Feature & a short

Episode #44 - Welcome to the fifth Fresh Air Award! Four cinephiles continue a Fourwind Films tradition of awarding a film that pushed cinema forward the most as an artform during a particular decade. To be nominated, a motion picture has to have advanced cinema in some way and made a lasting impression on how movies are made. This episode delves into the decade that saw the first full decade with sound becoming mainstream in film and the introduction the Technicolor three color process, 1930-1939.

To start the episode, our host, Justin Joseph Hall goes through a quick history lesson on what was happening in cinema business and technology in the decade.

The four cinephiles who select the nominees in this panel are cinephiles Elizabeth Chatelain, Justin Joseph Hall, John Robert Hammerer and Kevin Hinman. Any moving images that came out in the appropriate decade is eligible for nomination. Nominations spanned documentaries, shorts, animated films, and feature films. They featured cinema with thoughtful use of sound design, the first feature animation, films with the Technicolor three color process, the template for romantic comedies, and maybe the most famous film of all-time.

Here is the link to all the nominations: 1930’s Fresh Air Award Nominees - Letterboxd list

There were several overlaps, but here are the main nominations made by each panelist:

Elizabeth Chatelain nominees

Rules of the Game (1939)

M (1931)

Colour Box (1935)

Sisters of the Gion (1936)

It Happened One Night (1934)

Justin Joseph Hall nominees

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Gone with the Wind (1939)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)

Land Without Bread (1933)

Lampião, o Rei do Cangaço (1937)

John Robert Hammerer nominees

Duck Soup (1933 )

Freaks (1932)

Porky in Wackyland (1938)

Rules of the Game (1939)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)

Kevin Hinman nominees

M (1931)

Flowers and Trees (1932)

King Kong (1933)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

To find the 1930’s Fresh Air Award winner click on this link!

We hope you enjoy this episode! Share with us your own lists, comments, arguments, and films that we left out via social media @fourwindfilms. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

Thanks for listening, Season 8 to come shortly!

Thank you to our cinephiles who did joined this out of their passion. To hear more from them, visit links below:

Elizabeth Chatelain

Quatre-Vents Post-Production

Movie Directing & Writing

Justin Joseph Hall

Quatre-Vents Post-Production

Fourwind Films

John Robert Hammerer

Director's site

Kevin Hinman

Magnum Opus

Spesh to Death

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Fresh Air Award Contributors for 1900s Decade - Elizabeth Chatelain, Tracey Goessel, Justin Joseph Hall, & Kevin Hinman

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

The theme song of Season 6 is New Tires by Silent Partner.

Additional Music - The Beat Goes On by Backyard Wrestling & As the Stars Turn by Pandelion.

Episode #43 - Riki McManus began with her own talk show on KQRS Radio in Minneapolis while still in high school. She went on to the commercial industry in Minneapolis as On Camera and Voice Over Talent. McManus continued as an agent and then became the Director of Plaza Three Model and Talent Agency. She opened the first casting company in Minnesota, where Purple Rain was the first feature she casted. Since then, she has cast approximately 20 feature films. She won a Clio Award for a self-promotion piece she did with The Fallon Agency in Minneapolis for her company.

Our screening took place at the Minnesota Discovery Center the largest museum the largest museum complex in Minnesota outside the Twin Cities.

Boxed lunch given to each audience member for screening of Rated.

For her short, Riki brought Rated Directed by John Fortson with his directorial debut that won 14 Best Short FIlm Awards at Festivals. We have to say our audience would have given it award as well. The subject matter of the film is so relevant in our technilogical world, it’s a short about social media commenting how kind we are in our society. We had The Rustic Pig pack a school lunch for each of our audience members to enjoy during the screening.

The feature Riki brought to screen was Purple Rain, which was not only Prince’s debut feature, but also the first feature Riki worked on as well. She tells stories of when she met Prince, the difficulties in casting the film, and experiencing one of Prince’s famous free concerts. So check this out and don’t forget to drink some champagne and celebrate Prince as we did on this very memorable night at the Minnesota Discovery Center.

Riki McManus

Credits:

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Production & Event Space - Minnesota Discovery Center

Food - The Rustic Pig

Post-Production - Quatre-Vents

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

Production Assistant - Elizabeth Chatelain

The theme song of Season 7 is New Tires by Silent Partner.

Episode #42 - Justin Joseph Hall is an award-winning, multilingual multimedia director and founder of Fourwind Films and Quatre-Vents. His work has been acquired by major television networks such as HBO and he’s worked as a lead creative on projects that received awards at The Emmys, TriBeCa Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, and more.

