Fantasy/Animation

Footnote #32 - 3D (with Nick Jones)

Fresh from their discussion of Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts, 2021), Chris, Alex and special guest Dr Nick Jones (Senior Lecturer in Film, Television and Digital Culture, University of York) return for this short Footnote episode on the marvel and magic of 3D technology. Topics include cinema’s own history of size, space, and spectacle from the Lumière brothers to James Cameron; the kinds of depth cues offered by 3D cinema that extends perception beyond the real-world; technological innovation and 3D’s default narratives of extension and protrusion; and how understanding the history of film in three-dimensions perhaps gets us closer to seeing what cinema might actually be as a creative medium.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) (with Nick Jones)

The MCU comes calling once again for Episode 122 of the podcast, as Chris and Alex navigate the complex web of storylines and superheroes that build the world of Spider-Man: No Way Home (Jon Watts, 2021). Joining them to reflect on the genre’s enduring appeal alongside the contemporary pleasures of Hollywood’s increasing multiversal madness is Dr Nick Jones, who is Senior Lecturer in Film, Television and Digital Culture at the University of York. Nick is the author of the monographs Hollywood Action Films and Spatial Theory (2015), Spaces Mapped and Monstrous: Digital 3D and Visual Culture (2020), and the upcoming Gooey Media Screen Entertainment and the Graphic User Interface (2023), and his research focuses on digital effects, popular cinema, and interactive media. Listen as they discuss the complex place of Spider-Man within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the industrial power of the franchise reboot; superheroic nostalgia and post-pandemic realities of what it means to ‘move on’; the collective authorship of a character as it is crafted through actorly labour and VFX processes across disparate entries within a film series; digital de-aging and the virtual recreation of youth; the stakes of popular cinema’s turn towards the fractures of a multiverse narrative; and how Spider-Man: No Way Home offers a space where heightened levels of intertextuality and intensified emotion determine the importance of an exceptional individual as much as the value of connection.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #31 - Claymation

From the invention of Plasticine by William Harbutt in Britain in 1897 to the use of malleable materials in the earliest stop-motion ‘trick films’ of Edwin S. Porter, J. Stuart Blackton, and the Fleischer Brothers, the application of clay in animation has a history as long as the medium itself. In Footnote #31 of the podcast, Chris and Alex deliberate the evolution of clay animation, including the patenting of ‘Claymation’ in the early-1980s and its emergent synonymy with the Bristol-based Aardman studio; distinctions between more freeform and fluid clay animation and the moveable, modelled bodies of Wallace and Gromit; and how this craft-based handmade style came to embody (and continues to define) the Aardman studio’s animated spirit in an era of pervasive and pristine computer graphics.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Monster House (2006) (with Jane Batkin)

Chris and Alex delve into motion-capture, murder mystery, and monster houses for this discussion of Gil Kenan’s 2006 computer-animated film Monster House, a digital feature produced by the ImageMovers company founded by renowned filmmaker Robert Zemeckis and a specialist in animation utilising mo-cap technologies. Joining them for Episode 121 of the podcast is Dr Jane Batkin, an animation film theorist and Associate Professor in the School of Film, Media and Journalism at the University of Lincoln. Her book Identity in Animation: A Journey into Self, Difference, Culture and the Body was published in 2017, and she has had various chapters in edited collections on animation, including a recent piece on childhood wandering in Coraline: A Closer Look at Studio Laika’s Stop Motion Witchcraft (2021). Jane is currently working on a monograph on childhood in animated film and television and gained a British Academy Award for research in August 2022 for her project entitled “The Secret Space of Childhood in Animated and Live Action Cinema: Performance, Preservation and Metaphor.” Topics in this instalment include the production context for Monster House and the question of child labour; the uncanniness of children-in-performance and what it means for a child to be viewed as ‘acting’ vs. ‘being’; the digital rendering of surfaces and textures and the film’s ‘puppetlike’ character designs; computer animation and nostalgia, and whether it is possible to be nostalgic for CGI; the ‘body’ of animated homes and psycho-architectural spaces via the film’s proximity to the horror genre; and how Monster House’s negotiation of adulthood positions Kenan’s computer-animated feature as a ‘Sirkian’ melodrama for children.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #30 - Franchises

The economy of the Hollywood franchise is the focus of Footnote #30, where Chris and Alex examine the multimedia conglomeration of the U.S. cinema industry in the blockbuster era of the 1970s, and the subsequent impact on the post-2000 phase of Hollywood film production and its intensified franchise mentality. To unpack the so-called ‘genius of the system,’ they take a journey through the history of sequels, serials, and series as far back as early Hollywood, and discuss the value of ‘pre-sold’ pleasures in the marketing of popular film franchises. The result is a consideration of precisely when (and how) Hollywood went from making franchises out of movies to making movies out of franchises.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) (with Rhianna Dhillon)

