The vastness of the night

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The vastness of the night
Original title The vast of night
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2019
length 91 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Andrew Patterson
script James Montague ,
Craig W. Sanger
production Adam Dietrich ,
Melissa Kirkendall ,
James Montague
music Erick Alexander ,
Jared Bulmer
camera MI Littin-Menz
cut Junius Tully
occupation

The vastness of the night (in the English original "The Vast of Night") is a mystery - science fiction thriller from Andrew Patterson , of the 26 January 2019 at the Slamdance Film Festival celebrated its premiere on 29 May 2020, the program Recorded by Amazon Prime Video . The film is set in a small town in New Mexico in the late 1950s, where two teenagers interested in science and new technology, a radio DJ and a telephone operator investigate the origin of a strange noise after callers report alleged UFO sightings .

action

In the small town of Cayuga, New Mexico in November 1958. Everett and Fay are in high school. It's Friday night and they can't watch the season opener basketball game, for which almost all of Cayuga's less than 500 residents have come together, because they have to work that night. They walk through the abandoned city and then go to their respective workplaces. Chain-smoking Everett hosts a show every night on his WOTW radio station while she manned the town's switchboard. 16-year-old Fay wears thick horn-rimmed glasses, likes to read through Modern Mechanics and is the proud owner of a brand new tape recorder.

Something strange is going on that night. Calls are interrupted, radio signals are disturbed, and a strange noise that Fay cannot identify comes through the line. She finds that it has a rhythmic pattern. Fay calls Everett and plays it for him, but he doesn't know what it is either. Through a phone call, they learn of a static charge in the ether on the outskirts of town and a strange sighting in the night sky, and throws in the story of caller Billy, a former military man who was previously involved in building a hangar as part of a top-secret mission even more mysterious light on what happened.

Everett still believes the Soviets have something to do with the matter because they are in the middle of the Cold War. However, they are more and more convinced that a UFO is circling over their small town. So the two tech nerds decide to find out what's going on here.

production

Staff, idea and film title

Andrew Patterson made his directorial debut in a feature film with The Vast of Night . After graduating from high school, he began working as a freelance producer of video films and commercials. Over the years Patterson had bought all of the equipment needed to make a movie for his job, including equipment difficult to access in Oklahoma. His production company GED Media owned a Movi gimbal . After Patterson and his team had gone through various ideas what you could do with the Movi-Gimbal and the suggestion came up to make a UFO film that is set in the 1950s, he realized The Vast of Night and let his experiences from the advertising film productions flow in, so the lighting, which was of particular importance for the film. The film was fully funded by him. The script was written by James Montague and Craig W. Sanger .

The title of the film is picked up right in the first scene when the camera in an empty living room heads towards a television showing an episode of Paradox Theater , announced with the words: “You are entering a realm [...]. Today's episode: The Vast of Night ”. The phrase is actually a Shakespeare quote. Screenwriter Craig Sanger approached the team with the idea for the film title. This can be found in Der Sturm (original title The Tempest ), and Prospero says in the drama: “For this, rely on it, you should lie in cramps at night, have stitches in the side that inhibit your breath; Hedgehogs should practice the night through where they are allowed to move ... "

Influences and structure

The film's underlying UFO theme reminds people of what happened in Roswell , according to the director, a city in southeast New Mexico known as the site of a suspected UFO crash in 1947 . That's why they wanted to bring the film to this time and place. This idea also works, says Katie Rife of The AV Club , because all you have to hear is the words "New Mexico" and "1950s" to understand where the action is going.

Patterson took inspiration for his film from Yann Demanges '71 and Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men . If you look at the latter film, you will find that this also fills two hours with phone calls and dialogues, but that you can also solve a puzzle in this way, according to Patterson.

Fay wears thick horn-rimmed glasses and likes to browse magazines like Modern Mechanics

In addition to these films, which would have had an influence on The Vast of Night , Patterson said that when he built his film, he oriented himself towards literary works, plays and podcasts , such as the three main locations or the focus on the auditory in Everett's work as a radio host. For example, during a scene in which Billy talks about the construction of the hangar in which he was involved, Patterson completely dispenses with a picture and lets the sound do all the work, or he cuts onto a black screen in the middle of a conversation, which makes it easier for the dialogue make it possible to carry the story, says Justin Chang of Los Angeles Tiems . Everett's radio station with the name "WOTW" written in capital letters also evokes its origins in the radio play War of the Worlds by Orson Welles based on the original The War of the Worlds by HG Wells , which was broadcast on the eve of Halloween in 1938. Cayuga, the setting, refers to Rod Serling's production company Cayuga Productions in the Twilight Zone . The popular science magazine Modern Mechanics , which Fay reads regularly in the film, actually existed and appeared under this title for some time in the publishing house of Henry H. Windsor, later also under slightly different titles such as Popular Mechanics .