Justin Joseph Hall, photo by Laura Davi

Our screening resumed back at Fourwind Films’ headquarters.

For his short, Justin brought his short series, Marcellus Hall an Artist in New York City. The five episode season has won six awards and been nominated for many more around the world. The documentary is of New Yorker Illustrator Marcellus Hall who also wrote the song Life Is Still Sweet that inspired Float On performed by Modest Mouse.

We screened the entire series back to back and served white and yellow cheese with steak in conjunction with the series.

The feature Justin chose inspired his series with a one-on-one interview that endures the entire documentary. It was Errol Morris’ Oscar winning Fog of War where Robert McNamara goes through thought processes of military decisions during major wars of the United States of America. We served a juicy homemade Vietnamese Beef And Lettuce Curry during the screening.

To learn more about Justin Joseph Hall, sign up for Fourwind Films newsletter.

Credits:

Host - Laura Davi

Production & Event Space - Fourwind Films

Post-Production - Quatre-Vents

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

The theme song of Season 7 is New Tires by Silent Partner.

Episode #41 - Colin Buckingham is an actor and writer who’s worked on Mr. Robot & Sleep No More. He cares deeply about how to improve society as a whole and reflects that in the work he pursues. We held the live event an intimate Fourwind Films studio with a small group of friends and colleagues.

For his short, Colin brought the short he wrote and starred in, November Ninth, a personal tale of being assaulted on the election day in 2016. Colin coalesces his accounts of being bullied for his dwarfism into an eight minute action revenge story that takes place in a Manhattan bar and hence we served our audience beer.

The feature Colin chose was an account of two outsiders going on a roadtrip during COVID that yields an unexpected friendship between a woman who believes in aliens and a sad recluse with dwarfism. The chosen fiercly independent movies were paired showing experiences of dwarfism and living with a condition not fully understood by society. Our audience enjoyed Chinese takeout and a classic diner ham sandwich and fries plate during the screening.

Check out more from Colin Buckingham for his latest via his website.

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Production & Event Space - Fourwind Films

Post-Production - Quatre-Vents

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

The theme song of Season 7 is New Tires by Silent Partner.

Episode #40 - Welcome to the third Fresh Air Award! Four cinephiles continue a Fourwind Films tradition of awarding a film that pushed cinema forward the most as an artform during a particular decade. To be nominated, a motion picture has to have changed movies in some way and made a lasting impression on how movies are made today. This episode delves into the decade that saw the beginning of successful commercial sound in cinema: 1920-1929.

Before getting into the nominations with the panelists, our host Justin Joseph Hall goes through a quick history lesson on what was happening in the decade businesswise and technology-wise. 

The four cinephiles who select the nominees in this panel are cinephiles Elizabeth Chatelain, Tracey Goessel, Justin Joseph Hall, and Kevin Hinman. If the piece has moving images and came out in the appropriate decade, it is eligible for nomination. This group chose an array of documentaries, shorts, animated films, and feature films, including films with the first synchronized score with animation, the first montage, a commercially successful duo tone color film, and the first soundtrack synched on the film strip.

Here is the link to all the nominations: 1920’s Fresh Air Award Nominees - Letterboxd list

There were several overlaps, but here are the main nominations made by each panelist:

Elizabeth Chatelain nominees

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Tracey Goessel nominees

Nanook of the North (1922)

Don Juan (1926)

Steamboat Willie (1928)

The Play House (1921)

The Toll of the Sea (1922)

Justin Joseph Hall nominees

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Nosferatu (1922)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Kevin Hinman nominees

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Drifters (1929)

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924)

The Gold Rush (1924)

To find the 1920’s Fresh Air Award winner click on this link!

We hope you enjoy this episode! Share with us your own lists, comments, arguments, and films that we left out via social media @fourwindfilms. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

Thanks for listening, Season 7 to come shortly!

Thank you to our cinephiles who did joined this out of their passion. To hear more from them, visit links below:

Elizabeth Chatelain

Quatre-Vents Post-Production

Movie Directing & Writing

Tracey Goessel

Film Preservation Society

Justin Joseph Hall

Quatre-Vents Post-Production

Fourwind Films

Kevin Hinman

Magnum Opus

Spesh to Death

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Fresh Air Award Contributors for 1900s Decade - Elizabeth Chatelain, Tracey Goessel, Justin Joseph Hall, & Kevin Hinman

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

Additional Sound Recordist - Elizabeth Chatelain, Kevin Hinman, Ricky Rosario

The theme song of Season 6 is Getting It Done by Kevin MacLeod.

Additional Music MOMFG & The Drums! provided by Kevin Hinman & Magnum Opus for interludes.

