Who loves cats and cinema? On this episode, the crew of your favorite cat-themed culture, history and science podcast make our first foray into feline film studies! Join us for a 40 minute discussion on the roles cats have played onscreen - from overlooked props and stereotypes to scene-stealing stars who shape stories and symbolize mystery, power and resilience. Host Amanda “Captain Kitty” B. is joined by film critic Angelica Jade Bastién, 25 Cats from Qatar and Cat Daddies filmmaker Mye Hoang (with cinematographer Rob Bennett), and Girls and Their Cats video series creator Brianne Wills to unpack how filmmakers use the “five Cs of cinematography” to portray cats, the cultural tropes tying felines to witches and “mad women” and the rise of cat-pawsitive storytelling in both film and digital media. From Hollywood classics to international documentaries and everyday cat videos, we explore how these furry icons are reshaping the zeitgeist - and how we can celebrate and sustain this New Wave.
Note: There is a brief mention of gender-based violence. If you or someone you know has experienced domestic or intimate partner violence or assault, please connect with 1-800-656-HOPE (US) or visit domesticshelters.org for international resources. You are not alone, nobody deserves it and you have options.
Support the podcast at https://ko-fi.com/6degreesofcats for as little as $1 / month for stickers, early access to new episodes and behind the scenes audio. View the show notes and more on The Captain’s Log, the companion podcast newsletter here: linktr.ee/6degreesofcats.
And check out these supplementary episodes:
- Witches, Whiskers and Whisky: Re-introducing the Original Cat Lady of Halloween! [Season 2 Premiere]
- Cats vs Cupid: Why Cats are the Better Valentine’s Day Mascot
- Did You Know the Vikings had Cats? Magic, Freya and Norse Folklore
- Felines & Fatherhood: Exploring Masculinity, Father’s Day, and the Unique Bond Between Men and Cats
About the experts:
- Angelica Jade Bastién is a critic and essayist at New York Magazine’s site Vulture. She has been featured on Rotten Tomatoes and her work has been published in many publications including Harper’s Bazaar, The Atlantic, and within Criterion Blu-ray releases. She lives in Chicago with her two cats. You can subscribe to her newsletter, Madwomen & Muses on Substack.
- BriAnne Wills is a fashion and beauty photographer and the creator of Girls and Their Cats, a photo and YouTube series created by BriAnne as a way to debunk the crazy cat lady stereotype and to showcase cat-owning women in a positive light. Originally from Oregon, she currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two cats, Liza and Tuck. She’s photographed over 400 women around the US, all as unique as their feline friends. Subscribe to the Girls and Their Cats YouTube channel and sign up here to be featured in her next video shoot.
- Mye Hoang is a Los Angeles–based producer and director of cat-themed documentaries 25 Cats From Qatar (2025) and Cat Daddies (2022). She produced the award-winning noir thriller Man From Reno (LA Film Festival Best Feature, Spirit Award Nominee 2015) and Lynn Chen’s I Will Make You Mine (SXSW 2020), and her first narrative feature, Viette (2012), a Vietnamese American coming-of-age story, screened at dozens of festivals including the Asian American International Film Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Fest. Hoang is the founder and former Executive Director of the Asian Film Festival of Dallas, former Artistic Director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, and holds a BA in Cinema from Southern Methodist University. Visit 25catsfromqatar.com to purchase the film on Blu-ray and visit catdaddiesmovie.com Cat Daddies to watch On Demand or p
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Okay guys, you have...no, it's not my --Binky, Peanut.
(00:04):
Hang on sweetie, you have to hold the camera this way.
This button.
Alright, lights, camera, action.
Okay, I guess this isn't gonna work.
Maybe we can fix this in public.
(00:28):
Welcome back to 60 degrees of cats.
The world's number one and only cat-themed culture, history and science podcast in which
I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B, and my feline co-executive producers Binky, Snuggles, and
Peanut, navigate the weird wild world from the past to the present with the help of an
exceptional array of guest experts.
(00:51):
All aboard!
I bet many among you can imagine the first few real or cartoon cats whose personalities
and presence caused you to pause the frame or quietly note in the theater.
(01:14):
That yes, there is a kitty in the shot.
For me, it was the 1986 Suspense film, The Adventures of Milo and Otis.
Despite grand cinematic achievements like that, cats have largely remained marginalized
in cinema, and very recently the team and I have had a very serious and important complaint
(01:36):
about how cats are portrayed in live-action films.
They are rarely, if ever, granted their full humanity.
I mean, the feline-ity.
You know what I mean?
They are either a punchline about a lonely man, an accessory to some "crazy lady"
(01:57):
or a disposable victim of predators both human and non-human.
They are side players and background scene decoration.
Babe, cats are main characters.
(02:19):
Now thankfully, I think this is changing.
Albeit slowly.
I attempted to run a very serious study that required reviewing all 3,047 films in the
wonderful Cats and Cinema website's database, but unfortunately or fortunately depending
on how you view the ongoing labor transformation and its environmental impact, the agents
(02:41):
could not handle a simple research retrieval task.
However, I was able to run a very basic survey of film titles with the word "cat" in them
and there does seem to be an upward trend.
We may be on track to even double the amount of films with the word "cat" in the title,
though I know.
This does indeed exclude films that are quite obviously about cats like Garfield and Flow,
(03:05):
but the 6 Degrees of Cats cinema research centers pretty short-staffed and underfunded
right now.
However, in this episode of 6 Degrees of Cats, we'll be hearing from a film critic, a documentarian,
and a producer of cat-centric media who are actively and positively contributing to this
"New Wave", if you will, of cat-friendly media.
(03:35):
Unless you're one of those aliens or androids who doesn't engage on social media and is
reaping the cognitive and emotional benefits of a life-lived offline, you've probably
noticed that within the past 10 years, our dear furry faves, cats, have been undergoing
a massive rebrand.
So you're kind of missing out there.
(03:58):
We partially addressed the advent of this in our season 2 "Pizza Paws" episode, celebrating
cats' dominance in internet culture.
And over the past 20 years, I think it's safe to say that cat culture has blown up.
Cats are showing up in non-cat food-related commercials.
More and more celebrities are loud and proud about their cats.
(04:19):
We have cat cafes popping up everywhere across the world.
There's cat conventions, cat themed fashion, cat themed magazines.
Oh yeah, and cat-themed podcasts.
To the point of this episode, they're also much more prominently featured in film lately.
