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zaffrenotes · 3 years

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[TRR x ES] Viewing Party

Book: The Royal Romance & Endless Summer Pairings: Liam x MC (Katrina Bailey), Drake x OC (Alyssa Devereaux), Jake x MC (Laurel) Rating/Warnings: G; mild innuendo Author’s Note: * All main characters belong to Pixelberry, I’m just borrowing them * Katrina Bailey & Laurel are the MCs I use when writing fanfic for TRR and ES, respectively; Alyssa Devereaux belongs to birthday girl @burnsoslow * This is my submission for @wackydrabbles Prompt 80: Stop looking at me like that. * Author’s Note 2: * This is a birthday gift for my cheesy, potato loving homegirl Burnsie, who requested her very first Endless Summer/Jake fic, despite having never read any ES fic until now 🙈 for the sole reason being that she and Jake McKenzie are almost birthday twins, and my favorite pilot turns 30 this year. If you’re unfamiliar with canon ES trivia, Jake can hold his breath for 9 minutes, and Estela can hold her breath for an astonishing 14. This isn’t entirely what I had in mind when I set out to write an ES/Jake birthday fic, but I wasn’t about to miss your day because I’ve hit a whole ass writer’s wall, Burnsie! I hope you have an AMAZING day and I’m sending you so many hugs! You’re one of the sweetest ladies here, and I am so very thankful that I can call you a friend 🥰 also my real, real gift to you is coming at a later date, as I still have to work on it 😬 * and yes, that’s DDT in the moodboard - just for Burnsie, again - since I use Barnes as Drake’s FC in my TRR fics, lol * Word Count: 2000 on the dot!

It was nearly 10:00 PM on Friday evening, when Burns arranged things around the comfiest chair in her living room. The rest of her family already retired for the evening, after a small but wonderful birthday celebration in her honor at home. Within easy reach, she’d arranged drinks and snacks next to her laptop - a glass of water, a hot mug of tea, a slice of homemade birthday cake to take care of any sugar cravings, and a small platter of cheese and crackers for something more savory. She grinned softly at the newest addition to her mug collection, watching the steam rise from the contents within.

The lavender mug arrived in the mail earlier that day from one of her friends, emblazoned with a quote from David Rose. Burns took a sip of the warm beverage before setting it down on the small side table and situated herself in the chair. She flipped open the laptop and pulled up a browser window, smiling at a gift from another friend - there was a sticker next to the trackpad with a drawing of a wedge of Swiss, quoting another memorable line from Schitt’s Creek, reminding her to “fold in the cheese.” Burns glanced to the time on the screen and logged in to her Netflix account, clicking until she arrived at the viewing party, and began typing to join the group chat.

She was greeted with jubilant messages from Donna, Ella, Brandy, Anitah, and half a dozen other friends, wishing her a happy birthday before the show started. They’d formed an ever-growing viewing party for a new series titled Stranded in the Orchard, which was an odd amalgamation of Survivor and Gilligan’s Island. Taking a cue from reality tv competitions, there were hidden cameras all over the island to monitor everyone and reduce production crew intervention, and in a nod to Hunger Games, there was an omnipresent host that would drop messages to signal when challenges were about to take place. After four episodes, the ladies in the watching party started picking their favorites from the two teams.

Team Ruby consisted of a group that appeared to have been shipwrecked onto the island. Leo was dubbed The Rogue; his brother Liam was The CEO; Katrina was The Attorney; Alyssa was The Teacher; Drake was The Cowboy; Olivia was The Weapons Expert; Bertrand was The Grump; Madeleine was The Whiner; Maxwell was Bertrand’s brother and The Jester; Hana was The Jill of All Trades. Bertrand and Madeleine had already been voted off when Ruby lost two events.

Team Catalyst consisted of a group of mostly college students. Jake was The Pilot; Laurel was The Mystery Girl; Sean was The Coach; Michelle was The Doctor, even though she was only pre-med; Craig was The Muscle; Zahra was The Engineer; Aleister was The Slick One; Grace was The Brain; Diego was The Entertainer; Estela was The Huntress. Catalyst lost the last two events, which sent Aleister and Grace packing.

