenwood’s (Meek’s) seems to sit differently on him, it’s concealing, along with its long hair and beard. What story do his clothes tell?

Meek is a character playing out the role of being himself. That’s why his hat, his beard, his hair, his red shirt and his buckskin suit are all a little larger than life. At one point in the film, he was supposed to appear by the campfire in a gentleman’s smoking turban. I was sort of against it at the time, because I thought it was too much, but now I wish it was in there. Meek could have pulled off a costume shenanigan like that!

Do you believe that costumes not only relate to the characters who wear them, but also to the modern audiences who watch them? Is that why you didn’t reproduce an exact replica of Meek’s headpiece? And does it take a lot of convincing for the director to accept a different approach that the costume designer proposes?

I was concerned the turban might have looked too comical in the film. That turban may not have even been Meek’s own. It may have been a prop in the Victorian studio when the portrait was taken many years after the time of Meek’s misguidance of the Oregon settlers.

There can be constant adjustments to the costumes as the project evolves. Lots of things influence the final look of the film’s costumes. The costume design has to bend and grow along with the character and the actor playing the character and the script changes and the director’s changing vision and even the locations as the film comes together. But I always have a strong design base early on to keep referring to and to keep the costumes true.

“The hands-on experience of making Meek’s Cutoff
was very special and not usual.”

Do you usually talk about the costumes with a director or is it more a conversation about characters and their evolution?

My favourite films have been the ones where there was a lot of conversation early on with the director. Getting excited about exchanging reference pictures and paintings and even sharing written references. For instance, Kelly and I read the settler women’s journals of the western journey and there was a lot about their everyday life and workaday routines that influenced the way the costumes looked.

Are the opening and ending film credits really sewn on a piece of cloth?

Yes!! Not only are they embroidered on cloth, but it is the actual canvas cloth that was covering the Tetherow’s covered wagon. The artist Marlene McCarty created the Meek’s title artwork and we both hand embroidered the title cards. The idea came from a picture I found while researching the pioneers of an example of an embroidery by a pioneer woman with a family portrait and the words “A Piece of the Old Tent”. She had embroidered an old piece of canvas and it was a memory of her journey west with her family as a young woman. The original embroidery was kind of offset, crooked and imperfect and seemed heartfelt.

How often does the work of a costume designer call for this kind of craftsmanship and attention to detail these days?

The hands-on experience of making Meek’s Cutoff was very special and not usual.

Zoe Kazan, Bruce Greenwood and Tommy Nelson in “Meek’s Cutoff”, 2010, directed by Kelly Reichardt
Evenstar Films, Film Science, Harmony Productions

”The original inspiration for the Meek’s Cutoff title cards is the embroidery on the cover of the
museum exhibit pamphlet on the left,” explains Vicki Farrell.

Night Moves was your next film with Kelly Reichardt. Does working on a contemporary film differ radically from period films, from the costume designer’s point of view? How did you approach costuming the characters in Night Moves?

To me, designing a contemporary film is more difficult than a period film. You don’t get the control of designing the costumes, choosing fabrics and fine-tuning colours. For contemporary films, I am mostly finding the costumes, shopping for them, instead of making them or having them made. I still like to have a lot of research compiled and try to find what the real people who are like these characters wear. I like to keep things true and realistic if that’s what the film calls for. In Night Moves, I felt the main characters would like it if all people just disappeared back into the earth. The way that Josh, Dena and Harmon dressed was the opposite of standing out.

But I also think that contemporary costume design may not often be acknowledged as it should be and that the audience can easily overlook the fact that in a good movie, nothing is left to chance, not even a plain t-shirt or a hooded jacket.

I agree!! Finding the right t-shirt or hoody or jeans can be a lot of trouble! My stockpile of costumes consists of lots of vintage basics like sweatshirts and t-shirts and jeans and belts. The basics are the most useful costume items that I collect. People think that, as a costume designer, I must have the coolest collection of vintage costumes, and I do, but what I really value and what I use the most from my stock are nicely aged basic clothing items like jeans and sweatshirts.