Music in the public domain used in this podcast:

Deep Blue Sea - Clara Smith

One of Battleship Potemkin’s Scores - Eisenstein wanted the scores to be updated about every decade.

Don Juan Soundtrack - Context on who wrote it “William Axt used two pieces that owned by Robbins-Engel, "The Fire Agitato" and "In Gloomy Forest," along with several pieces of European classical music including compositions by Richard Strauss.

Episode #39 - Justin Joseph Hall’s work has been acquired by major television networks such as HBO and he’s worked as a lead creative on projects that received awards at The Emmys, TriBeCa Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, and more. He is Director and Founder of Fourwind Films. Dorie Hall hosted the podcast which was held as a private screening in Minnesota.

For his short, Justin brought a never publicly screened version of Yeon-Gi, an experimental Buddhist themed movie. This version was created in 32x9 aspect ratio, and includes a full reflections visible on screen. The emotional short created a lot to talk about in our discussion.

Dorie Hall, Justin Joseph Hall - photographer Laura Davi

The feature Justin chose to screen is the famous location documentary, Samsara. During the screening Fourwind chefs served a mouthwatering combination: potstickers, burgers, fries, and a cola.

Through the visuals of nature and human altered locations, Samsara shows nature on land nearly void of life until we encounter various locations of cities and former settlements. It’s an emotional journey around the earth with seemingly no connection except our location on the earth and what the montage movie weaves together through the beautiful images.

To learn more about Justin Joseph Hall, sign up for Fourwind Films newsletter.

Credits:

Host - Dorie Hall

Editor - Billie Joe Laitenin

Sound Mixer - Hans Bilger

Event Space - Hall Family Home

Photographer - Laura Davi

The theme song of Season 6 is Getting It Done by Kevin MacLeod.

Episode #38 - WARNING: This episode is a workflow episode.  It is made for people with extensive knowledge in post-production and can be a confusing listen if you do not have an interest in the material.  If you do not have that particular background skip to another one of our episodes.

Welcome to another Feature & a Short workflow episode where we chat about differences in working in Feature versus short movies. In this episode Director, Editor Justin Joseph Hall explains what criteria to look for when choosing a hard drive in general, but specifically what will save you time on feature projects.

Thank you to Bobby O’Brien for requesting this podcast

The Biggest difference between a selecting a hard drive for feature or a short movie is really the transcoding, export time, and transfer times (time to create backups).

The first thing to look for in either a feature or a short movie is the connection. There are three modern connections found in the fall of 2022

1. USB-C

2. Thunderbolt

3. USB-3.0

Ethernet connection to a network is also an option if you happen to be working off of a large storage network in an office. Otherwise another storage device to consider is a RAID = redundant array of independent disks. It’s probably not worth it to invest in an expensive RAID for short. There are 3 main ways to set up your RAID.

1. RAID 0

2. RAID 1

3. RAID 5

We go through all types, but recommend RAID 0 for editing digital video, mainly because it’s the fastest way to read and write data.

Don’t forget to backup your hard drives in three separate physical locations. Plan out before you start post-production where your three locations will be.

Justin suggests a few brands

1. G-RAID

2. Seagate

3. LACIE

4. OWC

Justin also suggests to diversify backup types including going through what an LTO tape is. Quatre-Vents is Fourwind Films’ sister company in Minnesota!  They can be your solution for LTO Tapes and all other Post-Production needs .  In the podcast Justin tells how you can get 70% back on video expenditures through tax incentives through Quatre-Vents.  Some are direct rebates, just by hiring us and others in the region. Justin also goes through various options of powering your drive and pricing for drives. And don’t forget to always include hard drives in your budgets!

Thanks for listening! For more content like this check out other podcast episodes as well as our blog posts, where a wide variety of film and multimedia professionals share what they’ve learned.

Credits:

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Editor - Billie Jo Laitinen

Audio Mixer - Hans Bilger

The theme song of Season 6 is Getting It Done by Kevin MacLeod.

Episode #37 - Ellen Goosenberg Kent is an Oscar winning documentarian who knows how to produce a compelling story first and foremost. She is always interested in the price paid by common people going against difficult odds, often fighting government systems often unintentionally. She is incredible in her long and varied work. We had the pleasure to talk with her at Nitehawk Cinema - Williamsburg in front of a live studio audience while we screened the documentary.

For her short, Ellen brought MTV short Anastasia. Activist Anastasia Shevchenko was accused of being a threat to Russian state. She was kept under house arrest for two years. Sarah McCarthy’s short documentary tells the story of a civil rights advocate and single mother who longs to see her children grow up in a free society in a deeply personal account of her family and the sometimes unseen cost of activism. The movie is a deeply humanizing tale of the price paid by a woman struggling for freedom and her family’s safety and peace of mind.

