Cameron Woodward(00:00.044)

You've both described to me here that this book is a celebration of cinema. What does that mean to you in practice? Like how do you write a dictionary that also celebrates the thing it's defining?

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Kory Orban(00:10.988)

I think if you love something, you want to be in service of it. So the process of grading the dictionary is a way that we could earnestly, thoughtfully, and sincerely be in service of the industry, the medium, the art form.

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Scooter Corkle(00:27.47)

You know, cinema is communal if you are a fan and it is a community if you're making it. And really front to back, once you make a movie and you give it to an audience, you're having a conversation. So you're part of the same community. So in a lot of ways, with all of these different sections, because they're not just aimed at filmmakers, it is connecting all of those pieces in a common language, which we found was very special as well.

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Cameron Woodward(00:49.582)

Before I get into today's conversation, I want to flag that this one is a little different from my usual format, and intentionally so. I don't often step outside the business and operational side of the industry, but every once in a while something comes along that I think is just genuinely worth celebrating. And today is one of those days. There is no single book that defines both gaffer and spaghetti western. So if you work in film long enough, you learn one language from the set. You know, call times, deal memos, hot sets and a completely different lexicon from film school or from film criticism. And nobody's ever put them together. Well, I've got Kory Orban and Scooter Corkle here, and this is also, of course, co-authored by Chrissy Mozylisky. They're three working film industry professionals out of Vancouver. And between them, they've worked on The Last of Us, Deadpool, Hollow in the Land, and Productions for HBO, Netflix, Amazon, and Disney. And over the last several years, they built

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The comprehensive dictionary of cinema, and it is hundreds of pages, covering thousands of terms from set life to film theory to internet fandom. They ran a Kickstarter last year. Their goal was $7,500 and they raised $221,000. I want to talk about what it takes to write the industry a dictionary and what you can learn about a business when you try to define every word it uses. This is on production. I'm Cameron Woodward. Let's get into it. Welcome to the show.

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Kory Orban(02:18.338)

Thanks for having us.

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Scooter Corkle(02:19.342)

Yeah, thank you.

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Cameron Woodward(02:20.258)

So Kory, you come to this from the set side, location management, production work, and scooter, you come from directing and writing. How did two people with that different of a relationship to the industry end up co-writing the same book? Yeah.

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Kory Orban(02:36.586)

Certainly. So I mean I can kind of like briefly touch on the history of the project and then how and when Scooter got involved. So cinematicalism, which is the brand that the book was published under, started as kind of a movie fan social media account. And it was something that I did in my part-time because as I'm sure many of your listeners will appreciate, when you work in the industry, it's very easy.

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Maybe a little bit jaded and disconnected with your love of the art and the medium. So this social media account was a way for me to kind of re-engage with my passion and interest for film and television production beyond just what I was doing day to day in terms of work. Then we experienced kind of a growth spurt in our following, an ambition that was doing a Kickstarter, arrived at the comprehensive dictionary of cinema.

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As project that we wanted to do. We did the Kickstarter. It went better as it ex than than we expected, as you explained in your interview. And that awarded us kind of the luxury to bring on a whole bunch of different contributors. Now, one of the first people I turned to was Scooter because Scooter is such a fantastic

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well of experience and information as it relates to the industry. In your intro, you describe him as a writer and director, but that career was built on one working kind of on set, which I'm sure Scooter would be happy happy to touch on. Yeah.

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Scooter Corkle(04:08.332)

I I started it in the early two thousands as a PA, literally sweeping cigarette butts at Crew Park, on music videos and not getting paid for it on night shoots, all that kind of stuff. So I I started there and then worked my way up through the camera department, the grips, the electrics. I've worked in, you know, art and props and a little bit of, you know, effects. The effects work is a lot of fun. And when you can jump in and help, you will jump in and help. And then I I became a gaffer for a long time.

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And beyond the Black Rainbow, I was the gaffer and it gets a little nod in the book too. Made sure that it got a little nod. But yeah, I've had over twenty years of experience on set, which is sort of where Kory kind of brought me in. And I've developed into becoming a director and a writer. And I never really wanted to be that to begin with. And I've sort of slipped into that through a passion for, you know, this this art form that we love so much. And then yeah, Kory and I have done a podcast together. We did do something called Below the Line, which a company called Circus was sponsoring.

