"We were working with grainy Super 16mm film, editing in standard definition.
This is captured via grainy Super 16mm cinematography courtesy of Sean Price Williams, the indie world's unofficial director of photography of choice, whose vivid lensing is largely responsible for the film's alluring, hazy atmosphere.
There were maybe half a dozen interstitial parts involving Super 8-like, grainy-color videos, or dancers moving in various styles to an abstracted bit of melody, or modest light shows.
Shot in both grainy Super-8 and velvety 35-millimeter film, these bodies appear alternately grounded and out of this world, reflecting extremes of physical effort while also suggesting different states of being.
However, anyone who thinks they've got the B&S aesthetic nailed – you know: grainy Super-8 shots of girls gazing enigmatically from buses – might be surprised to hear the short list of musicals on heavy rotation chez Stu.
It was a period piece before period pieces were all the rage, epitomized by the opening credit sequence that layered Joe Cocker's rendition of "With a Little Help from My Friends" over grainy, Super-8 home-video footage.
He will, for example, cut from grainy Super-8 close-up indoor talk to a majestic landscape shot in 35-millimeter but deliberately underexposed in a way that suggests it may or may not be real.
The archive-footage-heavy take hasn't pleased everyone (one LA surfer dismissed it as 'a middle-aged guy's nostalgia trip'), but in the grainy Super-88, whether it's of addled surfers sledging down storm drains in Nazi uniforms or playfully dropping into billows of vast Hawaiian surf, there is a dream of innocence and the pulsing heart of surf culture.
Dramatization of the story is provided both by grainy Super-8 reconstructions and by scenes from the couple's actual films: lush, groundbreaking works, such as the first North Korean film ever about romantic love.
The music reminds him of "cities and grainy film - super-saturated Super 8 imagery".