Peter Sarsgaard in “Night Moves”, 2013, directed by Kelly Reichardt | Cinedigm Entertainment Group

“The costumes would disguise her figure, but not be
too baggy and loose, which could make Brandon
look as if he was playing dress-up.”

Speaking of jeans and sweatshirts, I would like to talk a little about Boys Don’t Cry. In cross-dressing narrative, the relationship between clothing and body plays an even more crucial part in forming an identity and in establishing how the character is looked at by the other characters and by the audience. What was the starting point in dressing Hilary Swank’s character, Brandon Teena?

I watched the documentary The Brandon Teena Story many times. At the NY Public Library (before looking things up on the internet was the norm!!), I researched the places where Brandon Teena lived, Lincoln, Nebraska and Falls City, Nebraska, and the time, the early 90s. Thought about what it would be like to be a young person then. What music would you be into, where would you hang out, where would you buy your clothes and how would you create your look.

We prepped and filmed Boys Don’t Cry in 1998 in Dallas, Texas, which is not that far from Nebraska and only 5 years after the murder of Brandon Teena. I thrifted most of the costumes in used clothing stores in the outskirts of Dallas and it really seemed like I could find actual clothing from that place and time.

I had two fittings with Hilary to figure out which types of clothing worked best to help her pass as a young man. So the costumes would disguise her figure, but not be too baggy and loose which could make Brandon look as if he was playing dress-up. Also, what the best method of binding her body would be for Hilary’s comfort. I had a binding vest that was made for that purpose, but it was too tight and uncomfortable and not working. What ended up working best was wrapping Hilary with athletic bandages.

I remember reading that director Kimberly Peirce was very specific in not wanting anyone meet Hilary Swank (who was at her first major role in this film) as Hilary and wanted her to pass as a boy everywhere as much as she could. Was there any specific part you played in this, in not only helping the character, but also the actor playing the character, get into this other identity offset?

I didn’t really have any part in the character preparation that Kimberly and Hilary did offset. I think that happened in NY and LA before everyone came to Dallas for the shoot. But during the shoot all the cast and crew stayed in the same hotel in Dallas and I think that really helped with pulling everything together. We could all meet up and exchange our ideas and our work and really create the film as a group.

Chloë Sevigny and Hilary Swank in “Boys Don’t Cry”, 1999, directed by Kimberly Peirce | Fox Searchlight Pictures

We’ve only talked about main characters. How are you addressing dressing the extras? Because it’s so crucial that they feel that they are part of the world that you are creating.

I agree one hundred percent that the background players are so important to the look of the film. I prefer to have fittings with the extras ahead of shooting if I can. I would like to always have a specific department that just focuses on getting the background costumes right. You can get so many interesting details in there! I’m always checking out what everybody’s wearing in the fringes of films.

You have also worked for television. Does costume designing for television differ much from designing for the big screen, especially today when the bar has been set pretty high for television with so many interesting new series?

I know! So many great things to watch! For me, the difference is that in designing for a TV/Web series you have the luxury of more money and more crew to work with. I just finished the 3rd season of a comedy series called At Home With Amy Sedaris this February. It’s a super fun show with most of the costumes designed and made in-house. Lots of crafty colourful costuming and flashy sets. Very different from the realism of Meek’s Cutoff and Boys Don’t Cry!

Website: vickifarrell.net

La enfermedad del domingo: In Conversation with Costume Designer Clara Bilbao

Jacques Demy in Black and White and His Quiet Heroines

Posted by classiq in Film, Film costume, Interviews | | Comments Off

14 August 2020

Sounds and Tracks: On the Road

“Maybe this world is busy enough, yes?”

During my interview with Dylan Haley earlier this month, there was something he said that resonated with me only too well. He said that lately he had been listening to “a lot of Bob Dylan and Hank Williams and other traditional music often with just one guy or girl singing and playing the guitar and that’s it. Now I can hardly listen to any other kind of music, it just sounds like noise,” resembling his recent more minimalist approach to design to a good folk song. I think many creatives are likely to experience this in response to everything that this world has been going through, not just in the last six months.

