Phantom Thread

Started by wilder, June 02, 2016, 08:21:51 PM

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Jeremy Blackman

I was greeted with this tonight:

Jeremy Blackman

Fun facts from my theater experience:

Arrived early, so had to literally cover my ears like a crazy person as people walked out openly discussing spoilers.

In the auditorium, a large group to the back left came in chatting up a storm. Then I realized they were chatting about how they hate people who talk during movies. Sure enough they were silent except for the girl who giggled delightfully at appropriate moments.

Right before the movie started, guy to the back right inexplicably began reading a detailed plot synopsis to his companion. Had to shield my delicate ears once again.

Drenk

You've made it! Unfortunately, I've been spoiled. Just some keywords...But by my own fault.

I remember this couple who was probably on a first date or something just after TWBB:

"So...? That's not your kind of movie?
—No."
Ascension.

Sleepless

He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

Jeremy Blackman

It looks like Rian Johnson will be on the Slashfilmcast next week to discuss Phantom Thread! I'll update if/when it materializes.

https://twitter.com/davechensky/status/954103552460206080

boogienights

Quote from: csage97 on January 16, 2018, 03:51:40 PM
Phantom Thread is finally playing at my local theatre on Friday. I'm so happy. :') I got a ticket for a screening just after noon in the best seat in the house.

Awesome, I'm excited for you! Hope you dig it!

modage

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on January 18, 2018, 05:28:36 PM
It looks like Rian Johnson will be on the Slashfilmcast next week to discuss Phantom Thread! I'll update if/when it materializes.

https://twitter.com/davechensky/status/954103552460206080

Very cool. Fun tidbit: I had emailed with Rian about writing a little something about The Master for C&RV back in 2012. I think he was into the idea but for whatever reason it never ended up happening.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

d

#517
Quote from: Drenk on January 18, 2018, 11:52:38 AM
You've made it! Unfortunately, I've been spoiled. Just some keywords...But by my own fault.

Does one of the keywords begin with "p"? Cause that's the one I have learnt before seeing it, saldy. Seems major but hope that that's not the biggest surprise. Well, in terms of the plot it probably is but I'm trying to convince myself that it's not a big deal. Spoiling the scenes, the way they are put together, lines of dialogue etc. is much worse for me. But then again it's so fuckin' hard to avoid that at this point with all the clips, gifs, headlines, even the giggles of PTA and/or the interviewer in spoiler-free podcasts. Movies should be released everywhere at the same time, right? Why aren't they?! At least PTA's movies.

Jeremy Blackman

Unfortunately, that probably is the majorest of the spoilers. But at the same time, this movie isn't quite as spoilable as you might think.

I actually wish I hadn't watched the trailer, not even once, so I could have discovered some of those beautifully idiosyncratic lines for the first time in the film.

Alethia

Even if that detail IS spoiled as such, it's (while unfortunate) nearly impossible to spoil exactly how it factors in and what ultimate meaning it takes on.

d

Hope you are right and I'll still be able to enjoy that aspect. But it's hard not to think about it now and during the screening, trying to guess how and when it happens, waiting for it to happen.

Hope I'm not spoiling it for others just by writing about it.

wilberfan

Rebecca, The Passionate Friends, Rear Window, and their influence on Phantom Thread.

http://www.freecinemanow.com/2018/01/informedimages-rebecca-passionate.html

QuoteWhile the 1940 Oscar winner Rebecca has its fingerprints all over Phantom Thread, I wanted to bring to light a couple of other films whose heartbeats pulsate throughout Anderson's film: David Lean's 1949 drama The Passionate Friends and Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller Rear Window. Lean's film shares more similarities to the high society looks and settings of Rebecca and Phantom Thread. Rear Window is the less obvious inspiration but it shares an important connection to Phantom Thread's theme of obsession (while also providing commentary on how physical ailment can sometimes reignite the romance between partners).

Direct Link to the video essay:  https://vimeo.com/251583308

Ravi

https://slate.com/culture/2018/01/the-secrets-behindphantom-threads-evocative-sound-design.html

How Phantom Thread Made Toast Irritating

By Jackson McHenry
Jan 18, 2018

In Phantom Thread, Daniel Day-Lewis's quiet, meticulous dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock falls hard for a young, mysterious woman named Alma (Vicky Krieps). As with any fall, what results is bruising and chaotic—and a significant amount of noise. Reynolds is graceful and exacting. Alma is clumsy and clamorous. He works quietly; she walks heavily, trips, drop things. He insists on eating breakfast in total silence. She chews so loudly even the audience starts to grimace. It's through these small, bothersome sounds—Alma scraping butter across her toast at breakfast and slowly pouring tea, or Reynolds aggressively cutting his asparagus—that the movie unnerves you, traps you inside the couple's shared psychosis. The sound is as much a part of the story as the couture, or the characters themselves.