(04:40):
In the past 10 years, we've had Flow, the first independent animated film to ever win an
Oscar, which starred a black cat.
And more and more, films are featuring felines, not just as colorful sidekicks, but also
significant characters.
Just check out the third installment of the hit American Thriller A Quiet Place.
(05:00):
And a favorite among many on this episode is the 2016 Turkish documentary on the street
kitties of Istanbul called Kedi, named one of Time Magazine's top 10 films of 2017.
Cats are firmly in the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.
(05:21):
And since motion pictures are the most context-rich catalysts, carriers, and containers of the zeitgeist,
I think we have a lot to notice when it comes to cats and cinema.
As a heads up, we'll be using a lot of C words.
No, not that one.
The Five Cs of Cinematography.
(05:44):
The Five Cs apply to all forms of cinema, which would be narrative, where the story is
set in advance of the film shoot, documentary, which is based on reality, and often the
story emerges during or after the shoot, and experimental, self-explanatory.
(06:05):
When you're watching a film and something about the vibes is just giving you the impression
that the director doesn't like, understand, or care about cats, or the people who love
them, there are little towels within those Five Cs.
And the first one that is very specific to cats, continuity, or the lack thereof.
(06:31):
I'll let my first expert explain.
Cats have appeared in films since the beginning.
They're like fun, weird creatures that are notoriously terrible to train, which is
why when you watch a movie like Alien or Aliens, you're like, "Oh, there's multiple cats.
This is not the same ginger cat.
This is like 15 different cats, and they're trying to make a scene."
(06:52):
This is just one cat with one of my favorite noir films, The Third Man.
You see a cat running down the street and starts playing with the shoelaces, and then light
turns on Orson Wells' face, light turns off, back into darkness.
And that cat is probably the third or fourth cat in that movie that's supposed to be the
same cat.
(07:14):
They were not doing kitty continuity at all.
That, my friends, is one of my favorite writers and film critics.
My name is Angelica Jade Bastién.
I'm a writer, critic, essayist, storyteller.
(07:34):
I currently work at New York Magazine, specifically at their site, Vulture, as one of the film
critics on staff and TV critics.
But I'm primarily known to write about film.
You can find my writing online at Vulture, and also give my newsletter, "Mad Women and
(07:57):
Muses" a Shot.
If you go to angelicabastien.substack.com, you will find me there.
As a critic and essayist, I really focus on depictions of mental illness and blackness and
pop culture.
I write a lot about acting, science fiction, noir.
(08:24):
Female madness is a big obsession of mine, and I'm a big horror nut.
She also happens to be a cat lover.
Cats have always represented good luck.
I never got as a kid the whole black cat walks in front of you, bad luck.
I always thought of it as like incredible luck, and I just want sweeter representations of
(08:45):
cats that lean into the mystery of them and the beauty of them and how caring and inspiring
they are as creatures.
Cats pop up in a lot of horror movies.
Cats represent a sort of figure that sees through the veil.
(09:07):
This is true again throughout history, the idea that cats can see into other worlds that
they're closer to the veil, that they can see through things, they can see ghosts.
They're figures of mystery which can then be exalted in some cases, ancient Egypt, and then
in other cases looked at as very dangerous, which has always come back to two things.
(09:35):
Women, cats, and two cultures relationship to mad women.
When I say "mad women" and "female madness", I'm speaking of both the experience of mental
illness, but also the experience and physical and emotional embodiment of the emotion of anger.
(10:01):
It does not take a lot for society to call a woman crazy.
She just has to be slightly against the grain.
Film can feel very liberating in how it depicts the mad woman as someone who bucks against
society, who is obsessed with pleasure and is a representation of a woman actually being
(10:25):
a little cocky and bold and dynamic in a way.
I think female characters don't always get a chance to be, especially if you're talking
about certain decades, certain areas of the world, especially here in America.
But then also there's another side of the mad woman in cinema in which she can become
(10:51):
a sort of landfill for every misogynistic belief that always comes down to this idea that
women are inherently hysteric, that women are inherently mad.
This way that film and culture are often ties women to nature.
I mean, you can even think of the term mother nature.
(11:13):
There's definitely something to this wildness tied to the cluster of traits we call femininity.
Speaking back to the mythology we've explored, Bast - Egyptian goddess of fertility, as well
as Norse mythology's Freya, goddess of fertility, ...
[fading commentary about Freud and primal urges]
(11:34):
With the link between women and nature.
It's a way to tie flesh and blood women to this idea of chaos and unrulyness.
It's not that women are more emotionally attuned and more spiritually attuned naturally, necessarily,
is that you have to be in order to survive a world that is literally trying to kill you.
(11:56):
And so I think it's just sort of interesting, especially watching horror films and just
film in general to see the link between witches and cats as a way to sort of speak to unruly
femininity.
(12:17):
What is more unruly to the world than a single woman with a cat who has a sense of her own
power?
So there are a few trends when it comes to female manness.
One, is that the dynamics of female manness and cinema, and it's not just in American cinema,
(12:39):
or even Hollywood specifically, is that more often than not I should say, female madness
is the prospect and territory of white women.
We actually don't really have too many examples of mad women who are of the black and brown
persuasion to put it that way.
I think a lot of directors and artists in the film space are really obsessed with mad women,
(13:05):
in part because there's something cultural to the obsession of watching a beautiful white
woman unravel.
And while many of these fictional so-called mad women with cats have been very expertly
acted by really incredible performers such as Academy of World Winners Glenn Close in
(13:28):
1987's Erotic Thriller Fatal Attraction and Kathy Bates in 1980's Non-Erotic Thriller
Misery.
I think it says a lot about culture and race and gender because we like keep making movies
about mad women and tying women to nature to this essential hysteria that was argued
(13:49):
about being like the essence of womanhood is to suffer kind of bullshit, right?
But you look at the world and the gray violence you're seeing is really men's relationship
to madness and this is not me saying madness as a way to like give them an out but more
(14:10):
so to call attention to the fact that as a culture, as a society, as a world, we don't know
how to grapple with the ways, men's, maladaptive behaviors present themselves because they present
themselves very violently.
It's interesting to think of the mad woman specifically in certain cultural context like
(14:33):
erotic thrillers of the 80's and 90's because it is not women who are boiling bunnies
and like killing cats.
Women don't have the leeway to do that.
I'm sad to say statistically speaking, this is indisputable.