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And it was really interviewing, you know, heads of department below the line. So it wasn't cinematographers, it wasn't directors, it was, you know, location manager PMs, props masters, production sound, those sort of things. So we we've always had a big passion for the industry. And I don't know, we just like each other.

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Cameron Woodward(05:23.982)

Kory, you've said that this is the resource you always wished existed on set. What was the moment on an actual production where you felt that there was this gap acutely? Where did the absence of a reference like this create a real problem?

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Kory Orban(05:41.43)

Yeah. So I mean, like, I don't know that I have one particular instance where something like that occurred and stands out in my mind so much as I have like an endless multitude of instances where that kind of occurred and happened. I mean, especially when you're starting in the industry, it's like there is so much to know and learn.

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Like within any functional area or any department within the industry, you can spend a lifetime walking in that direction and still constantly be learning new things. And I know that, you know, something that's happened to me a number of times is, you know, you'll you'll be in a critical moment. Someone will come to you and says, This needs to be done. I need this. this was forgotten about, yada, yada, and so on.

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And in that moment, they might not have the capacity to provide that answer. There might not be an opportunity. And every time that these glitches in communication happen, it ends up inevitably costing time, it costs money, and it costs a lot of embarrassment. So just any time, I think a big motivator for with the project was just enabling people to.

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equip themselves with as much granular knowledge about the different facets of film and television production as humanly possible.

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Cameron Woodward(07:09.452)

That's great. You know, Scooter, I'm curious from a director and writer's perspective, where does the language of the set and the language of the development room diverge most? You know, are there terms that mean completely different things depending on which side of the process you're on?

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Scooter Corkle(07:25.324)

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we we were sort of discussing this before was, you know, the the language of set and post and development and all these sort of things, they're they're completely separate. They feel like they're completely different industries a lot of the time. and they're so separated within their granular minutia that sort of run their day-to-day. So they're they're kind of night and day. Like if you're in a writer's room compared to when you're on set, you know, you you will really communicate only through the page.

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what's written, you're trying to translate that onto a set, or or in post or through visual effects or whatever it may be. And yeah, I think the the one word that sort of should transfer over through all of them that isn't even in the book book is is patience, is really trying to sort of like take your time and understand stuff. But we are we are in an industry where time is money and everything moves quickly, but

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Cameron Woodward(08:16.886)

Without question. you both described to me here that this book is a celebration of cinema. And that's a very specific framing. It's not just a reference tool, a textbook, but something with a point of view about why film matters. What does that mean to you in practice? Like how do you write a dictionary that also celebrates the thing it's defining?

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Kory Orban(08:41.068)

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think like I think if you love something, you want to be in service of it. So the process of creating the dictionary is a way that we could earnestly, thoughtfully, and sincerely be in service of the industry, the medium, the art form, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, how is a dictionary in service of all those things? Like, well, one

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It's an archive. It's a snapshot of the language that's used to communicate within the context of film and television. And then two, and probably more importantly, is that it's it's a tool for other people who share that passion to develop their comprehension. So whether you're coming from it as a film fan or a film student or a 20 year veteran who's worked in a particular facet of the industry.

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Now through this book, the hope and intent is that you're equipped to expand your comprehension. You can walk further in other and unique directions. And I think ultimately the long-term health and success of film television as an industry, as an art form, is entirely contingent upon that continuous pipeline of new people engaging with it.

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Expanding their comprehension, et cetera, et cetera.

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Scooter Corkle(10:10.146)

To that point, it is a community. And the community isn't just, you know, cinema is communal if you are a fan, and it is a community if you're making it. And and really front to back, once you make a movie and you give it to an audience, you're having a conversation. So you're part of the same community. So in a lot of ways, with all of these different sections, because they're not just aimed at filmmakers, it is connecting all of those pieces in a in a in a common language, which we found was very special as well.

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Kory Orban(10:39.564)

Yeah, and the bedrock of community is language, right?

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Scooter Corkle(10:42.7)

Yeah, poor math, one of the two.

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Cameron Woodward(10:44.172)

I was actually going to say, well, it turns out language just is math, it turns out in the last couple of years. But nevertheless, nearly three thousand people backed this on Kickstarter, to your point, Scooter, about the community. And that was all before a single page was printed. So what do you think that response tells you about what people in the industry were looking for or about how film culture thinks about its own language?