I have been listening to a lot of early Bob Dylan myself all summer long (I finally understand why Mats Wilander is so hooked on listening to Bob Dylan on his road trips), including his soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, from 1973. Sam Peckinpah’s Western marked Dylan’s first dramatic role, playing an associate of the gunfighter Billy the Kid, and stealing the scene while doing it, and his first soundtrack album. And I couldn’t leave Jeff Bridges’s Hold On You from Crazy Heart (2009) out either. I always mix movie soundtrack songs with other favourite tunes. I just wish I had a good old mix tape every time I feel like gathering all the songs I’m currently listening to in one place. Remember those? The human element.

1. Hold On You, Jeff Bridges / 2. Out on the Weekend, Neil Young / 3. Perfect Day, Lou Reed / 4. Union Sundown, Bob Dylan / 5. Lay Lady Lay, The Birds / 6. Summer in Siam, The Pogues / 7. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack), Bob Dylan / 8. The River, Bruce Springsteen /
9. Out on the Road, Norah Jones / 10. Main Title Theme (Billy) from the Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack, Bob Dylan / 11. Words (Between the Lines of Age), Neil Young / 12. Jersey Girl, Tom Waits /
13. Sara, Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”, 1973, directed by Sam Peckinpah
Photo by MGM/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

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10 August 2020

The Armani Aesthetic and Film Costume Appropriation: Sam Shepard in “Voyager”

Sam Shepard in “Voyager”, 1991 | Action Films, Bioskop Film, Stefi 2

This Summer We’re Channelling: a recurring seasonal series
in the journal that celebrates both style in film and summertime.

Giorgio Armani’s menswear, and womenswear, aesthetic defined and ruled an era, giving birth to a new form of democracy, a new modernity, a new elegance, by going against the grain and proposing diffused lines, a less severe allure to the male figure, and a less constricted allure to the female figure. It was an aesthetic that photographer Aldo Fallai, who started to work with Armani in the early 1970s, before Armani established his own label, and the designer “developed together step by step, as it came from simply observing what was happening around us”, but not by copying what they saw but by portraying something aspirational, a social class that was missing, “a non-existing Italian bourgeoisie – a sort of Nordic bourgeoisie, an enlightened bourgeoisie. A civilised population. […] I mean, especially when there’s a period of general crisis, we should deliver dreams to people instead of helping to lower their general taste,” the photographer further concludes in this interview. Armani wanted people to live differently through the way they dressed.

It was an aesthetic that went against the formality of the times. Talking about his impoverished childhood in postwar Piacenza and his father in his book, Armani writes: “My father was someone for whom it took very little to look elegant – as people would say back then – whenever he didn’t have to wear a uniform. But I always picture him, even now, in that Fascist uniform” (his father had no choice when he was hired to work at a Fascist local headquarters): “a black jacket made of course wooden cloth, baggy blue grey gabardine trousers, a black tie over a black shirt. How curious: isn’t there something about the description that makes us think of the way people dress today?”

It was an aesthetic that Aldo Fallai noted that it originated in Fellini’s I Vitelloni.

Giorgio Armani has had a long relationship with cinema and he has worked on many films, as it has been well documented in this journal, from American Gigolo and The Comfort of Strangers to The Untouchables. In his fashion designs, he preserved an aesthetic of “elegance and distinction” and the idea that attractiveness should not be too revealing. He made people sexy by dressing, not by undressing them, and the epitome of that was the unstructured jacket.

Aldo Fallai continues: “There was also the narcissistic element of the person wearing the clothes, right? Showing off a bit. If you look closely at the images, the models are almost always looking straight at the camera – this was premeditated. Of course, there were images where they looked to the left or right but in the end we always chose the ones that looked straight at you. That’s the relationship between the image on the poster and the viewer. It looks at you and centralises everything. I remember when the first Armani billboard went up. It was a small, slow, low-intensity revolution of having black-and-white fashion imagery in the streets.”

This narcissistic element, some argue, makes its presence felt in many of the characters Armani dressed for the big screen. Designing for film, as a fashion designer, has had its controversies over time, as it is an ambiguous process of preserving their fashion house look and immersing the designs in the narrative. “Cinema allows me to work with clothes in a way that upholds my vision of style, in that I help to build a character. It’s the kind of operation that, when it really works out well, rewards you in the most satisfying of ways: eternity.”