(14:54):
Also statistically speaking, maybe some of you even know this personally, please do check
show notes for resources that remain available to you if you ever need.
This is where art comes in.
We need art to see things clearly and feel things safely, maybe even experience things differently
(15:18):
but it's interesting to think about why we translate and transform reality in this specific
way.
I think when it comes to media consumption, more than ever, we need media literacy as an
understanding the context of the moving images we see on screen in the many ways we process
(15:39):
art.
Here is where I'm going to introduce another C word, criticism.
It's not part of those five C's of cinematography but I think it should be because as Angelica
demonstrated, critics are an important lens.
(16:00):
To be a good and worthwhile critic calls for a broad, obsessive but also particular interest
in history, not just the history of the medium you're writing about but the history of
the world, the history of the people who existed in this world.
You have to be incredibly knowledgeable to write good criticism, incredibly curious,
(16:22):
voracious as a reader I would say.
For me, the importance of criticism comes down to the ability to speak truth to power, to
call out the trends, the psychology, the history that is flowing through the world that people
don't know how to make sense of.
(16:43):
We live in a world where people are both incredibly lonely and incredible in their lack of self-awareness
about themselves and how they fit into the world.
A great critic can be such a vital lens to look at the world.
Its fault, its foibles, its pleasures and make sense of them and give them an actual
(17:04):
context, psychologically, historically, artistically, emotionally.
I think they tell us a lot about the lies we believe about how people actually are.
All things that help advance the medium and, yes, integrate the work into the zeitgeist.
Here's a good example.
(17:27):
I've had an issue with the ending of "Bell Book Candle," the 1958 film that sees Vertigo
stars, Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart together, and it's a really, really fun movie where
Kim Novak plays like this cool New York witch and she has her witch friends, including
(17:47):
her brother played by Jack Lemmon.
She has her beautiful, beautiful, gray Siamese cat who helps her cast spells.
Why am I hell she casting spells to get with James Stewart?
That man is too old for you, girl, like they should have cast someone way younger.
(18:08):
It pisses me off to this day.
The movie ends, I'm sorry, spoiling a movie from 1958, y'all.
Okay, please skip ahead about two minutes if you want to miss the spoiler.
The ending sucks.
It's such a fun movie that I'm always like, "Why don't I watch that movie more because
I love the cat?
(18:29):
How Kim Novak looks?
It just looks like so much fun."
But the central love story, because it is supposed to be a witchy, fun love story for James
Stewart and Kim Novak, it doesn't work.
He just is the wrong age and also just the wrong actor for the role.
You end the film with her giving up her witchy abilities, reigning herself in to be with
(18:55):
this man.
But you're looking at really is a loss.
Even her cat ends up hanging out with her brother, like, "Oh, you ain't doing no spells anymore."
Okay, bye.
I think it speaks to the way witches and cats are considered unruly figures against the
dominant forces.
(19:16):
The way that this sort of love story has to end, because they're setting it up as a love
story, is she has to give up what makes your creative artistic and different to be with
this man who is not even attractive, which, wow, pick a struggle.
Like, don't do that girl.
This movie lied to me and was like, "Yeah, Kim Novak, looking absolutely fabulous with her
(19:37):
cute cat is totally gonna leave behind her witch abilities for James Stewart."
Okay, sure.
I think this is also a motif in classic stories, like the Little Mermaid, brutal.
It's not simply cultural and historical context that critics contribute to the art of film
(20:10):
analysis, interpreting the visual storytelling elements of cinematography also factor in,
which is where we bring in three more themes.
What's composition and camera angles?
How has those been leveraged by filmmakers for training cats in cinema?
(20:31):
Film is really good at using cats when they lean into the mystery and beauty of cats, and
also use them as a point of tension, drama, or really to build suspense.
You've seen in any movie where someone becomes something small, there's a really interesting,
tiny sequence in the incredible shrinking man from 1957.
(20:55):
Yeah, dude is not having a good time with that cat, I'll tell you that much, because you
know how they are when they see something small that moves.
You're dead.
If I became small, I would be scared of cats.
They used over 40 cats.
(21:18):
All of these tricks are intentional work with composition, strategic edited cuts, and
very painstaking camera angles and lighting to pull off all those wild shots of a man the
height of a sewing needle running away from his wife's house cat.
(21:38):
The most effective use of cats exists when you understand the relationship that cat has
to their person.
That's why I think Jonesy in "Alien" and "Aliens" is so wonderful, because you're like, "Oh
yeah, I totally get why Ripley has this cat and why they're cool."
And I really love that.
(22:00):
And also the cat is smart enough to be like, "That's an f-ing alien.
Let me get the fuck out."
That cat is so smart.
I guess like, "No, I have survival instinct, unlike these people, before making some interesting
decisions sometimes."
Angelica is one of us y'all.
(22:21):
So far, we've touched on criticism and four of the five Cs of cinematography.
After the break, we'll get a closer look at cats when it comes to the fifth C.
(22:46):
In the failed cats in Cinema Research Project I tried to run with the team,
the majority of the films in that database seemed to be narrative film, like The Witches
and even biopics, like the artistic travesty that was Bohemian Rhapsody.
No, I'm not going to get over how they did our beloved cat daddy, Freddie Mercury, dirty.
(23:08):
But lately, I'm noticing a pro-cat attitude being ushered into the zeitgeist courtesy documentary
filmmakers.
And I'm really glad to bring one such filmmaker into this conversation.
My name is Mye Hoang.
I am a director at Grey Hat Productions.
(23:32):
I grew up in Dallas, Texas.
My parents immigrated from Vietnam.
Growing up in Texas was my immigrant family.
It was maybe different from what most people grow up with.
They were very, very strict.
They didn't allow us to do very much.
One of the few things that I got to do as a child was go to the movies.
(23:55):
And so it was just a kind of a weekly ritual of my brothers and sisters taking me to the
movies.
When I was in school as a kid, we would make videos, make little movies with their home camera,
things like that.
That was just my entire world.
(24:18):
I actually used to be in the narrative world.
And now documentary films, I kind of switched over.
And I think it suits my personality better.
I met Mye at a screening of her incredible film, 25 Cats from Qatar, which follows the
heroing heroics of American cat rescue cafe owner and flight attendant Katie, who, spoiler,
(24:39):
successfully manages to fly 25 cats to Wisconsin, all the way from, you guessed it, Qatar.
a wealthy Arab state in the Persian Gulf where charitable donations are illegal, nearly
90% of the local population are temporary workers and millions of abandoned kiddies are served
(25:00):
by a very small group of wonderful people working overtime for no pay to feed and care for
as many of them as possible.