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Kory Orban(11:08.556)

Yeah, I mean I'm happy to jump in there. It's like I think what it tells us is that there is an intense, perhaps even insatiable, thirst and hunger from those who are committed to the art form in the industry, for knowledge and information about it. Like we managed to find almost 3,000 people who love film and television so much.

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that they want to buy a dictionary about it, which is, you know, that's that's a pretty an intense level of affection for a thing. Cause I I don't know about you both, but the only other dictionary I own is is for the English language. So you know, like that's a it's it's a pretty high barrier. But yeah, I mean I think it tells us that people care about this passionately, deeply. And it means a lot to them.

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Scooter Corkle(11:58.35)

Yeah, and it's definitely still a part of the community. It's still part of, you know, the culture. the culture of cinema has touched so many people. And we still talk about it the in similar ways than we used to talk about it. And having like people who really want to put their, you know, money where their mouth is in this case is it it not only like allows us to then explore and learn. And, you know, while you're actually in the book creating all these things, all these terms and really researching and finding all the history, it makes us

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bigger film fans. It makes us even more proud to be a part of cinema, which, you know, it it was them giving us that treat as well.

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Cameron Woodward(12:36.962)

That's awesome. Speaking of proud, I'm curious. Like, you know, the book is already in its second printing, I understand. Like when you see people actually using it, you know, whether that's on set or at film school and people's personal collections as fans, what does that feel like relative to why you all started it?

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Kory Orban(12:54.306)

Yeah, I mean, I would say that it feels like immensely gratifying and incredibly heartwarming. It's interesting. My wife was helping crew up a gallery chute maybe a week ago, and she was dealing with like a new entrant to the industry of production assistant who doesn't have oodles of experience, and she asked, like, hey, you know, do you want to work on this gallery chute? And the response was, What what is a gallery chute? And then her response to that text message was just sending a photo of the definition of a gallery chute from the book.

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And it's like, you know, so it's like it it's just it's a really wonderful feeling when you have an intention, you make a thing, and then you see it working in the world and having the effect that you'd hope for.

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Scooter Corkle(13:36.022)

And just like as a total aside, like as a screenwriter, you know, most of the things you write never see the time of day. Like when you are considered a writer as a screenwriter, only when the movie gets made are you really even showcase. Nobody actually sees any of the work. So to develop something and write something where the writing is the product is so satisfying and so unique and rare for screenwriters. And to have people, you know, engage with it. I was telling Kory like the

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production designer of backrooms, Danny Vermet. he sent me a photo of like him buying the dictionary. And, you know, one of the producers of that same movie, Jesse Sabbath, he sent me a picture as well. And it's just really neat to see that the industry is also kind of getting behind it at the at the top level. You know what I mean? It's very it's super satisfying.

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Cameron Woodward(14:22.018)

That's awesome. What's the term in the book that was hardest to define? Like where you kept rewriting the entry because the industry doesn't quite actually agree on what it means?

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Scooter Corkle(14:31.938)

That's a tough one. I think for in general, and this is sort of like there's so many like this because we all speak a different language depending on where you are and what region you are. In Vancouver, where we are, the US comes up here, LA comes up here all the time to film and they brought their terms with us and sort of trained us. And one of the like simplest ones is just what a flag is. You know, a brute flag versus a standard flag versus a floppy flag. What sizes they are? What is the measurement? What do they actually mean? What is a finger versus, you know?

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What is the slash? Like all these sort of different small terms, even key grips within the city can't really agree on those. So it's it's really defining them and making it a definitive definition so that, you know, the next generation can kind of look at a standard flag and understand that this is what it means. Cause even a standard flag in general doesn't really mean anything to some people in LA at all, or in New York or in, you know, Europe. So those kind of little terms, and there's a lot of them, are

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difficult but also a lot of fun to to finally put your foot down and be like, no, this is what it is.

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Kory Orban(15:35.596)

Yeah, and just echoing what Scooter said, I mean, I think you could say that about like almost any definition in the entire book. Like for all for all of these terms, it's like you want to give each of them as much thought and diligence as you possibly can. So what you inevitably present to the world is as definitive and authoritative as reasonably possible.

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'Cause it's not it's not so often that anyone takes a moment in our industry and like writes down what we actually are all trying to say. So yeah, just it just giving every term its due.

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Scooter Corkle(16:14.2)

Within each term, too, there are different, you know, di depending on what department you're in, you're gonna have a different definition for what it is. So, you know, AC in the camera department is an assistant camera person. In the electrical departments, it's a power cable. in locations, it's literally air conditioning. So, like all of these different terms, there's a ton of different terms that have so many different meanings. And trying to find that language and really make sure that it's across the board, all of these different departments.