Sam Shepard in “Voyager”, 1991 | Action Films, Bioskop Film, Stefi 2

Even when working within the confines of film costume, Armani retains a strong aesthetic identity. That is easily to observe in films such as American Gigolo and The Comfort of Strangers, films set in 1980 and 1990, respectively, thus displaying contemporary Armani designs, but in The Untouchables (released in 1987 but with a story set in the 1920s) or Voyager (original title Homo Faber, from 1991 but set in the 1950s), he had to deal with period reconstruction, and he did it in his own individual way. Films draw on complex codes of authenticity in order to convince and attract their audiences, and Armani knows that. “Film costumes not only relate to the characters who wear them, but also to the audiences who watch them,” writes Sarah Street in Costume and Cinema: Dress Codes in Popular Films. Costume appropriation depends not only on the period of the story, but on the period when the film is released, and, most importantly, on the director’s vision.

“The Magnificent Seven wear Armani,” was the title of an American critic’s piece about The Untouchables when it came out in 1987. Film journalist Lars Penning wrote that that remark “wasn’t far from the truth. The Untouchables is more like a Western than a detective story. In interviews, De Palma repeatedly stressed that the story was really about the young and old revolver heroes.” For sure, whenever a relaxation of the differences between contemporaneity and costume period occurs in film, that is clearly a vision upheld by the director in collaboration with the costume designer or fashion designer. Another example would be New York New York, where the exaggerated suits and clothing that Armani did were an overnight sensation retail-wise, but they were suits and clothing about which a friend of mine who studied film recalls vividly from a talk Martin Scorsese gave to her class that they were brilliantly thought out to reflect the heightened emotions of a crumbling marriage. Sometimes liberties are taken to make a film a bit more comprehensible to modern times and that’s something I am always open to, especially if changes are carefully considered and thoughtfully altered from reality and work for the film and for the audience.

“A successful character surpasses the barrier of time; he or she becomes a legendary figure and not just because of the way they act, but because of the way they’re dressed,” Armani said. Cinema is primarily visual, and Giorgio Armani knows that clothes enhance the cinematic experience, recalling to mind that relationship between his billboard posters and his audience he focused on when creating the image of his fashion house. That being said, Armani’s clothes in Voyager (and before that, in The Untouchables) are not necessarily easily identifiable as Armani style, but as a style that easily navigates through the fashions of the 1950s and 1990s, a repertoire of sartorial items of the fifties that are lended a modern sensibility – therein lies their appeal. Stylisation is the key word here. “Giorgio is a perfect stylist, he knows absolutely everything there is to know – where to put the pins, how to place the jackets in the best possible position, how to shape the waistline,” Aldo Fallai resolved. He is a craftsman, too, one who likes to feel the line of his designs from the moment he draws them by hand to the moment when they follow the movement of the body. “People underestimate the importance of drawing in fashion,” the designer says. “But to those who insist that all you need is a computer, I reply that then the essential human factor is missing; the hand that traces the width of a pair of pants or how low a neckline on an evening dress should be.”

“I enjoyed being out of reach.”
Walter Faber

When I first came across a publicity still from Voyager (image at the top of this article), I didn’t know that Armani had worked on the film. But when I saw Sam Shepard in his tank top, vest, suspenders and Trilby hat, the image instantly reminded me of Giorgio Armani’s 1980s and 1990s campaigns. It also reminded me of this portrait of Armani’s father – in his shirt, tie and vest and with his spectacles on, one of those elegant looks he wore on his days off uniform. It was not just the clothes that brought Armani’s campaign imagery to mind, but the feel of the shot, and Sam Shepard’s body language, and the gaze on his face. It is a detached look.