Everyone settled in to watch the opening credits as they recapped last week’s episode, where Ruby won the immunity challenge and fishing gear by building a makeshift stretcher to rescue and carry Katrina from a jungle crash site to a first aid station on the beach; Catalyst voted Grace out. Burns popped a cheese cube into her mouth as she and her friends watched the two groups deal with day-to-day chores in their respective camps on Day 14 of the show. They chatted about the team members and how much Burns wanted to see Drake take off his shirt to go in the water, despite the knowledge that there were clips of him cuddling with Alyssa; Donna, Ella, and Anitah would keysmash in the group chat any time Liam appeared on the screen, even though he and Katrina were clearly sweet on each other, while Brandy and Alyssa Lauren would ask what was happening or who someone was from the Catalyst team.

—

“Pillows and blankets are nice, but what we could really use is food,” Maxwell said, drawing an octopus in the sand with a piece of driftwood. “I don’t know how much longer I can last on coconuts and rice.”

“Liam and Drake took the raft out this morning to try fishing with the gear, maybe they’ll get lucky,” Katrina suggested, stirring the pot of rice in the fire. She set the lid on top and stood up from her kimchi squat position, dusting some errant sand off her leg. They both looked out towards the water, as dawn stretched out across the ocean, making out shadowy forms of their friends as they bobbed in the water, just before one of them went under the surface. Behind them, the rest of their friends began to stir awake from the scent of rice cooking.

Back at the Catalyst camp, Jake sat by the campfire with Estela; they were working on making their own fishing gear from bamboo and camp supplies after losing the previous challenge. Jake fed a length of twine through a handmade fishing pole while Estela sharpened tips on one end of a pile of branches she’d gathered. “Whatcha whittlin’, Katniss?”

Estela glanced at Jake sideways. “Stakes. Hand over some of that twine, I need it to bind these to make spears.” With a begrudging huff, Jake unfurled the twine and ran it against the edge of the makeshift bench he was sitting on to cut it, before tossing the rest at Estela.

“How fast can you tie those off? We’re losin’ daylight for a morning catch, if you wanna ride on the raft with me.”

“Five minutes,” she answered, already working nimbly around a branch to secure the whittled spikes.

The screen cut back to Ruby’s camp, where Liam and Drake stepped ashore, smiles brighter than the sunrise as Drake held up a fish trap with small rays flapping against one another.

—

“kjsdhfksjhfksjhfks,” Burns smashed into her keyboard. “Look at my man! With the sea bounty!”

“mevmnbvmnxb,” Ella smashed back.

“How do you know Drake did all the work? Liam’s just as wet, hahaha,” Donna chortled in response.

—

After killing their catch as humanely as possible - with Alyssa turning her face to Drake’s chest to avoid witnessing it - Leo and Olivia gutted and cleaned the rays before setting them on top of their makeshift grill to cook. Liam and Drake regaled the group with their morning under the water, as they took turns fishing.

While Team Ruby enjoyed some protein with their rice that morning, members of the Catalyst team glumly spooned rice into their mouths as they sat around the campfire while Jake and Estela dried off; their morning fishing trip had been unsuccessful.

Later that day, both teams received messages from the host to gather for a reward challenge. Each team made their way to a small lagoon, where they saw a structure floating in the water. A booming voice overhead instructed them to swim out to the structure and await further instructions. Once everyone from both teams had done so, a blue holographic image of the host appeared in the center to explain the rules. “The challenge is simple,” she narrated. “We want to see who can hold their breath the longest. There’s a bar you can use to keep yourself from floating up if you need it. Last one standing earns the prize for the whole team — an overnight trip at the Celestial Hotel, where our rotating film crew goes to rest. You’ll be treated to clean sheets and towels, hot showers, along with a decadent dinner and breakfast menu the next morning, before having to return to your camp.”

Everyone’s eyes lit up at the incentive of a night away from sleeping on the beach, away from mosquitos, rodents, and the threat of being waterlogged by passing storms. Stomachs gurgled at the thought of hot meals that didn’t consist of rice, and the possibility of cocktails or wine. “Oh, we got this,” Jake murmured quietly to Laurel. “Bet I can hold my breath longer’n any of those Ruby kids.”

“Is that so?” Leo taunted, overhearing Jake’s comment.

“Just call me Poseidon,” Jake smirked.

“We’ll see about that,” Leo replied. “You know most of us are from an island, right? We’re basically merpeople.”

—

“Bets! Bets on who wins this!” Brandy typed into the chat window.

“Sticking with Drake,” Burns typed. “Maybe Hana. She could have another random talent up her sleeve.”

“My money’s on Liam. Look how broad his chest is,” Anya replied. “He’s got to have massive lungs to match.”