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You know, when your department head is asking you for something, there's gonna be four, five, seven different versions, but one of them, this one, belongs to you. and we wanted to make sure that all those are in there.

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Cameron Woodward(16:54.286)

I never worked in the grip department, but I've been on lots of sets. And something that I found interesting was that there were agreed upon words for different tools, but sometimes there were even slang terms about those tools that only exist in film. Did you capture some of those as well? Some of them are very choice.

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Kory Orban(17:14.89)

Yeah, for sure. So, and I mean like, you know, some are extremely choice, but we wanted to be as authoritative as possible. So how we captured that in the book to the best of our ability is for each entry, there is included a list of cinnamon synonyms, excuse me. And then at the back of the book, at the index, we have every head word and synonym organized alphabetically.

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So like theoretically, if someone tells you to like go look for a what's it or a widget or whatever, whatever term, you could you know, go to the back index, flip through it alphabetically, find in the book, and then find the the corresponding headword. It's kind of with our design fixed to that eternal struggle that we all face on film site.

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Scooter Corkle(17:58.744)

So yeah, there's so many. There's so many synonyms for so many things. It's very funny.

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Cameron Woodward(18:03.628)

So to this point, like the book covers technical onset jargon, film theory, and fan and internet language. What surprised you about how those three vocabularies interact? And then where do they overlap and where don't they speak to each other at all?

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Kory Orban(18:19.916)

Yeah. So I mean, like, I think what's really interesting about it is how, to an certain extent, like how little they actually overlap. Like, you know, there's kind of this analogy or there is an analogy of, you know, how do how would three blind people describe an elephant and one's holding the trunk and one's touching the body and one's holding the tail? And what they would describe is very, very different, a very, very different animal.

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And I kind of feel like what we learned in this process is the language around film television is like that, in so much that depending on your functional background, you kind of bring your own experience, your own values, et cetera, et cetera, to it. So, you know, the although we're all dealing with film and television as products and content and pieces of material.

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You know, someone who is a tenured academic at a film school is gonna have a very different perspective on it than a teamster who drives the honeywagon or, you know, lamp hop number 17 on the call sheet on a nighttime exterior versus, you know, someone who goes to Comic-Con and attends Hall H, right? Like we're all fascinated and obsessed with the same thing and we care about it and we're interested in it.

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So there's approximations on how some of the language overlaps, but it it really is quite different.

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Scooter Corkle(19:53.026)

And there's like different exceptions that seem, you know, small and weird. one that came to mind was Stinger. You know, Stinger in writing is different to a stinger in composing, and it's different to again, the electrical department. It's like a power cable versus like a stinger for the actual composition of something. Or if you're talking about even marketing, you know, what a stinger is over there is also different. And they there's a bunch of those little overlaps, and then there's a bunch of hyper-specific.

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like what a big Ben is is very like that will never translate anywhere else. And probably nobody actually knows what that is unless you're in the grip department.

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Cameron Woodward(20:30.252)

Scooter, I mean, to that point, like from your vantage point as both a contributor to this work, really digging in on the words and the language, and then also being a writer and a director yourself, like, does the film industry's language reveal anything to you about its values? Like what it prioritizes, what it obscures, what it doesn't have words for yet?

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Scooter Corkle(20:53.962)

Yeah, I mean the film industry in general does evolve like culture and it evolves it in response to culture a lot of the time, as well as technology and all of those sort of things. And, you know, LED technology now compared to when I was a gaffer, it didn't exist at all. So a lot of those lights don't exist. But you can also trace so much of our language back to, you know, the very first tin type photograph.

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All the way back to the silence before even the talkies arrived. Like you can feel the full culture evolve and shift with technology and with culture in general. That that to me, you can keep seeing as you're writing all of these different terms and all these different historical notes and really learn a lot about where our language came from. So are we obscuring some words for sure? But we're also

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you know, rewriting some words or learning new words or trying to implement new things, like what an LED wall is, what does volume mean? They're the same thing. These sort of things I think keep keep evolving. So the language of cinema will never stop. And we're really excited about that because it means we can make more dictionaries.