The action of the film takes place in a single night. The dialog-rich opening sequence, a long shot in which the protagonists can usually be seen from behind and talk about the radio, the technology of the future and space, should make their enthusiasm for everything scientific clear. While Fay has some smart ideas about where the technology could go, Everett is more of the cool skeptic, which makes them look like Mulder and Scully , according to IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio . This sequence outlines the characters very elegantly, but at the same time introduces the viewer into their small-town environment, says Felicitas Kleiner from Filmdienst .

About the ambiguous end of the film, actor Jake Horowitz says that at the center of the film is the idea of ​​the unknown and the assumption that we don't know everything. At the beginning Everett thinks he knows everything, but at the end of the film you don't really know what's "out there" or what could happen tomorrow.

Cast and dubbing

actor Voice actor role
Sierra McCormick Franciska Friede Fay Crocker
Jake Horowitz Alexander Merbeth Everett Sloan
Mark Banik Martin Sabel Gerald

While it is the first leading role in a film for Horowitz, who embodies Everett, the newcomer Sierra McCormick , who plays Fay, was already seen in a leading role in the television series ANT: Achtung Natur-Talente . She was 18 years old at the time of filming. Gail Cronauer as Mabel Blanche and Gregory Peyton as Benny Wade can also be seen in other roles . Bruce Davis lends his voice to Billy the caller.

The German synchronization was based on a dialogue book by Klaus Schönicke and the dialogue direction by Clemens Gerhard on behalf of DMT - Digital Media Technologie GmbH, Hamburg.

Filming and equipment

Adam Dietrich was responsible for the production design , Jonathan Rudak acted as art director and MI Littin-Menz as cameraman . He and film editor Junius Tully use long, sometimes half-hour shots without editing, at the beginning realized by extended tracking shots or through and over the city, in and out of windows and doors and in.

Downtown Whitney by day

Most of the filming took place in the town of Whitney, Texas, which served as the backdrop for the fictional town of Cayuga, New Mexico. There the Donut Hut and Carla's Wacky Shack Hair Salon are among the filming locations. Due to the story, the film did not allow shooting during the day. So the film was shot between sunset and sunrise. According to the director, this schedule was adhered to for all interior shots. A side effect of these shooting times was that people and modern cars have disappeared from the streets. The film was shot almost exclusively at ISO 2000 , which increased contrasts even in the dark and gave the film a graininess that the director wanted. The on-site preparations took six months.

Screenwriter Craig Sanger had come across a telephone museum in Oklahoma City while preparing for it, the staff of which had all worked for AT&T in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. These helped with the search for control panels and with polishing them up. The electronics of the devices that were used for Fay's switchboard had also been restored to working order, so that the noises when Fay turns the buttons on the system to connect the calls in the film are original.

Film music and sound design

The film music was composed by Erick Alexander and Jared Bulmer , in which sounds ranging from simple rhythmic clapping to string music are used. Johnny Marshall and David Rosenblad were responsible for sound and sound editing. They also created the "strange noise", a disturbing, but sometimes also calming kind of whirring, an effect for which they mixed instrumental music, human sounds and mechanical hum. Since the cast for the callers had not yet been determined at the time of filming and the sound effects were only added afterwards, the actors McCormick and Horowitz had to do without sound recordings or a person on the phone during the recording.

Marketing and Publishing

The first screening took place on January 26, 2019 at the Slamdance Film Festival . It was screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in late June and early July 2019 . Screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest took place in September 2019 . In Toronto, Amazon Studios secured the rights to the film. In late October 2019 it was shown at the Chicago International Film Festival . In January 2020 there was a screening at the Palm Springs International Film Festival . The first trailer was presented at the beginning of February 2020. On May 29, 2020, he was accepted into the Amazon Prime Video program.

continuation

Prior to the film's release on Amazon Prime Video, Patterson said he would not be averse to an anthology of Paradox Theater-style films dealing with unexplained secrets, should The Vast of Night be well received by the public. The legends of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster could be explored, but such films were not yet in development. Which he won't do, be it to go back to Cayuga or to Fay and Everett. However, he is working on a script for his next project, which he describes as a kind of spiritual successor to The Vast of Night , which is about espionage and resistance in World War II and also takes place in one night in the Belgian-Dutch border region.

reception

Age ratings and reviews

In the US, the film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA . In Germany, the film was approved by the FSK from the age of 12.

