“It’s so early in the story and it has a certain type of energy that doesn’t really exist in the rest of the film, which makes for a nice contrast.” “That sequence was discussed at quite some length,” Loeb says. Again, it’s their bodies, not their words, that tell the story: They move in perfect harmony, until the music stops and Yang malfunctions and flops to the floor, throwing Jake, Kyra, and Mika into disarray.
#AFTER YANG SERIES#
In a series of static wides, the Fleming family competes against groups from around the world in an online dance competition. The final, vibrant moments of Yang’s life, and the odd abruptness of his death, are juxtaposed in the opening credits sequence. The family fully embraces him as one of their own, but when his body suddenly shuts down, they’re thrust into a period of intense mourning.
#AFTER YANG ANDROID#
Yang, we soon learn, is a “technosapien.” A lifelike android animated by artificial intelligence, he was purchased by the Flemings to serve as both a big brother to Mika and a cultural link to her Chinese ancestry. Min) - who stands just out of the frame, setting up a camera for a group photo - their gestures suggest there’s some subtle distance between them. As they call out to the fourth member of their family, Yang (Justin H. The film leads off with a wide shot of Jake Fleming, (Colin Farrell), his wife Kyra (Jodie Smith-Turner), and their adopted daughter Mika (Male Emma Tjandrawidjaja), who stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a grassy field, ensconced in the lush greens of windblown trees and sunlit weeds. This philosophy guides Loeb’s shot choices as soon as After Yang begins. “So, something that became as important as the idea of ‘absence’ was the approach of framing shots wide while still keeping their emotionality.” “In Ozu’s films, he wouldn’t be afraid of leaving emotional moments to a wide shot, or letting emotional qualities come though body posture,” Loeb explains. The famed Japanese director’s influence is ever-present in After Yang, but it’s perhaps felt most in its framing - in how people and places exist within a space. You’re not just looking at something - you’re having to use your imagination in a different way.”īefore he became a feature filmmaker, Kogonada made his mark as a prolific video essayist, and it was through that work that he first showcased his scholarly devotion to the films of Yasujirō Ozu. The absence of whatever information you’re concealing engages the audience in a way where, all of a sudden, you’re participating intellectually. Maybe you wouldn’t even see a character in a frame, and the scene is left to audio. “Maybe darkness could conceal an emotion. “A lot of what Kogonada appreciated in what he saw from me revolved around this idea of not being afraid to let things be left absent within the frame,” Loeb explains. He really values negative space, and he infuses it with something that feels palatable and tangible.” “There’s something in the air about Benjamin’s cinematography - that thing that’s always invisible to us, which is space itself. “It was really a marriage of sensibilities,” says Kogonada.
Of all the candidates Kogonada considered for the job, Loeb was the last to get an interview, and he laughs as he remembers how “very early in the conversation, he mentioned that there were others with more experience.” But while their first few phone calls barely covered the project itself, they revealed enough about the pair’s shared tastes to seal the deal. Two years later, Loeb would begin principal photography on After Yang - Kogonada’s sophomore feature, a ruminative sci-fi drama set in some near-to-distant future. At the time, he didn’t know how - or if - they’d ever work together, but he says that even then, “I just knew that my sensibilities would align with whatever led him to make that movie.” The cinematographer and director confer in Yang’s room.
“There are certain films you watch and say, ‘I wish I’d made that movie,’ and I had that feeling watching Columbus,” Loeb recalls. When cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, FNF saw Kogonada’s 2017 feature debut, Columbus, he felt an immediate connection to the director’s work. In this poetic sci-fi feature, cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, FNF and director Kogonada envision a world inhabited by androids, stricken by grief, but always teeming with life.
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