“That makes no sense,” Ella typed, adding a laughing emoji. “But I’m Team Liam anyway.”

“Don’t hate me,” Donna began. “Something tells me Jake isn’t boasting right now.”

From her screen at home, Alyssa Lauren used Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe to choose Zahra. The rest of the group picked their favorites as the castaways donned goggles and got into the water.

—

“Ready? Set! Go!”

Sixteen heads dipped under the water’s surface, with contestants pinching their noses and puffing out their cheeks as an underwater camera filmed them. A handful of them - Olivia, Alyssa, Maxwell, Diego, and Michelle - tapped out under a minute. As the sand settled, thirty seconds passed before Katrina, Laurel, Sean, and Drake headed to the surface. Just after the two minute mark, Hana, Craig, and Zahra gave up, leaving Jake, Liam, Estela, and Leo under the water.

Jake looked positively peaceful, sandy brown hair swaying with ease in the water. Estela tapped her fingers lightly across the bamboo rod, counting each second as it passed. Liam glanced over to his brother, who’d begun to turn pink. Half a minute later, Leo popped up to the surface, muttering to himself out of frustration.

Three minutes in, Liam surfaced, gasping for air, leaving Jake and Estela to battle it out between themselves. Even though the hologram host blasted a horn to signal the end of the challenge, neither Catalyst member surfaced. Liam ducked down to check on them, and Jake and Estela both signaled that they were fine. Everyone continued to wait as the pair spent minute after minute under the water.

—

“Seriously? They’re on the same team!” Anitah typed. “They won already!”

“They’ve been underwater for a scary length of time,” Brandy added. “What are they, Navy SEALs or something?”

“I think Jake mentioned he was actually in the Navy before,” Alyssa Lauren replied.

—

A digital clock appeared in the corner of the screen as the two Catalyst members continued to hold their breath underwater. With each passing minute, members from both groups began to worry. After eight minutes passed, the host’s voice rang out, advising them to pull Jake and Estela up from the water to end the challenge. Laurel and Craig ducked down, eventually pulling their teammates up. “Congratulations to The Catalysts!” the host exclaimed. “A boat will be waiting at your camp to take you to the hotel.”

Laurel swatted Jake’s arm as they made their way to the shore. “What’s wrong with you!? You were underwater for nearly ten minutes! Who does that!?”

Jake looked over his shoulder to her with a grin, mischievous sparkle in his bright blue eyes. “Ten would be a new record, my best is nine.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Imagine nine uninterrupted minutes of me holding my breath, Princess. My birthday is tomorrow, and I know exactly how I wanna celebrate,” he winked.

Laurel’s cheeks flushed at the suggestion. “Stop looking at me like that, Top Gun.”

—

That evening at the hotel, after a sumptuous feast of lobster, crab, and an endless supply of beer and wine, the Catalyst members eventually went to bed. Much later into the night, Jake was seen sneaking into Laurel’s room.

—

“I KNEW IT!” Burns typed. She laughed as her friends typed in responses full of lemon, fire, pepper, and eggplant emojis. She popped another cheese cube into her mouth and smiled, watching the rest of the episode play out.

#the royal romance fanfic #endless summer fanfic #choices the royal romance #choices endless summer #liam x mc #liam x trina #drake x alyssa #jake x mc #choices crossover fanfic #wacky drabbles #survivor au #happy birthday Burnsie #birthday fanfic #zaffrenotes writes #there was an attempt #this is not what I planned #lol but I am out of time and don't have it in me to scrap what I've written #🙈 I watched an entire season of Survivor for like...3 scenes to add to the fic

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bodhirook1138 · 5 years

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The Problems with Aladdin: Orientalism, Casting, and Ramadan

Originally posted on Medium.

Edward Said and Jack G. Shaheen did not do the work they did so that movies like Aladdin would still get made.

I say this as someone who has had a complicated relationship with the 1992 Aladdin animated feature. I loved it when I was a kid. For a long time, it was my favorite Disney cartoon. I remember proudly telling white friends and classmates in third grade that Aladdin was “about my people.” Although nothing is said in the movie about Aladdin’s religion, I read him as Muslim.

When I grew older, I read Jack G. Shaheen’s book, Reel Bad Arabs, which analyzes about 1,000 American films that vilify and stereotype Arabs and Muslims. Among these films is Aladdin, which Shaheen reportedly walked out of. Shaheen spoke out against lyrics in the film’s opening song: “I come from a land from a far-away place/Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” Although he convinced Disney to remove the lyrics for the home video release, the final verse was still there: “It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” As a 1993 op-ed in The New York Timeswrote, “It’s Racist, But Hey, It’s Disney.”