The film has so far convinced 92 percent of all Rotten Tomatoes critics and received an average rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10 points

Roger Ebert critic Sheila O'Malley writes that the plot makes you feel like you've seen it all before, but the way the story is told is new. Elements from The Blob , The X-Files , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Twilight Zone , the trappings of the genre, are there, and screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger were not afraid to use them Placing throughout the film, according to an episode of Paradox Theater Hour that is on television. Andrew Patterson's style in collaboration with cinematographer MI Littin-Menz, however, gives these worn plot elements an urgency and creates a continuous mood of the strange and secret. The moments of technical virtuosity are astonishing given the low budget. An initial distance from the characters increases the feeling of intimacy and warmth in the audience at the end of the film.

Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times sees The Vast of Night as an ingenious, beautifully crafted ode to the science fiction paranoia of the 1950s, recognizing that the visual and conceptual craftsmanship borrowed from films by David Fincher , Richard Linklater and the Coen- Brothers and highlights its modesty, the way the film manages to conjure up threatening visions in the mind of the viewer with little more than a great cast and some dimly lit and decorated rooms. Furthermore, Chang highlights the contributions of Gail Cronauer and Bruce Davis , who are both able to enchant with their voices alone.

In his review, IGN's Matt Fowler highlights the thrilling script, which tells and beats the descriptions of secret military projects and "people in the sky" that can penetrate the minds of ordinary people like finely tuned campfire ghost stories, where you can beat every word hold on. At a time when the world of streaming and video-on-demand often comes up with films on a huge budget, it would be great to see a uniquely stripped-down story like The Vast of Night .

At its core, The Vast of Night is a radio play with pictures, writes Mark Kermode in the Guardian . Charlotte O'Sullivan of the Evening Standard notes that the UFO story has more to do with the cult mystery podcast Welcome to Night Vale . Katie Rife of The AV Club writes that much of the script for this film, which has a great predilection for analog audio technology, would work just as well as a radio play, creating an unearthly atmosphere through the dialogue and sound effects alone. But this approach is also a smart solution for an independent film production with a tiny budget for effects, and what The Vast of Night lacks in CGI spaceships, the film does again with a detailed 1950s atmosphere created by the production designers bet. Despite its intergalactic radius of action, it is an intimate film.

Felicitas Kleiner from the film service writes, The expanse of the night revolve around characters who initially live in very manageable, but also quite small-minded circumstances, whereby the film subtly alludes to topics such as racism and the position of women , but then confronts them with the disturbing realization that things are going on "out there" that will forever change your mind. The film alternates elegantly between dystopia and utopia , paranoia and longing.

Awards

Edinburgh International Film Festival 2019

Hamptons International Film Festival 2019

  • Nomination for the Golden Starfish Award - Narrative Feature (Andrew Patterson)
  • Received the Special Cinematography Award (Miguel Ioann Litten Menz)

Hollywood Critics Association's Midseason Awards 2020

Independent Spirit Awards 2020

  • Nomination for Best First Screenplay (James Montague and Craig W. Sanger)

Slamdance Film Festival 2019

  • Received the Audience Award - Best Narrative Feature (Andrew Patterson)
  • Nomination for the Grand Jury Prize - Best Narrative Feature (Andrew Patterson)

The Overlook Film Festival 2019

  • Best Film Awarded Jury Award (Andrew Patterson)

