🥪 #275 - Recipes for Leftovers

Sometimes the leftovers are the best part of the meal. Yes, on their own you can have yourself a microwaved portion of the same meal for several days, but because you can get creative. Just like how Monica Gellar invented the Moist Maker sandwich out of food from Thanksgiving dinner, ideas that don't get used for one story might make a good secret ingredient for something else.

A prime example of using storytelling leftovers comes from Peter Bogdanovich's first feature film, Targets:

“At the outset, Bogdanovich and Platt were approached by Roger Corman – who they were working for at the time – to make a film with Boris Karloff, who Corman said owed him two days work. The two were instructed to turn around a full script in a very short time span, with the caveat that Karloff would star in the film, and they would use segments from Corman and Karloff’s most recent collaboration, the B-grade gothic horror, The Terror (1963).”

Jacob Agius looks at how the producer’s limitations became a springboard to make a haunting story about the transition from horror stories happening in the shadows of ancient castles or misty moors into the horrors that happen in broad daylight right next door.

Youtube channel rangerreview gives a breakdown of how various Power Rangers shows in the US repurposed footage from the Japanese Super Sentai series, and the ways they added to and edited things together to create a sense of continuity between footage from two different countries that was shot at two (or more) different times.

BeautyBabayagha teaches us how to play the Power Rangers game “Now We’re in Japan,” highlighting ways to tell the difference between original Super Sentai footage and new footage shot elsewhere (like New Zealand). Este profiles Koichi Sakamoto, a stunt performer who rose to the role of executive producer while shepherding a decade of the Power Rangers US shows, and how his focus on stunt technique helped fuse old and new footage.

Camcorder Camerin details the journey Mulholland Dr took from TV pilot to feature film, also drawing in how scraps of ideas and images from throughout David Lynch’s life and work up to that point made their way into the final film.

And let us not forget to honor one of the most re-purposed props in all of science-fiction, “Dual Generators with Rotating Neon Lights inside an Acrylic Tube.”

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In case you missed it...

In the most clicked link from our last issue, Lisa Sibbett explores the ways that the Nuclear Family was designed to isolate and exploit individuals (and not just parents).

What else is inneresting?

• Cait from Scores Unstitched uses examples to show the relationship between singer vocal profiles and their associated character profiles in opera based on the Fach System.
• John Mauriello debunks supposedly natural design principles that are supposed to be objectively beautiful.
• Sheehan Quirke travels around London to make the argument that the aesthetics of civil engineering, like street lamps, tells a story about what that society values:
  
  “Modern design tells the truth very loudly. That we are technologically superior and very efficient, but also a little bit boring and unimaginative. And it says that we no longer believe in the idea of ordinary beauty, or in the idea of a public that deserves ordinary beauty.”

And that’s what’s inneresting this week!

Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team. 

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