In Edward Said’s seminal book, Orientalism (1978), he described orientalism as a process in which the West constructs Eastern societies as exotic, backwards, and inferior. According to Said, orientalism’s otherization of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam provided justification for European colonialism and Western intervention in the Middle East and Muslim-majority countries, often under the pretext of rescuing the people — especially Muslim women — from themselves. In addition to orientalism’s practices of constructing the “Orient” as the West’s “Other,” Said asserted that another major facet of orientalism involves a “western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the ‘Orient.’” In other words, it is not the Arab or Muslim who gets to define themselves, but rather the West does.

There are plenty of excellent and detailed critiques out there about how the original Aladdin is filled with racist, sexist, and orientalist tropes, so there’s very little, if anything, to say that already hasn’t been said. In her extensive report, “Haqq and Hollywood: Illuminating 100 Years of Muslim Tropes And How to Transform Them,” Dr. Maytha Alhassen argues that Hollywood’s legacy of depicting Arabs and Muslims as offensive caricatures is continued in Aladdin, where the main characters like Aladdin and Jasmine are “whitewashed, with anglicized versions of Arabic names and Western European (though brown-skinned) facial features” and speak with white American accents. Alhassen notes the contrast with the “villains, Jafar, and the palace guards” who are depicted as “darker, swarthy, with undereye circles, hooked noses, black beards, and pronounced Arabic and British accents.” In another article, “The Problem with ‘Aladdin,’” Aditi Natasha Kini asserts that Aladdin is “a misogynist, xenophobic white fantasy,” in which Jasmine is sexualized and subjected to tropes of “white feminism as written by white dudes.” Not only does Jasmine have limited agency in the film, Kini writes, but her role in the film is “entirely dependent on the men around her.”

When Disney announced plans to produce a live-action remake of Aladdin, I learned through conversations that the Aladdin story is not even in the original text for Alf Layla wa Layla, or One Thousand and One Nights. It was later added by an 18th century French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard the story from a Syrian Maronite storyteller, Hanna Diyab. Galland did not even give credit to Diyab in his translation. Beyond the counter-argument that “the original Aladdin took place in China,” I am left wondering, how much of the original tale do we really know? How much did Galland change? It’s possible that Galland changed the story so significantly that everything we know about Aladdin is mostly a western, orientalist fabrication. For a more detailed account about the origins of the Aladdin tale, I recommend reading Arafat A. Razzaque’s article, “Who ‘wrote’ Aladdin? The Forgotten Syrian Storyteller.”

Disney has been boasting about how the live-action Aladdin is one of the “most diverse” movies in Hollywood, but this is an attempt to hide the fact that the casting of this film relied on racist logic: “All brown people are the same.” It’s great that an Egyptian-Canadian actor, Mena Massoud, was cast in the lead role, but there’s inconsistency elsewhere: Jasmine is played by British actress Naomi Scott, who is half Indian and half white; Jafar is played by Dutch-Tunisian actor Marwan Kenzari; and Jasmine’s father and a new character, Dalia, are played by Iranian-American actors Navid Negahban and Nasim Pedrad, respectively. The casting demonstrates that the filmmakers don’t know the differences between Arabs, Iranians, and South Asians. We are all conflated as “one and the same,” as usual.

Then there’s the casting of Will Smith as the genie. Whether deliberate or not, reinforced here is the Magical Negro trope. According to blogger Modern Hermeneut, this term was popularized by Spike Lee in 2011 and refers to “a spiritually attuned black character who is eager to help fulfill the destiny of a white protagonist.” Moreover, the author writes that Lee saw the Magical Negro as “a cleaned up version of the ‘happy slave’ stereotype, with black actors cast as simpleminded angels and saints.” Examples of the Magical Negro can be found in films like What Dreams May Come, City of Angels, Kazaam (which also features a Black genie), The Green Mile, The Adjustment Bureau, and The Legend of Bagger Vance. In the case of Aladdin, the genie’s purpose is to serve the protagonist’s dreams and ambitions. While Aladdin is Arab, not white, the racial dynamic is still problematic as the Magical Negro trope can be perpetuated by non-Black people of color as well.