No sooner have Chris and Alex finished their examination of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Chris Columbus, 2002) than they make a swift return to Hogwarts for the third (and best?) in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004). Joining them in this instalment to separate their Leaky Cauldrons from their Time-Turners is very special guest Rhianna Dhillon, Film/TV critic and Presenter who has featured on BBC Radio One, Front Row, Sky News, and Channel 5, and is currently the film critic for BBC6Music and Radio 5 Live as well as regularly appearing on Kermode and Mayo's Take. Listen as they get to grips with Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘darker’ approach to the Harry Potter universe as a vital moment of change for the series; fantastical transformation stories and the power of the VFX animagus; enchantment and wizarding spells of de-animation; the power of Pam Ferris as the magically-inflating Aunt Marge; shifting narrative chronology and the film’s links to Hollywood’s emergent ‘puzzle film’ tradition; the visualisation of childhood trauma through the dark Dementors; and how Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban successfully captures Harry’s anger at a world in which his family, friendships, and loyalties are becoming increasing fractured and fragmented.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #29 - Transmedia

Drawing on the seminal work of scholar Henry Jenkins, this latest Footnote episode engages the question of transmedia storytelling, industrial organisation, cultures of appreciation, and the consumption of media in an era of convergence. Alex takes the lead in discussing how contemporary entertainment experiences involve the dispersal of content across interacting, co-ordinated, and co-dependent media platforms. From medium specificity to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the idea of ‘transmedia’ is understood in this instalment through the creation of unified stories and narratives that no longer belong to one singular media channel, as well as in relation to the role played by fan practices and the post-classical horizontal integration and media synergy of the Hollywood film industry.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Arab Animation (1937-2015) (with Omar Sayfo)

Special guest Dr Omar Sayfo joins Chris and Alex for Episode 119 of the podcast, which features a rundown of Arab Animation covering a range of cartoons from Egypt, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, alongside a discussion of Omar’s recent book Arab Animation: Images of Identity (2021). Omar is an Affiliated Researcher in the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University, and a researcher at the Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, who has published articles in animation: an interdisciplinary journal, Media Industries Journal and The Journal of Popular Culture, as well as chapters in a number of edited collections. His monograph Arab Animation: Images of Identity looks at Arab animation from the 1930s to the present, offering an in-depth study of the “institutional and infrastructural background of animation production in the Arab world,” but also how Arab producers and artists have used animation to “mediate national, pan-Arab, Islamic and revolutionary identities.” Listen as the trio discuss a cross-section of animated examples that negotiate national culture and the mediation of political and religious messages, but also invite questions of local audiences vs. transnational flow; humour, allegory, and censorship; and the broader Arab political environment into which animation and fantasy has repeatedly entered. The case studies up for examination include Mish Mish Effendi (Frenkel Brothers, 1937) featuring the first Arab cartoon star; the fantasy film The Princess and the River (Faisal Al Yasiri, 1982) animated in East Germany; television series Freej (Mohammed Saeed Harib, 2006-2007) on the importance of tradition and custom; the parable Animal Stories from Qur'an (Sabbah Brothers, 2011) that demonstrates animation’s ability for educational entertainment; and the computer-animated feature Bilal: A New Breed of Hero (Khurram H. Alavi & Ayman Jamal, 2015) that depicts the life of Bilal ibn Rabah.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #28 - Adult Animation

Animation’s rude and crude history is the topic of Footnote #28 of the podcast as Chris and Alex take up the complex issue of adult animation. Topics include adult animation as the medium’s cultural ‘other’ and how it is a term involved in exclusionary tactics of classification; associations between the ‘adult’ of adult animation and taboo themes, strong language, and graphic sexual content; alternate definitions of adultness rooted in everything from the medium’s potential for satire, parody, and social criticism to wartime propaganda shorts; and how adult animation as a label opens up a discussion of animation’s own pedagogical function as a tool for education.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo*

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) (with David Sorfa)

Prepare for more multiverse madness as Chris and Alex dive into the world of Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, 2022), the Oscar-winning absurdist sci-fi action adventure that engages head-on with the question of what it means to be human set against the backdrop of forking path storylines, a sumptuous mise-en-scène of colliding visual styles, and a maelstrom of digital VFX. The special guest for Episode 118 is Dr David Sorfa, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Edinburgh and editor-in-chief of the journal Film-Philosophy, who specialises in philosophy’s relationship with cinema, Existentialism, phenomenology, the work of Jacques Derrida, and the presentation of thought and thinking in cinema. The trio cover a variety of topics appropriate to a film that slingshots spectators between multiple times and places, including what Everything Everywhere All At Once establishes in relation to feelings of worthlessness, apathy, and the power of choice; images of freedom and responsibility, and what it means for humanity to act in good faith; Michelle Yeoh’s star persona and her relationship to late-1990s/early-2000s Hollywood kung-fu cinema; the reflexive depiction of multiple femininities at breaking point; turns to chaos and fictional world theories rooted in what is made ‘possible’; and how a film like Everything Everywhere All At Once can add to and ‘do’ philosophical enquiry in positing how things might be otherwise than they are.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**