In order to learn the secrets behind Phantom Thread's evocative sound design—and figure out how they made that toast so damn annoying—Vulture spoke with sound designer and rerecording mixer Christopher Scarabosio. Scarabosio, who's worked with director Paul Thomas Anderson ever since Punch-Drunk Love and earned an Oscar nomination for There Will Be Blood, developed a plan for Phantom Thread's specific sound design after watching the complex relationship between the characters play out in an early cut of the film. "I thought, I'm going to base my sound design on the these characters, and way they're building tension," he explained.

Scarabosio has previously worked on blockbuster films like The Force Awakens and Rogue One, and noted that a film like Phantom Thread requires a different sort of approach to sound. "Nothing can take you out of the film," he said. "With a blockbuster, we know we're going into an action sequence, or a mind-altering sequence, and it's all about creating exciting and cool sound-design-y moments." In a film like Phantom Thread, however, with a director like Anderson, the goal is to stay within the story—and match the director's aesthetic.

Scarabosio began by using rerecorded sounds, or matches, and integrating them into the film with the production sound, i.e., what was recorded on set. That initial sound "was a little rough to start," Scarabosio said, and since Anderson prefers not to use a lot of additional dialogue recording or Foley effects to reproduce sounds, a lot of Scarabosio's work involves finding sounds that feel real, like they were recorded in the moment. Because he'd worked with Anderson before, he also knew that the director preferred a "messy" and "not overly polished or produced sound to things," as he did in Punch-Drunk Love or There Will Be Blood. In essence, the directive was to bring on the irritation, with one caveat—"the fabrics, those have to sound really beautiful."

The noise created by moving fabric can seem like indistinct white noise—fuzzy, without a lot of definition. In order to capture the textures of Reynolds's dresses with exactitude, the sound department composed a collection of "satins and silks and cottons and linens and fabrics with textures and some that were smoother." "Everything that Reynolds is making has to be of the highest quality, and we started building a library of different textures for various fabrics," Scarabosio said. The team had to be exact; the way that silk might sounds as it moves or is cut, for example, is different from the way cotton or linen might sound. The same conscientiousness is necessary when scoring different types of sewing machines, differentiating between the sound of machine and hand sewing, and even contrasting various types of needles and threads. Each gets its own place in the library. "We're trying to make it as distinctive as possible," Scarabosio said.

Scarabosio was also charged with establishing character and tone through sound. In scenes where Alma finally stops pushing up against Reynolds's strict lifestyle and conforms to his expectations, she becomes nearly silent, and the noises she produces—opening or closing a door, for instance—are far softer. "This is her way of saying, 'You're going to have your time and I'm going to have my time,'" explained Scarabosio. Reynolds's officious sister Cyril (Lesley Manville), in contrast, is "disruptive and deliberate." "Earlier in the film, every time that she enters, she breaks the moment," Scarabosio said. "She'll come in with loud footsteps or she'll slam a door or she'll start talking, and all those moments break the initial spell."

Many of the film's most crucial scenes take place while Reynolds and Alma are eating around a table, where the familiar noises of chewing, cutting, and scraping soon become overwhelming. In one scene—which Scarabosio said was one of the most difficult to get right—Alma eats breakfast across from Reynolds and his sister Cyril, and in a key moment, scrapes butter across her toast in a way that's especially grating, both to Reynolds and viewers.

"That was one of those moments where we really had to intensify what was happening in the scene," Scarabosio said. He and his team tried cutting out all production sound and focusing recorded effects, but instead settled on "a combination of reality and enhanced reality," which meant finding and recording the right noises to match what was happening in the scene. "We recorded a bunch of various things—plates clacking and silverware dropping and toast being buttered—as did the Foley [artists]." Then, in the studio, the team combined and exaggerated these noises, so they might be as irksome as possible to Reynolds.

And as for how he made that toast-buttering so unbelievably loud? Scarabosio did his diligent carb research. "We buttered a lot of different toasts," he said. "We did bagels. We did rye. We did sourdough. We tried them all." The bread that worked best: "Plain white toast," he said. "When you toast it and get it to that nice dark brown—that and some good sourdough, with a really thick crust."

HACKANUT

sooo, how soon is too soon to talk about how poor the box office numbers are? :(

6.8/35 million is rough, worse than any of his other films if i remember correctly. hope awards season draws a lot of people to it, at least.

Drenk

It will probably do better than IV. Which doesn't mean much because IV made nothing. BUT! with these nominations I think he's safe for the next movie. When he got 35 millions, everyone knew they were losing money.
Ascension.