I need to pause for a moment to explain that I don’t believe an Aladdin movie should only consist of Arab actors. Yes, Agrabah is a fictional Arab country, but it would be perfectly fine to have non-Arabs like Iranians, South Asians, and Africans in the movie as well. That’s not the issue I have with the casting, and this is not about identity politics. My problem is that the filmmakers saw Middle Eastern and South Asian people as interchangeable rather than setting out to explore complex racial, ethnic, and power dynamics that would arise from having ethnically diverse characters existing within an Arab-majority society. Evelyn Alsultany, an Associate Professor who was consulted for the film, states in her post that one of the ways Disney tried to justify casting a non-Arab actress for Jasmine was by mentioning that her mother was born “in another land.” However, this seems to have been Disney doing damage control after they received some backlash about Jasmine’s casting. The result is convenient erasure of an Arab woman character. Moreover, the change in Jasmine’s ethnicity does little, if anything, to reduce the film’s problematic amalgamation of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. Alsultany writes that “audiences today will be as hard pressed as those in 1992 — or 1922, for that matter — to identify any distinct Middle Eastern cultures beyond that of an overgeneralized ‘East,’” where “belly dancing and Bollywood dancing, turbans and keffiyehs, Iranian and Arab accents all appear in the film interchangeably.”

Other examples of how the film conflates various Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures is highlighted in Roxana Hadadi’s review: “Terms like ‘Sultan’ and ‘Vizier’ can be traced to the Ottoman Empire, but the movie also uses the term ‘Shah,’ which is Iranian monarchy.” Referring to the dance scenes and clothing, she writes they are “mostly influenced by Indian designs and Bollywood styles” while “the military armor looks like leftovers from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven.” An intersectional approach to the diverse ethnic communities represented in the film would have made for a more nuanced narrative, but this would have required a better director.

Speaking of the director, it is amazing that, of all people, Disney hired Guy Ritchie. Because if there is any director out there who understands the importance of representation and knows how to author a nuanced narrative about Middle Eastern characters living in a fictitious Arab country, it’s… Guy Ritchie? Despite all of the issues regarding the origin of the Aladdin story, I still believed the narrative could have been reclaimed in a really empowering way, but that could not happen with someone like Guy Ritchie. It’s textbook orientalism to have a white man control the narrative. I would have preferred socially and politically conscious Middle Eastern and Muslim writers/directors to make this narrative their own. Instead, we are left with an orientalist fantasy that looks like an exoticized fusion of how a white man perceives South Asia and the Middle East.

Lastly, I have to comment on how this movie was released during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In fact, the film’s release date, May 24th, was just one day before the last ten days of Ramadan, which are considered to be the most important in the month. During Ramadan, Muslims around the world fast — if they are able to — from dawn to sunset every day for 30 days. The time when we break our fast, iftar, typically involves dinner and prayer with family, friends, and/or the community. But Ramadan is more than just about fasting, it’s a time of self-reflection, compassion, and strengthening our connection with Allah, our loved ones, and community. I don’t believe Disney released Aladdin during Ramadan intentionally. If anything, I think the film’s release date is reflective of how clueless and ignorant Disney is. It’s so ridiculous that it’s laughable.

I don’t want to give the impression that Muslims don’t go out to the movies during Ramadan. Of course there are Muslims who do. I just know a lot who don’t— some for religious reasons and some, like myself, for no other reason than simply not having enough time between iftar and the pre-dawn meal, sehri (I mean, I could go during the day, but who wants to watch a movie hungry, right?). Even Islamophobic Bollywood knows to release blockbuster movies on Eid, not towards the end of Ramadan.

But this isn’t about judging Muslim religiosity during the holy month. No one is “less” of a Muslim if they are going to the movie theater or anywhere else on Ramadan. My point is that Disney has not shown any consideration for the Muslim community with this movie. They did not even consider how releasing the film during Ramadan would isolate some of the Muslim audience. It’s clear that Disney did not make efforts to engage the Muslim community. Of course, there is nothing surprising about this. But you cannot brag about diversity when you’re not even engaging a group of people that represents the majority of the population you claim to be celebrating! In response to Shaheen’s critiques of the original Aladdin cartoon, a Disney distribution president at the time said Aladdin is “not just for Arabs, but for everybody.” But this is a typical dismissive tactic used to gloss over the real issues. No doubt Disney will follow the same script when people criticize the latest film.