25 Cats, wow.
Mye both figuratively and literally, herded so many cats, among other things.
(25:25):
So I directed this film, edited, I'm a producer on it.
I also recorded the sound although I don't credit myself with that.
We always wear a lot of hats to get things under budget.
For the record, it's a pretty nontraditional shooting situation in Doha, Qatar.
(25:45):
How do they manage?
I was fortunate to have gotten my cinematographer Rob Bennett in on the chat.
I'm a cinematographer based in Los Angeles and I have a company called Genius Insane.
Being behind the camera, I generally operate in the camera for anything that I'm shooting.
And often that means also coordinating with art department, lighting, the other folks
(26:11):
in camera department as well to create the look of a film.
For a documentary like the one that we're talking about right now, it was a very small
crew.
It was literally just me, my and an additional camera operator and cinematographer Patrick.
(26:31):
I did not really want to come out during the daytime.
All the night in the street, it's just complete chaos and we just do the best we can.
It was 120 hours.
We literally just had to go from place to place to place and we just had to get what we
could get.
(26:52):
The heat was a big consideration leading up to the film since I needed to decide what
the camera is we're going to use how we can make this thing happen in just a number of days.
So did some research into what would maybe kind of stand up to the heat the best as well
as be kind of a smaller compact camera package to not get in the way while we're kind of
(27:16):
going around doing some guerilla-type style filmmaking.
If the local Qataris that live there complained about us being there, you could get detained.
I was thinking this could happen, so we just need to try to be as just discreet as possible.
Sounds like it was not for the faint of heart to get those perfect camera angles either.
(27:40):
This was so overwhelming because of the sheer number of cats.
At Castle, we didn't even see all the cats.
There's 300 cats, so it's like, which cats do we focus on?
I don't know.
I'm cutting all that footage of the various rescue facilities with dozens to, well, hundreds
of rescued kitties who didn't have very much to work with for them, but I got every single
(28:03):
cat that was rescued.
We caught it in there, even if it was just for a second.
I ended up editing it because I just think for someone who wasn't there, it's a lot of
cat footage, and I could sort of organize it in my brain.
(28:27):
I really appreciated and felt my care for all her feeling and human subjects through the
thoughtful cuts, the editing choices, the really spot on pacing, the great sound design,
especially in the close-ups, the final five of the five Cs of cinematography as it turns
out.
(28:51):
I guess to clarify a little bit, we're talking about both animals on the streets and in people's
homes.
Definitely, when filming cats, you want to be able to get in close.
The cat is an individual and being able to see where it's looking around all of those little
(29:13):
pieces kind of clue you into just a little bit of what's going on in its mind and the kind
of character that it is, getting down on their level to get that kind of cat's eye view
at times.
I kind of come in, gauge how the cats are feeling and try to interact with them accordingly.
(29:36):
In that vein, one of the plus sides of doing work like this is that sometimes you get a lot
of nozzles and you're allowed to put down the camera for a second to give you cats some
scratches if it's looking for that.
(30:10):
This is at my first rodeo when it comes to leveraging film for the good word on cats and cat people.
In fact, her first foray into documentary film addresses those old cat tropes we processed
with Angelica earlier from a different, equally disruptive perspective.
One day I had an idea about, you know, why can't there be a movie about men who love cats?
(30:34):
And then that became my first documentary project and that was called "Cat Daddies".
It's about men who love their cats.
Unabashedly inspired by seeing my husband become a cat guy.
In America we have this stigma about guys who like cats and there's a lot of men who really
(30:59):
don't care about that and they show their love for their cats.
This was appearing more and more on social media and it was just something that made me so
happy to see.
I just loved seeing men with their cats and then at the same time I was going through the
experience of my husband.
You would never have guests that he could like cats.
(31:21):
One day a cat found him and kind of opened his whole world, his whole heart and I think it
just goes to show that there's a lot of men out there who were maybe cat guys and they
just don't know it yet.
You too can carry on the work, my and other artists are doing through the power of motion capture
(31:44):
to counter those old messages about cats and gender.
You don't need to have state of the art tools, professional crew and specialized equipment.
You just need a camera and a consenting cat, obviously.
The whole thing about video that I really like is you capture more of a cat's personality.
(32:10):
That was our third and final guest.
I'm BriAnne Wills and I'm the creator of Girls in their Cats.
I have a series on YouTube called "Cat Lady Home Tours" and then of course I have my Instagram
account and TikTok as well.
I'm "Girls and their Cats" everywhere.
(32:35):
When I moved to New York I decided to start a personal project from the female gaze.
The first subject that I had, I was photographing her in her home and her cat decided he wanted
to be a part of the photo shoot.
I realized that this was actually a much more intimate portrayal.
(32:55):
I decided that I would focus on that.
The girls part of that is just colloquial.
I'm not like photographing young people with their old cat ladies because all the cat
ladies in my life were actually really interesting and not crazy as the stereotype suggests.
(33:19):
In 2024, BriAnne moved to video, "Which I found really really fun and it just like changed
everything for me."
I felt like I was getting more of an insight to both the cat lady and the cat.
In a static photograph you get to like stare at the cat for a long period of time.
(33:40):
It's artistic, it's beautiful, you get to see like the highlights and the eyes and the
details, but you're missing the personality.
With video, you're not just capturing a moment, you're capturing their movement, their
expressions, their sometimes their voice and it just feels like you're getting more of
(34:03):
the cat.
It also doesn't like feel as scary for the cat because I'd get to be a little bit more
discreet with the video.
I can just let them do their thing and just be an observer.
Black kittie owners, here's another benefit of video.
Yeah, I think video might do a better job of capturing black cats.
(34:29):
I think it's still a little bit challenging if the background is black in the cat is
black as well because they don't necessarily pop as much.
That would go the same for white cats on a white backdrop, it just messes with the white
balance.
As an amateur cat videographer with a still pedestrian sense of the five Cs, I consulted
(34:51):
with BriAnne for some tips on capturing her cat's best angles for moving pictures of
the digital persuasion.
I didn't want to have to carry a lot of equipment, I don't have any lights, so I rely a lot on
natural light.
So I would say midday when the sun is overhead and the light inside is a little bit more
(35:14):
even throughout, that makes it the easiest for me.
