Footnote #46 responds to a listener email by focusing on the speeds and spaces of the “multiplanar” image, a term theorised in Thomas Lamarre’s writing on anime and its techniques which looks at how motion is able to divide animated landscapes into different planes of action.
Read MoreChris and Alex once again draw on the expertise of Dr Peter Kunze (Tulane University) for this discussion of the form and function of the period critically and culturally known as the Disney Renaissance.
Read MoreA deep dive into the U.S. animation studio Hanna-Barbera provides the focus of Footnote #44, as Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Jared Bahir Browsh to discuss the origins of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s influential and prolific production company that strengthened the cartoon’s move from theatrical exhibition to television.
Read MoreFresh from their discussion of Wish (Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023), Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Robyn Muir, Lecturer in Media and Communication (University of Surrey), author of The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis (2023), and founder and director of the Disney, Culture and Society Research Network to discuss the historical and cultural power of Disney princesses, a phenomenon that traverses films, merchandise, and several ancillary media.
Read MoreFollowing up last week’s feature-length episode on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003), the latest Footnote looks at J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal essay “On Fairy Stories” that engages the definitions, origins, and applications of the fairy story.
Read MoreFootnote #41 looks at canon formation and value judgments in relation to the selection and privilege of art and culture’s masterworks, with Chris and Alex tackling the relationship between canons and consensus.
Read MoreWhat is puppet animation, and are puppets a form of animation? The historical and theoretical implications of fantasy and animation’s relationship to puppet performance are the focus of Footnote #40.
Read MoreWhat is so special about special effects? What role does technological innovation play in their convincing construction of illusion? What distinguishes ‘special’ from ‘visual’ effects? In this Footnote episode, Chris and Alex play with ideas of special effects in relation to fantasy and animation.
Read MoreFootnote #38 tackles the recurrent motif of the storybook that so often begins Disney’s animated features, but which also takes other forms and styles as part of the studio’s sustained dramatisation of storytelling.
Read MoreSpecial guest Dr Lawrence Napper, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London and expert in early silent and British cinemas, joins Chris and Alex once again - this time to talk about silent cinema in this Footnote episode of the podcast.
Read MoreWhat is horror cinema, and where did it come from? What are its unsettling spectatorial effects and uncomfortable provocations? What codes and conventions define its big screen history, and at which points does it splinter into slasher sub-genres and monstrous cycles? What role does the gothic and supernatural play in its generic construction? And how does the body as both threat and as threatened play into horror’s fascination with the impacts of difference and otherness?
Read MoreChris and Alex return to the Footnote format for this latest episode on “twice told tales” - a term that, following its Shakespearean origins, has been applied by writers of fantasy to refer to fantasy’s relationship to oral literature and fairytales. Topics include the fairytale’s codification of oral culture; legacies of literary structures and the power of (re)telling the beats of a story; shifting narrative templates and the act of adding one story ‘on top’ of another; and the spectatorial pleasure of receiving the fantasy of twice told creativity.
Read MoreChris and Alex are joined once more by Mark Bould, Professor of Film and Literature at the University of West England, for this Footnote episode that explores the origins and definitions of science-fiction storytelling.
Read MoreSpecial guest Chris McKenna, current Head of Creative Operations at the VFX studio Moving Picture Company, joins Chris and Alex for this latest Footnote episode on the VFX industry, with a particular focus on artists with colour blindness and advice on the best avenues for getting into animation lighting and design.
Read MoreFresh 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.
Read MoreFrom 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreDrawing 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.
Read MoreAnimation’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.
Read MoreFollowing up episodes on hyper-realism and photorealism, this latest instalment completes the unofficial Fantasy/Animation ‘realism’ trilogy (!) by focusing on the history, politics, and aesthetic concerns of surrealism.
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