I don’t have any interest in this movie because it failed to learn anything from the criticism it received back in 1992. The fact that a 1993 op-ed piece titled, “It’s Racist, But Hey, It’s Disney” is still relevant to the live-action version of a film that came out 27 years ago is both upsetting and sad at the same time. As I said earlier, Edward Said and Jack Shaheen did not exhaustively speak out against orientalism, exoticism, and vilification to only see them reproduced over and over again. Of course Disney refused to educate themselves and listen to people like Shaheen— their Aladdin story was never meant for us.

#Aladdin #aladdin remake #Orientalism #Disney #Muslim

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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Will Runway Shows Be Replaced by Fashion Films? – WWD

https://pmcwwd.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/garethpugh_joie-de-vivre_stills_18.jpg?w=640&h=415&crop=1

Back in 2009, the first time Gareth Pugh decided to present a film instead of a runway show, he confessed that he had to tell a series of “white lies” to maintain his time slot on the official Paris Fashion Week calendar — and to make sure editors and retailers showed up. He repeated the experiment — and probably some fibbing — several times.

“We’ve done work with film as a replacement for a show quite extensively,” he said. “I never really found it’s been well received, but going forward, with this idea that fashion weeks have to turn digital in lieu of more physical presentations, I feel like people just have to be more receptive. So it’s like a new dawn.”

Indeed, fashion films, long on the fringes of the industry, are finally ready for their close-up.

Just listen to photographer Nick Knight, who frequently collaborates with Pugh and other cutting-edge designers.

“Every commission I get now is a film,” he told WWD in a recent interview. “They want still imagery, too, but they want film. Everybody wants film. Every single brand now knows that they want film, because that’s the medium they speak within. That’s taken 20 years to change fundamentally.”

According to Zenith Media projections published in September, the average person will spend 100 minutes a day watching online video in 2021, up from 84 minutes in 2019. That’s the equivalent of watching videos for 25 consecutive days around the clock.

“The forecasts were made well before the emergence of the coronavirus and are all now invalid,” noted Jonathan Barnard, Zenith’s head of forecasting and director of global intelligence. “Video consumption this year will now be substantially higher than we forecast then.”

Video consumption rates have accelerated at a global average of 32 percent a year between 2013 and 2018, boosted by improvements in display sizes and quality of mobile devices, faster mobile data connections, and the spread of connected TV sets, according to Zenith.

At present, China and Sweden harbor the hungriest eyeballs, with the average person in each country expected to spend 103 minutes a day watching online video this year. By 2021, Zenith expects Canada, India, Mexico, the U.K. and U.S. to join the 100-minutes-a-day crowd.

Organizers of digital fashion weeks this summer in London, Milan and Paris are touting videos and films as a chief format, setting the stage for a steep increase in such content.

Yet even proponents and creators of fashion on film confess that the medium is still a nascent one.

“We’re still in such an early phase of fashion film and what it could be, I think it still needs to be defined,” said Ruth Hogben, a director, photographer and creative director who has made films for the likes of Pugh and Lee Alexander McQueen and worked with Lady Gaga on her live performances. “The choices are endless with film. I’ve been on many judging panels at fashion film festivals, and it’s really difficult because it’s such a fine line. It’s not dance, and it’s not a feature film because that takes too long. I think it still needs to be defined. Think about the transition from drawing and illustration to fashion photography. It took time to understand what those codes and conventions were, and to discover the greats.”

A still from Gareth Pugh spring 2016 film by Ruth Hogben. Courtesy of Ruth Hogben

According to Knight, fashion’s organizing bodies in the main capitals have so vigorously promoted catwalk shows for decades that designers have largely capitulated, shunting films and other alternative formats to the margins.

While fashion film is touted as a new medium, that is hardly the case “because Guy Bourdin was doing it, Richard Avedon was doing it. But let’s suggest it is a new medium because there was virtually no platform to show it on before, which is why hardly anybody knows the films of Guy Bourdin,” he said.

At present, “the main creators of fashion films are from the film world,” according to Philipp Ulita, managing director of Berlin Commercial, previously known as the Berlin Fashion Film Festival, renamed to reflect its embrace of music and other categories. “One can notice if a film is based on foresight and artistic vision from experts who know their tools and know how to interpret the given task. People go to schools for that.”

To be sure, fashion film festivals multiplied worldwide over the past decade, peaking around 2014. While some boast sponsors and affiliations with fashion brands and retailers, others remain somewhat off the radar of the mainstream fashion world.