I have the iPhone 16 Pro and it does very well in low light settings.
And while it might not look incredibly professional because it's not like this well lit stage, it still
looks good.
Like the quality is still there, you can still see what you need to see.
(35:37):
So it's just me and then I have a couple of tripods, I can toss them in my tote bag and then
I have my stabilizer, my Gimbal, which is what I use when I'm doing the tour portion
so that I can not be shaky after all my coffee.
I always think it's good to wipe their eyes, make sure they're nice and clean.
(35:58):
And I also use some sort of a noisy toy to get them to look at the camera.
That's always a very successful shot.
Watch out for resting concerned face, helicopter ears.
Like what is this person doing in my face right now and do I need to run for my life?
(36:24):
PSA moment y'all.
I really don't think it's entertaining to film cats or any animal in distress, especially
staging experiences like that for them, like startling them, provoking negative reactions,
putting them in unsafe or unnatural situations, places they didn't choose to be in, or bullying
them just to go viral.
(36:45):
That's like the exact opposite of what we're trying to do here.
I don't need to tell you listeners that, but maybe spread the word and report stuff like
that.
You know, we can train the algorithm.
This is actually kind of tied to the zeitgeist if you really think about it.
(37:06):
One of the four properties of a zeitgeist is media and carriers of it.
I think we've made the case that cats and media, especially film and video, are the carriers
of this particular zeitgeist.
So if you're on social media or YouTube, tag "6DegreesOfCats on any of the videos
you post.
We'll share them and we'll definitely enjoy watching them.
(37:27):
Why not keep the momentum going?
Well, I think I've just made a real for USC to hire me to teach film.
And obviously an expert now.
Just kidding.
In the next episode, which is coming out a little bit later, we're going to be taking
(37:47):
an extra week off for a team retreat to facilitate some team building between Peanut and Binky,
who have been having very unprofessional exchanges lately.
I am both HR and labor relations.
This is not going to go well.
I want to thank my wonderful experts Angelica Jade Bastién, Mye Hoang, Rob Bennett and BriAnne Wells.
(38:12):
While the opinions are my own, the research and the work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them, please check out our show notes, which also include
the references and research that went into this episode.
And if you love us, the podcast or just want to keep positive cat content in the zeitgeist,
please consider sponsoring us.
You can upgrade your subscription to The Captain's Log, our companion [Substack] newsletter, or send
(38:35):
us $1.5/$10.00 monthly on Kofi.
Head on over to the show notes to make it happen.
And if you so choose, do tag us in your own cat videos or share your favorite film starring
a cat.
We would love to add it to our Letterboxed.
Every cat shown lovingly on screen shifts the zeitgeist towards a kinder, quirkier, more
(38:56):
open world.
Because remember, everything is connected.
Six Degrees of Cats is produced, written, edited, and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to l-i-n-k-t-r-d-e-e/60greas of
(39:19):
cats, or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient, and the
weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
(39:45):
I respect parents a lot because, wow, that shit has to be hard, especially today, especially
now in the world we're living in.
I have so much respect for parents, but I think we as a society, we as a people need to admit
that some babies aren't cute.
And that's fine.
Not everything has to be cute.
But don't lie to me.
(40:06):
Tell me that baby is cuter than my cats, because it's probably not.
Okay guys, you have...no, it's not my --Binky, Peanut.
(00:04):
Hang on sweetie, you have to hold the camera this way.
This button.
Alright, lights, camera, action.
Okay, I guess this isn't gonna work.
Maybe we can fix this in public.
(00:28):
Welcome back to 60 degrees of cats.
The world's number one and only cat-themed culture, history and science podcast in which
I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B, and my feline co-executive producers Binky, Snuggles, and
Peanut, navigate the weird wild world from the past to the present with the help of an
exceptional array of guest experts.
(00:51):
All aboard!
I bet many among you can imagine the first few real or cartoon cats whose personalities
and presence caused you to pause the frame or quietly note in the theater.
(01:14):
That yes, there is a kitty in the shot.
For me, it was the 1986 Suspense film, The Adventures of Milo and Otis.
Despite grand cinematic achievements like that, cats have largely remained marginalized
in cinema, and very recently the team and I have had a very serious and important complaint
(01:36):
about how cats are portrayed in live-action films.
They are rarely, if ever, granted their full humanity.
I mean, the feline-ity.
You know what I mean?
They are either a punchline about a lonely man, an accessory to some "crazy lady"
(01:57):
or a disposable victim of predators both human and non-human.
They are side players and background scene decoration.
Babe, cats are main characters.
(02:19):
Now thankfully, I think this is changing.
Albeit slowly.
I attempted to run a very serious study that required reviewing all 3,047 films in the
wonderful Cats and Cinema website's database, but unfortunately or fortunately depending
on how you view the ongoing labor transformation and its environmental impact, the agents
(02:41):
could not handle a simple research retrieval task.
However, I was able to run a very basic survey of film titles with the word "cat" in them
and there does seem to be an upward trend.
We may be on track to even double the amount of films with the word "cat" in the title,
though I know.
This does indeed exclude films that are quite obviously about cats like Garfield and Flow,
(03:05):
but the 6 Degrees of Cats cinema research centers pretty short-staffed and underfunded
right now.
However, in this episode of 6 Degrees of Cats, we'll be hearing from a film critic, a documentarian,
and a producer of cat-centric media who are actively and positively contributing to this
"New Wave", if you will, of cat-friendly media.
(03:35):
Unless you're one of those aliens or androids who doesn't engage on social media and is
reaping the cognitive and emotional benefits of a life-lived offline, you've probably
noticed that within the past 10 years, our dear furry faves, cats, have been undergoing
a massive rebrand.
So you're kind of missing out there.
(03:58):
We partially addressed the advent of this in our season 2 "Pizza Paws" episode, celebrating
cats' dominance in internet culture.
And over the past 20 years, I think it's safe to say that cat culture has blown up.
Cats are showing up in non-cat food-related commercials.
More and more celebrities are loud and proud about their cats.
(04:19):
We have cat cafes popping up everywhere across the world.
There's cat conventions, cat themed fashion, cat themed magazines.
Oh yeah, and cat-themed podcasts.
To the point of this episode, they're also much more prominently featured in film lately.
(04:40):
In the past 10 years, we've had Flow, the first independent animated film to ever win an
Oscar, which starred a black cat.