Walter Faber is an engineer who travels from New York to remote sites in Latin America, and from one corner of Europe to the other – Schlöndorff has acknowledged that the content of Voyager in a way reflected his own personal situation: “Somehow, I sort of have a suitcase existence,” as cited in the book Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema: Adaptations, Politics and the Movie-appropriate. Faber’s work has always come first. He is detached from everything, tepid and analytical, a voyager through his own life. Even when the plane he is on is about to crash, he remains composed and unemotional, simply absorbed by the mechanics of the accident rather than by the possible outcome – however, the experience makes him remember that there was a time when even he was in love (“With the eternal dream to settle down with a home,” Schlöndorff concludes his resemblance to the character). It’s that detachment, the intentional projection of a certain image that I first associated with the Armani aesthetic. More than representing the times and the fashions of the times, it creates a point of identification with the character, to his transient traveller’s existence, while subtly assimilating Armani’s designer identity into the costumes.

Sam Shepard in “Voyager”, 1991 | Action Films, Bioskop Film, Stefi 2

Walter Faber always wears a Trilby hat, even in bed. 1950s accurate? Yes. Functional for that particular scene? No. But it makes sense because it’s a distinctive trait of his character. It is however interesting to notice that the hat is clearly meant to be a reflection of the times. He always wears one in the present, which in the film is 1957, but in the flashbacks that show him in the 1930s, he wears a cap, which was much more appropriate for those times. Faber’s pleated, light weight trousers and his loose shirts with big breast pockets also echo the 1950s fashions, but it is a style that also reverberates the fashions of the 1990s – I perfectly remember how my father used to wear those same kinds of clothes in the 1990s.

But the details, the one size too big of the black coat, the way he wears his hat (just so), the gracefully draped and rumpled supple materials, the insouciant nature of that vest over tank top and suspenders, and attitude are undoubtedly Armani bywords. By offsetting the functionality of his clothes with a modern stylishness, a stylishness that confers Faber a universal appeal, Armani “surpasses the barrier of time”.

Sam Shepard in “Voyager”, 1991 | Action Films, Bioskop Film, Stefi 2

Posted by classiq in Film, Film costume, This summer we’re channelling | | Comments Off

6 August 2020

The Powerful Impact of Minimalism: Interview with Designer and Illustrator Dylan Haley

Dylan Haley film poster design for the Arbelos release of “Sátántangó”, 1994, directed by Béla Tarr

A poster design has to feel appropriate for the film and the style of an illustrator or designer has to be versatile enough to communicate different films in a way that best compliments each film. But I will say this: I personally appreciate so much more a minimalist aesthetic. Not stubbornly minimalistic just for the sake of being minimalistic, but one that is enigmatic yet strong in condensing the idea of the film or in extracting one of its special qualities.

One of the best contemporary posters that fall into this category is Dylan Haley‘s for the Arbelos Films release of Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó, a poster that caters to the audience not like the catchy commercial posters do, but one that has its own aesthetic identity and appeals through imaginative design, just as uncompromising as the film is. It speaks about the film within, yet can very well have a life of its own. And, most of all, it impresses because it’s this very simplicity that seems to prepare you for something visceral and profound.

I have caught up with Dylan to talk about his beautiful piece of art and other recent works, about the movie poster he would hang on his wall and about the approach he has taken with his design style since our last interview.

Dylan Haley festival poster for “Human Affairs”, 2018, directed by Charlie Birns

Your poster for Béla Tarr’s Sátántangó is one of the most striking, minimalist poster designs of the last few years. Could you walk us through the design process?

Well thank you, I am very pleased with the response this poster has had. The first thing I will say about this poster is that it was very much a collaborative process with a fellow named Ei Toshinari, who is one of the co-founders of Arbelos Films who are distributing the film in North America. Ei wears many hats, but one of them is working with me on these designs. Something that is rarely discussed is that a good design can only happen if the client says “yes”. I am the one crafting the posters, but both of us are looking at other work for reference, and, in this case, it was Ei’s idea to use the photo of the young girl looking in through the window. The two of us discuss almost every detail of the work we do. I have learned to not shy away from his input!

OK, back to the process – the film is such an uncompromising masterpiece it was very intimidating. I just tried to put all that out of my mind to start with. Furthermore, it was intimidating because the film is so long, and the story isn’t straight forward at all. There is no obvious simple way to visually sum up this film, there isn’t even really a main character. I eventually concluded the main character in this film was the shit weather, the rain and the mud and just the decay and desperation. That was my starting point. The image of the young girl in the film looking through the window was perfect as we could put the wild rain dumping down above her, and of course her expression is so powerful.