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Cameron Woodward(22:08.514)

To your point, I think it's it's fascinating. A lot of times dialects do not really move beyond their region. And yet in cinema, we have so much offshore production, things going to Vancouver, all over the world, that these small tribes who create their own lexicon are bringing that with them. So now you're getting all these interesting offshoots of language, which is fascinating.

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Scooter Corkle(22:27.308)

The more recent one too, Chrissy, the other contributor, is an intimacy coordinator. And that's a brand new, it's a whole industry, or a whole section of the industry that is still brand new and it's still finding its language around consent and around, you know, all of these different elements. How to make people comfortable without sort of getting in the way, like those sort of elements, all in response to the Me Too movement. so it is the culture that really changed and evolved the film industry. And the film industry likes to

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take the newest thing and really try and grapple onto it and incorporate it, right?

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Cameron Woodward(23:02.69)

There may not be an answer to this question I'm about to ask, but I'm curious, is there a term that means something very specific in the industry but has been completely misused or misunderstood by the general public? And does if if so, does that gap matter?

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Kory Orban(23:15.566)

I mean it's not really a term, like the the it's more of a phrase, but like lights camera action, I feel like to me is like that's not a thing. It's meaningless. Yeah, it's it's it's not something we do, you know.

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Scooter Corkle(23:28.408)

We block light shoot. Yeah. Exactly.

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Kory Orban(23:30.86)

Yeah. So that one comes to mind. Probably the more interesting question you asked is like, does it matter? You know, how how important is it is it that the larger society is in in sync with kind of the intracy intricacies of our world? And I guess what I would say is what's what's most important is that there's enough people in society that care enough to have at least a general knowledge and to to go to movies every weekend.

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to keep us afloat. But beyond that, I'm I'm not sure how important it is that your average film fan, unless they're a true obsessive, knows what what a gaffer is.

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Scooter Corkle(24:08.632)

There are like certain elements of like how movies get made within the funding situation versus the fandom. The first one that comes to mind is like cast. A lot of movies are based on getting a certain cast member who has value. And then that value will trigger your investment. And then that'll get your movie made. So there will be sort of fandom that'll be like, Why did you choose this person when this obscure actor that I love is actually the way better choice to represent this IP that I love so much? But it doesn't really

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operate in that way. Sometimes the IP is the star, and sometimes the star is the star, depending on what it is. Sometimes the director's the star, you know, like Chris Nolan can make anything and everybody will go watch his films. But and then he'll throw in every single actual A-list star he can possibly get in there. But the that disconnect, I don't know if it truly matters because people are still coming to these movies, but I think sometimes the discourse around casting can kind of get lost because the machine

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takes so much, takes so much to kind of get going. so maybe that, but realistically is as long as people are coming to watch movies and still love cinema, it's it's not really an issue.

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Cameron Woodward(25:18.86)

I wanna ask you guys about the writing process of this 'cause it is a huge task. It's a really like it is really a hefty book. I mean it's it's pretty

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Kory Orban(25:27.106)

Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward(25:29.402)

What was that? Yeah, very big. So the other thing is though, is that there's no shortage of film resources out there, books, podcasts, hello, YouTube channels, film school curricula. What does the comprehensive dictionary of cinema offer that those don't? And who did you have in mind when you were writing it? The working professional, the film student, the passionate fan, all three, it sounds like.

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Kory Orban(25:31.096)

Yeah.

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Kory Orban(25:59.394)

Yeah, so I mean like how we kind of arrived at unique value proposition for the book is that it is comprehensive. So a gap in kind of film reference works that I discovered and we were trying to address with this project is that all of them have a tendency to view the art form, the medium, the industry through one one lens at a time.

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So, you know, like a more academic reference book is going to look at film television as the subject of ac academic scrutiny. Then there's more technical books. Then there's ones that relate more heavily to the business and the industry of film television. And then there are more like pro prosumer and or consumer fan fan-centric resources. And what I struggle to find, we hope we created, was a singular resource that looked at

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film and television through all of those lenses at one time. So we could be truly comprehensive. So that if you are a passionate film fan, you can pick up the book and you have a way into it. You can go to the taxonomy section or the discourse section. And you can start looking up different subgenres. And then maybe one day you're watching a movie and you're watching the credits and you know you're like, well, what exactly is a prop spy or what do they do? You know, and you have that resource.

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And then similarly for film students, industry people, et cetera, et cetera. Now to answer your other question, like who did I write the book for? Or who did we write the book for, rather? For myself, I I I wrote it for myself when I was 16 years old, you know, living in northern Alberta and not having access to any kind of film community, you know? And I received, I think it was called the Moron's Guides to Film and Television as a gift when I was maybe 13 or 14.