Toronto International Film Festival 2019

  • Nomination for the People's Choice Award - Midnight Madness (Andrew Patterson)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Die Weite der Nacht . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 199455 / V). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b The Vast of Night. In: edfilmfest.org.uk. Retrieved May 16, 2020.
  3. ↑ https://maddwolf.com/new-in-theaters/long-distance-dedication/
  4. ^ A b Sheila O'Malley: The Vast of Night: "There's something in the sky." In: rogerebert.com, May 14, 2020.
  5. ^ A b Ian Freer: The Vast Of Night Review. In: Empire Online, May 2020.
  6. ↑ Manohla Dargis: Sierra McCormick as a switchboard operator in 1950s New Mexico in "The Vast of Night". In: The New York Times, May 28, 2020.
  7. ↑ a b Brandy McDonnell: Oklahoma filmmaker Andrew Patterson's feature film debut 'The Vast of Night' acquired by Amazon Studios, proves a hit at Toronto International Film Festival. In: oklahoman.com, September 13, 2019.
  8. ^ Richard Whittaker: Fantastic Fest Interview: Gazing Into The Vast of Night. In: austinchronicle.com, September 24, 2019.
  9. ↑ a b Heather Wixson: Fantastic Fest 2019 Interview: Director Andrew Patterson Takes Us into 'The Vast of Night'. In: dailydead.com, January 10, 2019.
  10. ^ GED Media: About. In: gedmedia.com. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
  11. ^ A b c Oakley Anderson-Moore: Why Andrew Patterson Puts Style Over Social Media: 'The World Will Tell You If Your Film is Good'. In: nofilmschool.com, January 31, 2019.
  12. ↑ a b c Andrew Patterson. In: filmmakermagazine.com. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
  13. ↑ a b c d Helen Barlow: 'The Vast of Night': There's Something in the Sky. In: filmink.com.au, May 27, 2020.
  14. ^ "For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps ... Shall, forth at vast of night that they may work, All exercise on thee ..." William Shakespeare: The Tempest.
  15. ↑ a b c d e f Justin Chang: Review: 'The Vast of Night' is an ingenious, beautifully crafted ode to 1950s sci-fi paranoia. In: Los Angeles Times, May 27, 2020.
  16. ↑ a b Katie Rife: Sci-fi wonder The Vast Of Night is an inspiring testament to resourceful indie filmmaking. In: avclub.com, May 29, 2020.
  17. ↑ a b c d Josh Weiss: 'The Vast Of Night' Director Explains How His Close Encounter Flick Is More Linklater Than Spielberg. In: Forbes, May 29, 2020.
  18. ↑ a b c Monica Castillo: Texas Is Inextricable From Film Festival Darling 'The Vast of Night'. In: texasmonthly.com, September 27, 2019.
  19. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC4rUrzYavw
  20. ↑ Matthew dessem: The Vast of Night Is Like a UFO Movie Directed by a Very Talented Alien. The new movie, coming to Amazon, finds thrilling new ways to tell an old story. In: slate.com, May 26, 2020.
  21. ↑ Emma Stefansky: Amazon's 'The Vast of Night' Is a Hypnotic Sci-Fi Throwback. In: thrillist.com, May 29, 2020.
  22. ↑ a b Alex Flood: Meet Jake Horowitz - rising star of 2020's best sci-fi film (so far) 'The Vast Of Night'. In: nme.com, May 29, 2020.
  23. ^ A b Anthony Lane: "Shirley" and "The Vast of Night," Reviewed. / "Mid-Century Murk". In: New Yorker, May 29, 2020 / print edition 8/15 June 2020.
  24. ↑ Ryan Lattanzio: 'The Vast of Night' Review: Nifty 'Twilight Zone'-Inspired UFO Thriller Is a Confident and Creepy Debut. In: indiewire.com, May 28, 2020.
  25. ↑ a b Felicitas Kleiner: The expanse of the night. In: Filmdienst. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  26. ↑ Alison Willmore: The Vast of Night Makes Retro Sci-Fi Feel Startlingly Fresh. In: Vulture, May 29, 2020.
  27. ^ Alan Ng: The Vast of Night. In: filmthreat.com, May 29, 2020.
  28. ↑ Peter Travers: 'The Vast of Night' Review: Meet Your New Lo-Fi Sci-Fi Classic. In: Rolling Stone, May 28, 2020.
  29. ↑ a b Stephen Saito: Interview: Andrew Patterson on Exploring All Possibilities in "The Vast of Night". In: moveablefest.com, May 29, 2020.
  30. ↑ Jordan Raup: 'The Vast of Night' Review: A Nocturnal Sci-Fi Tale with 'Twilight Zone'-Esque Thrills. In: The Film Stage, May 27, 2020.
  31. ^ Mekado Murphy: Anatomy of a Scene: How 'The Vast of Night' Builds Tension With a Strange Sound. In: The New York Times, May 29, 2020.
  32. ^ Program booklet of the Palm Springs International Film Festival 2020. In: psfilmfest.org. Retrieved January 3, 2020 (PDF; 331 KB)
  33. ↑ Vinnie Macuso: 'The Vast of Night' Trailer Explores a UFO Sighting Over 1950s New Mexico. In: collider.com, February 6, 2020.
  34. ↑ These are the series and film highlights in May 2020. In: welt.de. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  35. ↑ The Vast of Night. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved June 26, 2020.
  36. ^ Matt Fowler: The Vast of Night Review: Extraterrestrial Graffiti. In: ign.com, May 30, 2020.
  37. ↑ Mark Kermode: The Vast of Night review - mesmerizing retro sci-fi. In: The Guardian, May 31, 2020.
  38. ↑ Charlotte O'Sullivan: The Vast of Night review: Andrew Patterson's wonky gem deserves the hype. In: standard.co.uk, May 29, 2020.
  39. ↑ https://www.27east.com/arts/its-a-wrap-winners-of-the-27th-hamptons-film-festival-announced-1547874/
  40. ↑ Erik Anderson: 'Da 5 Bloods' a big winner with Hollywood Critics Association's Midseason Awards. In: awardswatch.com, July 2, 2020.
  41. ↑ Joey Nolfi: Uncut Gems, Lighthouse lead 2020 Film Independent Spirit Award nominations. In: Entertainment Weekly, November 21, 2019.