And more and more, films are featuring felines, not just as colorful sidekicks, but also
significant characters.
Just check out the third installment of the hit American Thriller A Quiet Place.
(05:00):
And a favorite among many on this episode is the 2016 Turkish documentary on the street
kitties of Istanbul called Kedi, named one of Time Magazine's top 10 films of 2017.
Cats are firmly in the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.
(05:21):
And since motion pictures are the most context-rich catalysts, carriers, and containers of the zeitgeist,
I think we have a lot to notice when it comes to cats and cinema.
As a heads up, we'll be using a lot of C words.
No, not that one.
The Five Cs of Cinematography.
(05:44):
The Five Cs apply to all forms of cinema, which would be narrative, where the story is
set in advance of the film shoot, documentary, which is based on reality, and often the
story emerges during or after the shoot, and experimental, self-explanatory.
(06:05):
When you're watching a film and something about the vibes is just giving you the impression
that the director doesn't like, understand, or care about cats, or the people who love
them, there are little towels within those Five Cs.
And the first one that is very specific to cats, continuity, or the lack thereof.
(06:31):
I'll let my first expert explain.
Cats have appeared in films since the beginning.
They're like fun, weird creatures that are notoriously terrible to train, which is
why when you watch a movie like Alien or Aliens, you're like, "Oh, there's multiple cats.
This is not the same ginger cat.
This is like 15 different cats, and they're trying to make a scene."
(06:52):
This is just one cat with one of my favorite noir films, The Third Man.
You see a cat running down the street and starts playing with the shoelaces, and then light
turns on Orson Wells' face, light turns off, back into darkness.
And that cat is probably the third or fourth cat in that movie that's supposed to be the
same cat.
(07:14):
They were not doing kitty continuity at all.
That, my friends, is one of my favorite writers and film critics.
My name is Angelica Jade Bastién.
I'm a writer, critic, essayist, storyteller.
(07:34):
I currently work at New York Magazine, specifically at their site, Vulture, as one of the film
critics on staff and TV critics.
But I'm primarily known to write about film.
You can find my writing online at Vulture, and also give my newsletter, "Mad Women and
(07:57):
Muses" a Shot.
If you go to angelicabastien.substack.com, you will find me there.
As a critic and essayist, I really focus on depictions of mental illness and blackness and
pop culture.
I write a lot about acting, science fiction, noir.
(08:24):
Female madness is a big obsession of mine, and I'm a big horror nut.
She also happens to be a cat lover.
Cats have always represented good luck.
I never got as a kid the whole black cat walks in front of you, bad luck.
I always thought of it as like incredible luck, and I just want sweeter representations of
(08:45):
cats that lean into the mystery of them and the beauty of them and how caring and inspiring
they are as creatures.
Cats pop up in a lot of horror movies.
Cats represent a sort of figure that sees through the veil.
(09:07):
This is true again throughout history, the idea that cats can see into other worlds that
they're closer to the veil, that they can see through things, they can see ghosts.
They're figures of mystery which can then be exalted in some cases, ancient Egypt, and then
in other cases looked at as very dangerous, which has always come back to two things.
(09:35):
Women, cats, and two cultures relationship to mad women.
When I say "mad women" and "female madness", I'm speaking of both the experience of mental
illness, but also the experience and physical and emotional embodiment of the emotion of anger.
(10:01):
It does not take a lot for society to call a woman crazy.
She just has to be slightly against the grain.
Film can feel very liberating in how it depicts the mad woman as someone who bucks against
society, who is obsessed with pleasure and is a representation of a woman actually being
(10:25):
a little cocky and bold and dynamic in a way.
I think female characters don't always get a chance to be, especially if you're talking
about certain decades, certain areas of the world, especially here in America.
But then also there's another side of the mad woman in cinema in which she can become
(10:51):
a sort of landfill for every misogynistic belief that always comes down to this idea that
women are inherently hysteric, that women are inherently mad.
This way that film and culture are often ties women to nature.
I mean, you can even think of the term mother nature.
(11:13):
There's definitely something to this wildness tied to the cluster of traits we call femininity.
Speaking back to the mythology we've explored, Bast - Egyptian goddess of fertility, as well
as Norse mythology's Freya, goddess of fertility, ...
[fading commentary about Freud and primal urges]
(11:34):
With the link between women and nature.
It's a way to tie flesh and blood women to this idea of chaos and unrulyness.
It's not that women are more emotionally attuned and more spiritually attuned naturally, necessarily,
is that you have to be in order to survive a world that is literally trying to kill you.
(11:56):
And so I think it's just sort of interesting, especially watching horror films and just
film in general to see the link between witches and cats as a way to sort of speak to unruly
femininity.
(12:17):
What is more unruly to the world than a single woman with a cat who has a sense of her own
power?
So there are a few trends when it comes to female manness.
One, is that the dynamics of female manness and cinema, and it's not just in American cinema,
(12:39):
or even Hollywood specifically, is that more often than not I should say, female madness
is the prospect and territory of white women.
We actually don't really have too many examples of mad women who are of the black and brown
persuasion to put it that way.
I think a lot of directors and artists in the film space are really obsessed with mad women,
(13:05):
in part because there's something cultural to the obsession of watching a beautiful white
woman unravel.
And while many of these fictional so-called mad women with cats have been very expertly
acted by really incredible performers such as Academy of World Winners Glenn Close in
(13:28):
1987's Erotic Thriller Fatal Attraction and Kathy Bates in 1980's Non-Erotic Thriller
Misery.
I think it says a lot about culture and race and gender because we like keep making movies
about mad women and tying women to nature to this essential hysteria that was argued
(13:49):
about being like the essence of womanhood is to suffer kind of bullshit, right?
But you look at the world and the gray violence you're seeing is really men's relationship
to madness and this is not me saying madness as a way to like give them an out but more
(14:10):
so to call attention to the fact that as a culture, as a society, as a world, we don't know
how to grapple with the ways, men's, maladaptive behaviors present themselves because they present
themselves very violently.
It's interesting to think of the mad woman specifically in certain cultural context like
(14:33):
erotic thrillers of the 80's and 90's because it is not women who are boiling bunnies
and like killing cats.
Women don't have the leeway to do that.
I'm sad to say statistically speaking, this is indisputable.
(14:54):
Also statistically speaking, maybe some of you even know this personally, please do check
show notes for resources that remain available to you if you ever need.
This is where art comes in.