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And I still have it, but that book is like dog-eared and torn to shreds. And I you know, I totally ate it up. I I was I had an incredible appetite to learn about the industry and the medium. So that's that's who for me who I wrote the book for or why, you know, it was created was to give people who wouldn't otherwise have access to this kind of information access.

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Cameron Woodward(28:19.436)

I love it. I want you, if you can, walk me through what the actual writing process looked like. You have thousands of entries, as you mentioned, across these nine different sections. How do you even start something like that? And then how do you know when a definition is done?

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Kory Orban(28:33.154)

Yeah, for sure. So I mean it's lot of work is the short answer. The longer answer is that at the beginning of the process, what we did is we purchased a lot of physical reference work, so textbooks, other film dictionaries, et cetera, et cetera. Then we scanned all of the glossaries, all of the terms and definitions. and then we started putting them into spreadsheets. So the first column would be the headword, so the term.

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And then second column would be definition, definition one from source one, definition two from source two, and so on and so forth. Our editorial standard for the book was that we did not want to publish any term that wasn't supported by at least three sources. Now there was some exception to that, like if a term was emerging or was more colloquial, and we couldn't find it kind of in in either

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a conventionally published book or you know like a reputable soft source like a website in those situations we we'd go with two and then if it could be validated by the contributors basically like we were all in yeah well that's relatively what it meant. Then after we created this like and it wasn't one spreadsheet it was several spreadsheets of basically our research materials.

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Scooter Corkle(30:00.142)

Thousands of pages.

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Kory Orban(30:02.818)

Ridiculous. Like it it it was a lot. In the end, we had over 2,000 research like work cited that contributed to the books. So it was yeah, a lot of work, the research component of it. So yeah, once we had our reference spreadsheets created, it got handed off to writing contributors.

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Myself and Scooter were part of that process, but it was way more than just us and Chrissy. It was it was a whole gang of people. Over 35 people contributed to the book in the various portions of its production. The writing contributors would look at the source materials or work cited. They would weigh it against their own experience and relationship with the term. They would write a draft and novel novel articulation of the definition. From there,

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we had fact checking contributors. We had a standard that each definition would be checked twice by two different fact checkers. so two two people who didn't write the term. And they would basically look at it, compare to the source material, thumbs up, thumbs down, tweak it here and there. And then it went to our copy editors. They'd give a pass of the term just to make sure that the entire volume kind of sounded like it was being written by a singular voice and there was consistency.

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Formatting, layout, et cetera, et cetera, throughout the entire book. And then finally, myself and Scooter alongside two of our editors did a final content review of the book in its entirety. So going through, reading every single definition in order, making sure the sections made sense, making sure we didn't miss any like second or third meanings of a particular definition, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And

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Scooter Corkle(31:44.93)

The red pen, the blue pen, the green pen, all the pens to scrape out and rewrite stuff. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward(31:49.846)

That's incredible. Where did you most disagree about how to define something? Like was what was the debate that went on the longest and then how did you guys resolve it?

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Kory Orban(31:58.604)

I think that, well, for one thing, you know, when you're taking on a project this large, at some point you just have to decide to trust some of your key contributors, you know, and it's like you're just not gonna have the bandwidth to to arm wrestle ev over every single period comma in the entire book, or else it'd take 20 years to write it and by the time it was finished, it'd be out of date. I think one one place that we kind of butted heads, oddly enough, was special effects makeup. Because yeah, every

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Go ahead, scooter.

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Scooter Corkle(32:28.846)

'Cause you write it as is like SPFX sometimes, or you know, special makeup effects or special effects makeup. So it's either special effects and makeup combined or there's special makeup effects. And Kory put his foot down very hard working, you know, having to use that term so often.

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Kory Orban(32:47.778)

Yeah, well, I spent years of my life like doing the first two seasons of The Last of Us having to deal with special effects makeup. So I felt very strongly about the articulation of it. But yeah, and it's just, you know, it I guess and that's a little bit of a microcosm of some of the other opportunities for conflict or disagreement with kind of defining language is that there's just so many novel articulations of that particular concept that you know it is hard to be definitive.

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Scooter Corkle(33:14.89)

It's making choices too. Sorry, I walked right over there. I walked on you, which is another term that's in the book.