“Unfortunately, there are not enough serious distribution channels in comparison to the quantity of material produced,” said Constanza Cavalli Etro, founder and director of Fashion Film Festival Milano, which is plotting a streaming format for its seventh edition later this year. “I believe in a way, there is more offer out there than demand. But I’m sure this will quickly change as the industry itself has changed in the last three months.”

Milan Fashion Film Festival 2019 winner for Best Fashion Film: “72 hours in André Balazs’ Chateau Marmont with Kenneth Anger.” Director: Floria Sigismondi for System Magazine and Gucci.

Given that the coronavirus pandemic is scuttling the usual fashion weeks, this “will bring a new interest in the video format and storytelling,” Cavalli Etro predicted. “A greater number of brands will take advantage of this as their current and future means of communication in terms of reaching a wide digital audience and staying alive in this digital era.”

She urged brands and designers to “think about fashion films as an important tool for experiential marketing, a multimedia, multisensory experience through which, now more than ever, they can show the human side of the brand together with core values.”

The Milan festival received more than 1,000 submissions for its 2109 edition, up from about 350 its first year, including films from Nigeria, China, Mexico, Finland and Iceland. “This shows how fashion films are a tool for expression without borders,” said Cavalli Etro, who is also the wife of Etro’s men’s wear creative director Kean Etro. “Fashion films are really an all-encompassing medium and they are the new way for the creative industry to express itself.”

A still from “Untitled,” by Laurent Amiel for Marine Serre, winner of 2019 Milan Fashion Film Festival Best New Designer Brand.

Beatrice Bloom, director of the London Fashion Film Festival, said the audience for its online platforms zoomed up 40 percent between January and May, reflecting a spike in online submissions and streaming during the lockdown period.

“When it comes to numbers, we see an influx of filmmakers and creatives in general,” Ulita echoed. “In terms of fashion films, and advertising in general, we witness a trend toward storytelling, content that takes us somewhere intellectually.”

That said, he allowed that some winners from previous years “fit the current zeitgeist more than they did before: quiet ones became louder and loud and colorful ones too loud. One could say they were ahead of their time.”

Kathryn Ferguson, a filmmaker and curator who spent several years working as Selfridges’ resident film director, said films can be made for a commercial purpose, or purely for creative expression.

“It’s such a malleable genre. Sometimes it’s used for sheer and blatant advertising potential but alternatively, it may result from brands commissioning a filmmaker they admire, someone who aligns with their ethos and aesthetic to create a piece of film that elevates their brand,” said Ferguson, also a film research fellow at London College of Fashion. “I haven’t detected a growing interest, but it’s obvious that brands are asking models and influencers to self-shoot in their own homes — to varying results.”

All parties agreed there is no template that brands and designers can follow when venturing into film and video — nor should there be.

“I just don’t think creativity works like that,” Hogben said. “There’s so many things to be invented within fashion film. I think it’s just an open door and open book, I don’t think there’s any rule that would fit all designers…you just have to be led by what’s in front of you.”

Hogben advocated freewheeling collaborations between fashion houses and any number of creative types, from visual artists to filmmakers and beyond.

“I think artists would be great, and people who have synergy with their visions. If you look at the work of someone like Michel Gondry, you imagine that in a fashion film, it’ll be incredible,” she enthused. “There are so many artists and filmmakers, people working with technology. A little bit of a break and rethinking and a shift from a different angle has never really hurt anyone creatively. Overcoming obstacles is always a good thing, and I think so many artists would jump at the chance to get into the minds of some of these great designers and collaborate.”

Knight said a common pitfall is to turn to Hollywood.

“David Lynch is an amazing director, but he’s not a fashion filmmaker any more than Sebastião Salgado, who is an amazing photographer, is not a fashion photographer,” he said. “The idea that you can just hire in a great film director and that will make it — it can give it some importance because you’ve got a celebrity director doing it, but as a great fashion film? Probably not. You need a fashion filmmaker, which in our generation is starting to be formed.”

In Hogben’s view, a crucial element is modeling talent.

“Supermodels are supermodels because they move in a way that doesn’t need to be directed,” she said, mentioning Raquel Zimmermann as a consummate pro. “An amazing supermodel understands who she is when she’s wearing a certain designer. He or she will move differently if she’s in a leather jacket from Fendi or a beautiful floral corset from Valentino. The models, I think, bring so much to the table on how to make a fashion film.”

Hogben highlighted how social media ignited over Gigi Hadid’s hair flick at the last Jacquemus runway show in Paris “because it was like, ‘Oh, some personality.’”