We need art to see things clearly and feel things safely, maybe even experience things differently
(15:18):
but it's interesting to think about why we translate and transform reality in this specific
way.
I think when it comes to media consumption, more than ever, we need media literacy as an
understanding the context of the moving images we see on screen in the many ways we process
(15:39):
art.
Here is where I'm going to introduce another C word, criticism.
It's not part of those five C's of cinematography but I think it should be because as Angelica
demonstrated, critics are an important lens.
(16:00):
To be a good and worthwhile critic calls for a broad, obsessive but also particular interest
in history, not just the history of the medium you're writing about but the history of
the world, the history of the people who existed in this world.
You have to be incredibly knowledgeable to write good criticism, incredibly curious,
(16:22):
voracious as a reader I would say.
For me, the importance of criticism comes down to the ability to speak truth to power, to
call out the trends, the psychology, the history that is flowing through the world that people
don't know how to make sense of.
(16:43):
We live in a world where people are both incredibly lonely and incredible in their lack of self-awareness
about themselves and how they fit into the world.
A great critic can be such a vital lens to look at the world.
Its fault, its foibles, its pleasures and make sense of them and give them an actual
(17:04):
context, psychologically, historically, artistically, emotionally.
I think they tell us a lot about the lies we believe about how people actually are.
All things that help advance the medium and, yes, integrate the work into the zeitgeist.
Here's a good example.
(17:27):
I've had an issue with the ending of "Bell Book Candle," the 1958 film that sees Vertigo
stars, Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart together, and it's a really, really fun movie where
Kim Novak plays like this cool New York witch and she has her witch friends, including
(17:47):
her brother played by Jack Lemmon.
She has her beautiful, beautiful, gray Siamese cat who helps her cast spells.
Why am I hell she casting spells to get with James Stewart?
That man is too old for you, girl, like they should have cast someone way younger.
(18:08):
It pisses me off to this day.
The movie ends, I'm sorry, spoiling a movie from 1958, y'all.
Okay, please skip ahead about two minutes if you want to miss the spoiler.
The ending sucks.
It's such a fun movie that I'm always like, "Why don't I watch that movie more because
I love the cat?
(18:29):
How Kim Novak looks?
It just looks like so much fun."
But the central love story, because it is supposed to be a witchy, fun love story for James
Stewart and Kim Novak, it doesn't work.
He just is the wrong age and also just the wrong actor for the role.
You end the film with her giving up her witchy abilities, reigning herself in to be with
(18:55):
this man.
But you're looking at really is a loss.
Even her cat ends up hanging out with her brother, like, "Oh, you ain't doing no spells anymore."
Okay, bye.
I think it speaks to the way witches and cats are considered unruly figures against the
dominant forces.
(19:16):
The way that this sort of love story has to end, because they're setting it up as a love
story, is she has to give up what makes your creative artistic and different to be with
this man who is not even attractive, which, wow, pick a struggle.
Like, don't do that girl.
This movie lied to me and was like, "Yeah, Kim Novak, looking absolutely fabulous with her
(19:37):
cute cat is totally gonna leave behind her witch abilities for James Stewart."
Okay, sure.
I think this is also a motif in classic stories, like the Little Mermaid, brutal.
It's not simply cultural and historical context that critics contribute to the art of film
(20:10):
analysis, interpreting the visual storytelling elements of cinematography also factor in,
which is where we bring in three more themes.
What's composition and camera angles?
How has those been leveraged by filmmakers for training cats in cinema?
(20:31):
Film is really good at using cats when they lean into the mystery and beauty of cats, and
also use them as a point of tension, drama, or really to build suspense.
You've seen in any movie where someone becomes something small, there's a really interesting,
tiny sequence in the incredible shrinking man from 1957.
(20:55):
Yeah, dude is not having a good time with that cat, I'll tell you that much, because you
know how they are when they see something small that moves.
You're dead.
If I became small, I would be scared of cats.
They used over 40 cats.
(21:18):
All of these tricks are intentional work with composition, strategic edited cuts, and
very painstaking camera angles and lighting to pull off all those wild shots of a man the
height of a sewing needle running away from his wife's house cat.
(21:38):
The most effective use of cats exists when you understand the relationship that cat has
to their person.
That's why I think Jonesy in "Alien" and "Aliens" is so wonderful, because you're like, "Oh
yeah, I totally get why Ripley has this cat and why they're cool."
And I really love that.
(22:00):
And also the cat is smart enough to be like, "That's an f-ing alien.
Let me get the fuck out."
That cat is so smart.
I guess like, "No, I have survival instinct, unlike these people, before making some interesting
decisions sometimes."
Angelica is one of us y'all.
(22:21):
So far, we've touched on criticism and four of the five Cs of cinematography.
After the break, we'll get a closer look at cats when it comes to the fifth C.
(22:46):
In the failed cats in Cinema Research Project I tried to run with the team,
the majority of the films in that database seemed to be narrative film, like The Witches
and even biopics, like the artistic travesty that was Bohemian Rhapsody.
No, I'm not going to get over how they did our beloved cat daddy, Freddie Mercury, dirty.
(23:08):
But lately, I'm noticing a pro-cat attitude being ushered into the zeitgeist courtesy documentary
filmmakers.
And I'm really glad to bring one such filmmaker into this conversation.
My name is Mye Hoang.
I am a director at Grey Hat Productions.
(23:32):
I grew up in Dallas, Texas.
My parents immigrated from Vietnam.
Growing up in Texas was my immigrant family.
It was maybe different from what most people grow up with.
They were very, very strict.
They didn't allow us to do very much.
One of the few things that I got to do as a child was go to the movies.
(23:55):
And so it was just a kind of a weekly ritual of my brothers and sisters taking me to the
movies.
When I was in school as a kid, we would make videos, make little movies with their home camera,
things like that.
That was just my entire world.
(24:18):
I actually used to be in the narrative world.
And now documentary films, I kind of switched over.
And I think it suits my personality better.
I met Mye at a screening of her incredible film, 25 Cats from Qatar, which follows the
heroing heroics of American cat rescue cafe owner and flight attendant Katie, who, spoiler,
(24:39):
successfully manages to fly 25 cats to Wisconsin, all the way from, you guessed it, Qatar.
a wealthy Arab state in the Persian Gulf where charitable donations are illegal, nearly
90% of the local population are temporary workers and millions of abandoned kiddies are served
(25:00):
by a very small group of wonderful people working overtime for no pay to feed and care for
as many of them as possible.