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Kory Orban(33:20.396)

Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward(33:21.133)

What section?

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Scooter Corkle(33:23.246)

that would be on set. Yeah. That's walk that's walkie etiquette. That's etiquette for using your walkie-talkie. Well, I mean, one of the other things is like actually having a c consistent way that you talk about certain terms. So like costumes versus wardrobe was one that came in there as well. Because you depending on where you are, you kind of talk about it in different ways.

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Cameron Woodward(33:42.286)

belief that could be totally wrong. Wardrobe is the department, costume is the artifact put on the cast member.

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Kory Orban(33:47.704)

I I would be inclined to agree with you. Yeah.

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Scooter Corkle(33:49.708)

That's that that was the definition that we went with for sure. So you're still like a you know, although like a costume designer is still somebody who gets an Oscar instead of a wardrobe designer. So they're they're like all of these different ways that you communicate and and you just have to make choices eventually.

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Cameron Woodward(34:04.908)

Right. I I guess a wardrobe technically, if I was a lay person outside of the industry, is a collection of outfits, but I've never heard it referred to as that.

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Scooter Corkle(34:12.841)

I would do that as one and two though, 'cause you would also call on the walkie four wardrobe.

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Cameron Woodward(34:17.25)

Yeah, to come in. Right.

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Scooter Corkle(34:19.074)

the department, but it's led by the costume designer. So it's anyways, there this is part of the the language of cinema that gets very confusing for people, which is why this exists.

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Cameron Woodward(34:29.216)

This is hilarious. I love it. Well, actually, this brings me to like, what does writing a dictionary about our industry reveal about the industry? Which is like, for both of you that have read through this multiple times and then also have having written thousands of definitions, like, what is your honest read on how well the film industry understands its own language? Like how standardized

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Is it really across departments, budget levels, and formats? I mean, you we sort of talked about this at the beginning of the segment that like it does move around geographically now, but that maybe creates room for standardization as as well as bastardization. So it's it's interesting and I'm sure that there's a, you know, there's an evolution there.

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Scooter Corkle(35:11.874)

Yeah, and even just speaking like the different, even just moving from development to pre-production, those terms are totally separate or can be totally separate with a little bit of overlapping. Production, totally different. Post-production, totally different.

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Cameron Woodward(35:24.95)

Maybe you guys could define first what is, finally, maybe definitively, what is an executive producer?

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Kory Orban(35:31.32)

Well, and that that is an excellent example of a term that just has this incredible multitude of meanings and like depending on the situation, the individual. yeah. And I think our definition for executive producer in the book is is quite long and it has several parts to it.

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Scooter Corkle(35:50.644)

Executive producer on a film versus executive producer on a TV show are hyper different as well, which is funny. But I'll skip over that for a second. Yeah, I think they honestly like when you're in your sphere, like if you're in post-production, the language is pretty clear. There's some like, you know, different slang and stuff that will occur depending on, you know, who your team is and your your geography. But the the biggest, I think, way to communicate between everything is that you understand that you're just a part of it.

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You're one cog in all of the different pieces, and that you trust that somebody else uses their language to the best of their ability, and then they hand it off to you. And now it's your turn and your language just kind of speak. But at the end of the day, we're all making the same project. We're all making a product. So we're all working together. So there is like it's a funny sort of working relationship that feels sometimes disparate, but you're in the trenches together. So you meet your editor.

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At the rap party, if you were, you know, in development and instantly you're buying each other drinks and like you're in this crazy community, even though you don't speak the same language, it feels like I love.

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Cameron Woodward(36:57.378)

That articulation of it, it actually reminds me of like what the world has been discussing in terms of how latent space exists within large language models, where it's like you are passing this package of language off to a model, or in this instance, in terms of your analogy, a different department, and then that vector is going to try to ascribe meaning.

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to the language that you've provided it and then conform it to its own meaning as well, given it's in a different department to execute to some output. So that's super interesting, scooter. I love that articulation of it.

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Scooter Corkle(37:35.214)

There's also like if you can look at it as something that is very common, a common saying, and you know, I can't remember what director sort of coined this. It might have been Hitchcock, I could be wrong. But the idea that you make a movie three times in writing, you have one movie and then you shoot it. So that's a totally different movie, or could be a totally different movie, and then you finally make it in post as the third way to make the movie. But each time you are passing that baton, you like your writing sets up the scenario to get to filming.