Host Justin Joseph Hall and Ellen Goosenberg Kent - Photo by Piper Werle

The feature Ellen chose is her latest, Afghan Dreamers also courtesy of MTV. During the screening Nitehawk’s chefs served a mouthwatering combination: Sheer Chai, an Afghani Salad, and Kabuli Palaw.

Through the story of a robotics team in Afghanistan, Afghan Dreamers recounts the advancements of women in the country since the American invasion and the effects of the Taliban taking over after the Americans left. Using various stock footage of government officials, the story of these high school students is a rollercoaster of joy, pain, hard work, and the country’s struggle for women’s rights in a conservative society.

See Afghan Dreamers on Paramount + in 2023.

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Editor - Billie Joe Laitenin

Sound Mixer - Brian Trahan

Sound Mixing Assistant - Hans Bilger

Lead Marketing Agent - Isabel Restrepo

Event Space - Nitehawk Cinema - Williamsburg

Photographer - Piper Werle

Sponsors: Documentarian Emanuele Mengotti & the documentary Stranger at the Gate by Joshua Seftel.

The theme song of Season 6 is Getting It Done by Kevin MacLeod.

Episode #36 - Shirley Venard is an incredible Minneapolis-based actress who uses her life experiences to embody a character. She’s kind, thoughtful, and a teacher. She loves to tell stories which is why we love her.

Shirley brought Oscar-winning short movie The Railroad Lady (La Femme et la TGV). The first tale of a lonely woman in this pairing. Shirley looked at the great actresses of the 1900’s to find her short and her and Justin talk of Jane’s fake orgasm that made her famous.

The feature Shirley chose is the Zellner Brother’s Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. The Japanese, Texas made movie that was largely shot in Minnesota. It was a Sundance Film Festival favorite, making Minnesota & Japan look beautiful on the silver screen.

See Shirley Venard’s work in our short movie Prologue. In the forecast to look forward to please check out the award-winning series Marcellus Hall an Artist in New York City which is playing around the world in 2022.

Shirley Venard at the Question & Answer with host Justin Joseph Hall

Credits:

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Editor - Billie Joe Laitenin

Sound Mixer - Brian Trahan

Sound Mixing Assistant - Hans Bilger

Lead Marketing Agent - Isabel Restrepo

Event Space - The Woman’s Club in Minneapolis

Photographers - Dakota & Dorie Hall

The theme song of Season 6 is Getting It Done by Kevin MacLeod.

Before getting into the nominations with the panelists, our host Justin Joseph Hall reads an excerpt from film historian David Kiehn of the Niles Film Museum about the second full decade of cinema. 

The four cinephiles who select the nominees in this panel are cinephiles Elizabeth Chatelain, Justin Joseph Hall, Kevin Hinman, and Jason Tucker. If the piece has moving images and came out in the appropriate decade, it is eligible for nomination. This group chose an array of documentaries, shorts, animated films, and feature films, including one with the film with the first synchronized score.

Here is the link to all the nominations: 1900’s Fresh Air Award Nominees - Letterboxd list

There were several overlaps, but here are the main nominations made by each panelist:

Elizabeth Chatelain nominees

Rituais e festas borôro (1917)

Birth of a Flower (1910)

Gertie The Dinosaur (1914)

A Man There Was (1917)

Shoulder Arms (1918)

Justin Joseph Hall nominees

Suspense. (1913)

The Oyster Princess (1919)

The Perils of Pauline (1914)

Cabiria (1914)

The Cameraman's Revenge (1912)

Kevin Hinman nominees

A Dog's Life (1918)

J'accuse (1919)

Different From the Others Richard Oswald (1919)

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

South (1919)

Jason Tucker nominees

Rapsodia Satanica (1917)

Frankenstein (1910)

Falling Leaves (1912)

Spring Fever (1919)

 The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)

Hope you enjoy this episode! Share with us your own lists, comments, arguments, and films that we left out via social media @fourwindfilms. We’re on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Thanks for listening, Season 6 to come shortly!

Credits for podcast:

Production Company - Fourwind Films

Fresh Air Award Contributors for 1900s Decade - Elizabeth Chatelain, Justin Joseph Hall, Kevin Hinman, & Jason Tucker

Host - Justin Joseph Hall

Sound Mixer - Brian Trahan

Additional Sound Recordist - Dakota Anthony

The theme song of Season 5 is This Monster by Sun Nectar.