The type below I am particularly happy with. None of it was typed out on the computer, it was all taken from screen shots from the film’s title sequences and then printed out on a copy machine and then I photographed the prints. So the shapes are maybe 4 (?) stages removed from the original source. It was a little step like this that made the type start to feel like an old letterpress poster. None of the type is centered or lined up evenly, which I think contributes to the tension that the young girl is also creating with her eyes. And then of course mixing the letters in with some dirt and dead leaves that I photographed gave it the final touch. I added a lot of grain and did some contrast stuff to the whole thing. In general I try to make my posters look “not digital”, but I took this concept to heart even more than usual for this poster.

“I always think of the life the poster could have.
If it ends up framed on someone’s wall for years to come,
then what could be better advertisement than that?”

I remember that the first time I saw your poster I lingered on the typed part because I loved the element of surprise, the fact that the credits are not a separate component, and the way the dead leaves and dirt are incorporated into the overall composition, interspersed with the text. The dead nature you photographed and incorporated into the design also reminded me of one of my favourite Hans Hillmann posters, for Louis Malle’s Le feu follet. Was it an inspiration?

Yes, the dead leaves and dirt were very much inspired from the Hans Hillman poster of which you speak. Adrian Curry at Movie Poster of the Day also noticed that. Of course my version is more subdued. I’m very impressed you would catch that! The dirt and the leaves give this poster a final touch or grittiness. Well, I don’t have a problem borrowing ideas, they are out there for the taking, but there is still the challenge of making them work with any given project.

Absolutely. Because what truly caught my interest was not the possible influence, but the way it all made perfect sense in your artwork, because that’s where my interest lies ultimately, in each and every poster that tells a story on its own. Going back to your stylistic approach for this poster, is there a lot of resistance to this extreme minimalism that lets the image speak for itself, from a commercial point of view?

Ha, well, the film itself is minimal. Compared to the original poster (which I love), our poster is not minimal at all! Well, again I must sing my praises for the Arbelos team. They have good taste and they love film, and they care about good design as a means of communication. I wouldn’t say we don’t care what other people think, because we do, but the model is that Arbelos only distributes films with a certain amount of artistic integrity, and the design that accompanies those films is meant to speak to that. To try and promote Sátántangó like a Hollywood film is ridiculous.

Adrian Curry wrote something about how we showed great restraint with the Sátántangó poster to leave out any quotes, praising the film in the empty black area that covers the top two thirds of the design. The truth is we never considered it. I’m not convinced quotes really work to sell a film in the first place, and besides, they never look good. They instantly turn a poster into an advertisement. I always think of the life the poster could have. If it ends up framed on someone’s wall for years to come, then what could be better advertisement than that?

Dylan Haley film poster design for the Arbelos release of ”The Juniper Tree”, 1990, directed by Nietzchka Keene

I do believe that a good poster will have a life past the release date, and it will make you want to frame it and put it on the wall. What movie posters do you have on the wall?

I would love to boast a wonderful film poster collection, but I actually don’t own any. Our home is very small with lots of windows and there is just no good place to hang a large film poster… a bit odd actually. I won’t shy away from the question though. If I had the space, I would possibly put up one of my favourite posters of all time, which is the poster for the film Downhill Racer, designed by Philip Gips. It’s just the greatest poster ever! The movie is really good as well, but I think the poster has had a more lasting life than the film. It’s also a very minimal poster that I imagine would sit very well in a living space. I’ve been fantasising about getting my hands dirty and turning our garden shed into a studio, maybe I will have to treat myself to a copy of this poster if I ever complete this task.

“Maybe this world is busy enough, yes?
If it’s done right, a simple poster can have
more impact, just like a good folk song.”

Do you think film poster designers are prone to being more creative when they are working on a film that is restored or re-released and the public is already familiar with the film than on a new theatrical release that usually puts accent on the marketable value of the actors’ image and their names?