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And then you film what you can to get to editing. And then you edit it all together and put all the final little button pieces so you can deliver it to the audience, which is really the most important.

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Cameron Woodward(38:14.638)

I've even heard of some directors being like, Okay, we're throwing the script out. We're just shooting now. Like I think even Nolan has articulated trying to like experiment in that way in in his process. So that

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Scooter Corkle(38:24.11)

Yeah, and being the writer and being the director are two different jobs. And I think Nolan, this is what you're sort of talking about is like once he takes the script as the director, he's no longer the writer. So now he's changing it depending on what the director wants, which is very fascinating.

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Cameron Woodward(38:38.528)

Sort of trying to push this towards a practical takeaway for our production audience here, I am curious, like what term in the book do you wish more people on set actually knew and used correctly? Like maybe there's a term or a word that would change how productions operate if it were better understood.

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Kory Orban(38:59.234)

Well, I mean, Scooter kind of brought this up earlier. and it's actually I don't think it's in the book at all. But I think probably patience would be the number one word that I think every single person in the industry could could sit with for a moment and really try and absorb and would improve the quality of all of our lives. So that would be my one, I think.

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Scooter Corkle(39:19.03)

Yeah. And to do like one term is it it feels relatively impossible. Patience is great, kindness is great. The culture when I started in the early 2000s was also on the tail end of when the culture really was pretty toxic on set. getting screamed at during my first few weeks for slating inappropriately or bringing the wrong flag or, you know, whatever it might be. those that culture has changed.

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And kindness has really kind of seeped its way into cinema, but I think it it probably has room to be more so for sure. I mean

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Cameron Woodward(39:55.342)

I mean, to be fair, there was no standardized definition of what a standard flag was when that happened for you.

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Scooter Corkle(40:00.96)

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're correct. And a brute. I mean, you know, what is that?

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Cameron Woodward(40:06.082)

You know, this is such a cool project. People should really check it out. Where do they find this if they want to pick up a copy?

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Kory Orban(40:12.546)

Yeah, for sure. So currently we are selling via our Shopify store, which is cinematicalism.com. Also, we're increasingly producing and distributing more and more sophisticated digital content under cinematicalism with the intent of educating and advocating relating to film and television. So yeah, any of the major social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube.

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it's probably the the easiest way to catch us.

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Cameron Woodward(40:43.618)

The the dictionary was born out of cinematicalism, which is really this community. What are you all building next and how does the dictionary fit into like sort of a larger vision for what cinematicalism is?

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Kory Orban(40:54.156)

Yeah, for sure. So the next project that we're we're working on right now actually came from our community. It was something that they had requested that we do next. And it's basically a film log book. So it's like a notebook where after you watch a movie, you write down your reflections, thoughts, feelings, et cetera, et cetera. In 2027, we're wanting to do a hardware project and then also doing more publishing projects relating to

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kind of the history of different subgenres, all that sort of fun stuff. And then the other piece of this is that the idea for cinematicalism is very much like a digital media e-commerce hybrid. So wanting to do more and more digital media stuff. So YouTube video essays and different types of vertical video and all that sort of fun stuff.

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Scooter Corkle(41:41.134)

Yeah, which is where I am in the actual studio for the YouTube videos that we've that we've constructed. And look how cool that thing is. Yeah.

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Cameron Woodward(41:49.974)

It's very cool. I leave you with one last request before we sign off. Thank you both for joining me. This has been fantastic. Congratulations on the launch and for building such an awesome community for our industry. But can either one of you say something to me? Just a few sentences with the most film language as you can possibly stuff into a few sentences.

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Kory Orban(42:15.0)

I think it'd probably involve killing a baby. Could probably throw in executive the executive producer asked that we killed the baby. I don't know. I mean executive producer wouldn't typically ask for that, but yeah, I don't know. That's that's a tough one. You got one scooter?

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Scooter Corkle(42:27.724)

Yeah, maybe can someone cover can someone cover the lockup while I go ten one? That's probably very spam I don't know if you know what that means.

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Kory Orban(42:36.344)

That's a good one.

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Cameron Woodward(42:40.0)

I have no idea what that means and I think that's the perfect place to end. Thank you, both of you, so much. This has been fantastic.

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Kory Orban(42:46.712)

Thank you, Cameron. It was really awesome to you.

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Scooter Corkle(42:48.354)

Do this. Thank you.