(Incidentally, Hogben held out hope Simon Porte Jacquemus would translate his dreamy Mediterranean universe into a fashion film. “It’ll be so idyllic, I’d want to live in it,” she said.)

On YouTube brand channels, runway footage still tends to rack up more views than other kinds of content, from J.W. Anderson’s hilarious mock-QVC commercials to Balenciaga’s mesmerizing “loop” videos.

But they have the capacity to break through.

Knight produced a high-energy video for Tom Ford’s spring 2016 collection that featured Lady Gaga in a riff on the Seventies television program “Soul Train.”

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“That was a great way of Tom presenting his collection, which otherwise would have been presented to a couple of hundred people, most of which would have been late, cross, or bored,” he said. “This went out to a huge number of fans, seen by millions of people the day it was launched. You saw how sexy, dynamic, how full of life his collection felt.”

In Cavalli Etro’s view, emerging designers also can propel their notoriety with films. “It’s not difficult to become relevant on social media by using the digital world in the correct way if you have a great product,” she said, noting one of its 2014 festival winners, Rie Yamagata, had her film picked up by Nowness, and was invited the next season to show during New York Fashion Week. Agi & Sam and Grace Wales Bonner also participated in past editions.

A chief drawback to film is that viewers can’t touch the clothes or see them in real life and therefore you lose “the physical part, which is very important in fashion. But I think that if used correctly, video can overcome this problem and become the ultimate tool, especially with technology that we have today such as VR or AR,” she said.

Pugh lamented that physical runway shows in many ways resemble a tennis match, heads swinging one way, then the other as models file out, and trudge back.

A still from Gareth Pugh “Autumn-Winter 2015” film, directed by Ruth Hogben. Courtesy of Ruth Hogben

Films, by contrast, give a designer more latitude to construct a mood, tell a story, provoke emotions and traverse a variety of atmospheres and settings.

“With film you’re much more able to express those worlds, you can do a lot of trickery, and I enjoy that aspect of it, that ability to be able to dig deeper into the world that you want to portray,” Pugh said. “It’s such an exciting time and people are going to be more receptive to new ideas.”

What’s more, “now without a physical, monolothic presence for a designer to sometimes hide behind, the story behind collections is going to have so much more value, so much worth,” he predicted.

Cavalli Etro agreed: “Through storytelling, it’s much easier to engage people and to touch on the emotional part that fashion can represent for everyone. Brands and designers can really show their soul, share their values, their universe, and go beyond the product itself.”

At Saint Laurent, creative director Anthony Vaccarello has given Wong Kar-wai, Bret Easton Ellis, Vanessa Beecroft and Gaspar Noé carte blanche to create films for its “Self” project, with some clocking more than 1.5 million views on the fashion house’s YouTube channel.

A still from Saint Laurent’s “Self 03,” directed by Bret Easton Ellis. Courtesy of Saint Laurent

“The idea started from my wish to combine creative disciplines across art and fashion to reinforce and fuel the concept of diversity, individuality, self-confidence through an artistic lens,” Vaccarello told WWD. “That’s how the ‘Self’ project became an artistic commentary on society, enabling me to work with artists whose vision is similar to mine, but in different fields.”

Asked what a film can express that a fashion show or standard campaign cannot, Vaccarello said “everything starts from mutual respect and admiration, the rest is a natural consequence. The selection of the artists is crucial and is a very instinctive process based on the admiration and the respect I nurture for each of them and it’s incredible how in the results of their artworks you can find and feel Saint Laurent. The story and the principles are similar, it is just developed in different formats.”

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To be sure, Vaccarello had a head start on fashion films, having introduced the “Self” project in 2018.

“We are already working on the upcoming chapters,” he said. “Films were and are important to me and my vision and always will be.”

Though her brand is less than three years old, Marine Serre has used film to showcase her “futurewear,” extrapolate on her recurrent theme of environmental apocalypse, express her love of science-fiction movies, and connect to young generations using immediate, high-tech means.

“I think it’s a really great way to speak to people,” she said. “I can let my imagination go, and not think so much about the commerciality of the garment. When I do movies, I’m really free,” she said.

Serre has collaborated with creative studio Blonstein and used CGI to create surreal landscapes for her fierce women to stride through. “‘Things that are kind of impossible become possible,” she said.

Indeed, she has already decided to forego a physical runway in September and pursue a digital showcase. While she didn’t go into detail about the format, she said films allow a designer to imagine “what the future is going to be.”