I think in many cases that is true, but, that being said, I have generally put the main character on my posters even if the film is an older known film. I worked on The Last Movie starring Dennis Hopper, and ultimately we had to make a second poster, because the first one we all liked didn’t clearly show Dennis Hopper’s image. It’s annoying to have to think about stuff like that, but at the same time you have to be realistic. I have done a few mock-ups on projects that don’t show any of the actors, but so far none of them has been picked. This is true on new releases as well as re-releases.

I do however think that, without a doubt, re-released films often have a lot less restrictions simply because the stakes are a lot lower, and, generally, a lot less people are involved. The most obvious example of this would be the Criterion Collection who have probably never created a Blu-ray cover that wasn’t better than the original One Sheet!

Dylan Haley film poster designs for the Arbelos releases of “Mutual Appreciation”, 2005, directed by Andrew Bujalski,
and “The Last Movie”, 1971, directed by Dennis Hopper

There is this distinctive, minimalist approach that runs through many of your latest works, from The Juniper Tree and Human Affairs to that alternative poster for The Last Movie. Is this the style you are most likely to pursue in your film poster designs in the future?

Well, yes, it seems my work is perhaps getting more minimal. Well, what can I say, I like it. Maybe this world is busy enough, yes? If it’s done right, a simple poster can have more impact, just like a good folk song. I’ve been listening to a lot of early Bob Dylan and Hank Williams and other traditional music often with just one guy or girl singing and playing a guitar and that’s it. Now I can hardly listen to any other kind of music, it just sounds like noise. I’m also constantly trying to make space in my house and clear things away… perhaps this is a “first world problem”. It’s so easy to buy things for cheap these days, but then you have to keep what you buy in the house and you can run out of space quickly. Maybe because I have a mind like a hamster on a wheel that I like to have some empty space around me.

That being said, not everything I do is SO minimal. Babylon and Mutual Appreciation, for example, show I can make things a little chaotic if the film calls for it!

“Working on a film poster isn’t really about ME and my work,
it’s about the film, and the distributor, and the filmmaker.”

Right. The design has to feel appropriate for the film rather than just be designing for the sake of designing in a certain style. Was there any handwork done on the Mutual Appreciation poster?

The Mutual Appreciation poster has a hand-drawn scribble on there with a pencil, but that is all… Also, I painted the yellow background on The Last Movie poster.

In our last interview you said you were thinking of bringing illustration more into your film poster work. How has your work been evolving in these last few years?

Ha, and so the struggle begins! I have made some attempts, but so far I have not found my voice so to speak. Maybe I am meant to simply be among the many who appreciate good illustration done by others. Funny thing about creative processes (maybe life in general), there is a tide that takes you where you are going whether you like it or not. I think free will may be more of an illusion than we would like to believe. At any rate, I have done some work that I am happy with recently, but it has not involved illustration.

So work does what it does and you are trying to follow it. What does freedom mean to you as an artist?

Yes, I suppose that is what I just said, but if I have to explain more, I will say that I find pleasure and stay interested in certain processes, and not so much in others, and I can’t really control that. And it is true that an idea can sort of pop out of nowhere and I, just as you say, “follow” the idea. But let me reel it in a little, because a lot of what I do is completely calculated and considered. In some cases, the ideas are even “borrowed” from another design. So it’s not like I am communing with spirits here. And even after the initial idea for a poster is decided upon, there is the very straightforward task of adding the film credits and just basic composition, which is not always easy and can make or break a design. So it’s like a dish that a cook prepares, a dash of this and a dash of that until it is just right.

As far as “freedom”… Well, sometimes too much freedom can be a bad thing. Sometimes an initial idea I have gets dismissed by a client and I’m not happy about it, but more often than not the final result will be much better. Working on a film poster isn’t really about “ME” and my work, it’s about the film, and the distributor, and the filmmaker. I do find my role within all of this, but the best results come when I consider the needs and goals of the project. If I want to just express myself for the sake of it, I will play my guitar and write a silly song, which is what I’ve been doing these days just for myself.

Dylan Haley festival poster for “Anne at 13,000 Ft.”, directed by Kazik Radwanski

You can find more of Dylan Haley’s work here.

Posted by classiq in Film, Film poster design, Interviews | | Comments Off