25 Cats, wow.
Mye both figuratively and literally, herded so many cats, among other things.
(25:25):
So I directed this film, edited, I'm a producer on it.
I also recorded the sound although I don't credit myself with that.
We always wear a lot of hats to get things under budget.
For the record, it's a pretty nontraditional shooting situation in Doha, Qatar.
(25:45):
How do they manage?
I was fortunate to have gotten my cinematographer Rob Bennett in on the chat.
I'm a cinematographer based in Los Angeles and I have a company called Genius Insane.
Being behind the camera, I generally operate in the camera for anything that I'm shooting.
And often that means also coordinating with art department, lighting, the other folks
(26:11):
in camera department as well to create the look of a film.
For a documentary like the one that we're talking about right now, it was a very small
crew.
It was literally just me, my and an additional camera operator and cinematographer Patrick.
(26:31):
I did not really want to come out during the daytime.
All the night in the street, it's just complete chaos and we just do the best we can.
It was 120 hours.
We literally just had to go from place to place to place and we just had to get what we
could get.
(26:52):
The heat was a big consideration leading up to the film since I needed to decide what
the camera is we're going to use how we can make this thing happen in just a number of days.
So did some research into what would maybe kind of stand up to the heat the best as well
as be kind of a smaller compact camera package to not get in the way while we're kind of
(27:16):
going around doing some guerilla-type style filmmaking.
If the local Qataris that live there complained about us being there, you could get detained.
I was thinking this could happen, so we just need to try to be as just discreet as possible.
Sounds like it was not for the faint of heart to get those perfect camera angles either.
(27:40):
This was so overwhelming because of the sheer number of cats.
At Castle, we didn't even see all the cats.
There's 300 cats, so it's like, which cats do we focus on?
I don't know.
I'm cutting all that footage of the various rescue facilities with dozens to, well, hundreds
of rescued kitties who didn't have very much to work with for them, but I got every single
(28:03):
cat that was rescued.
We caught it in there, even if it was just for a second.
I ended up editing it because I just think for someone who wasn't there, it's a lot of
cat footage, and I could sort of organize it in my brain.
(28:27):
I really appreciated and felt my care for all her feeling and human subjects through the
thoughtful cuts, the editing choices, the really spot on pacing, the great sound design,
especially in the close-ups, the final five of the five Cs of cinematography as it turns
out.
(28:51):
I guess to clarify a little bit, we're talking about both animals on the streets and in people's
homes.
Definitely, when filming cats, you want to be able to get in close.
The cat is an individual and being able to see where it's looking around all of those little
(29:13):
pieces kind of clue you into just a little bit of what's going on in its mind and the kind
of character that it is, getting down on their level to get that kind of cat's eye view
at times.
I kind of come in, gauge how the cats are feeling and try to interact with them accordingly.
(29:36):
In that vein, one of the plus sides of doing work like this is that sometimes you get a lot
of nozzles and you're allowed to put down the camera for a second to give you cats some
scratches if it's looking for that.
(30:10):
This is at my first rodeo when it comes to leveraging film for the good word on cats and cat people.
In fact, her first foray into documentary film addresses those old cat tropes we processed
with Angelica earlier from a different, equally disruptive perspective.
One day I had an idea about, you know, why can't there be a movie about men who love cats?
(30:34):
And then that became my first documentary project and that was called "Cat Daddies".
It's about men who love their cats.
Unabashedly inspired by seeing my husband become a cat guy.
In America we have this stigma about guys who like cats and there's a lot of men who really
(30:59):
don't care about that and they show their love for their cats.
This was appearing more and more on social media and it was just something that made me so
happy to see.
I just loved seeing men with their cats and then at the same time I was going through the
experience of my husband.
You would never have guests that he could like cats.
(31:21):
One day a cat found him and kind of opened his whole world, his whole heart and I think it
just goes to show that there's a lot of men out there who were maybe cat guys and they
just don't know it yet.
You too can carry on the work, my and other artists are doing through the power of motion capture
(31:44):
to counter those old messages about cats and gender.
You don't need to have state of the art tools, professional crew and specialized equipment.
You just need a camera and a consenting cat, obviously.
The whole thing about video that I really like is you capture more of a cat's personality.
(32:10):
That was our third and final guest.
I'm BriAnne Wills and I'm the creator of Girls in their Cats.
I have a series on YouTube called "Cat Lady Home Tours" and then of course I have my Instagram
account and TikTok as well.
I'm "Girls and their Cats" everywhere.
(32:35):
When I moved to New York I decided to start a personal project from the female gaze.
The first subject that I had, I was photographing her in her home and her cat decided he wanted
to be a part of the photo shoot.
I realized that this was actually a much more intimate portrayal.
(32:55):
I decided that I would focus on that.
The girls part of that is just colloquial.
I'm not like photographing young people with their old cat ladies because all the cat
ladies in my life were actually really interesting and not crazy as the stereotype suggests.
(33:19):
In 2024, BriAnne moved to video, "Which I found really really fun and it just like changed
everything for me."
I felt like I was getting more of an insight to both the cat lady and the cat.
In a static photograph you get to like stare at the cat for a long period of time.
(33:40):
It's artistic, it's beautiful, you get to see like the highlights and the eyes and the
details, but you're missing the personality.
With video, you're not just capturing a moment, you're capturing their movement, their
expressions, their sometimes their voice and it just feels like you're getting more of
(34:03):
the cat.
It also doesn't like feel as scary for the cat because I'd get to be a little bit more
discreet with the video.
I can just let them do their thing and just be an observer.
Black kittie owners, here's another benefit of video.
Yeah, I think video might do a better job of capturing black cats.
(34:29):
I think it's still a little bit challenging if the background is black in the cat is
black as well because they don't necessarily pop as much.
That would go the same for white cats on a white backdrop, it just messes with the white
balance.
As an amateur cat videographer with a still pedestrian sense of the five Cs, I consulted
(34:51):
with BriAnne for some tips on capturing her cat's best angles for moving pictures of
the digital persuasion.
I didn't want to have to carry a lot of equipment, I don't have any lights, so I rely a lot on
natural light.
So I would say midday when the sun is overhead and the light inside is a little bit more
(35:14):
even throughout, that makes it the easiest for me.
I have the iPhone 16 Pro and it does very well in low light settings.
And while it might not look incredibly professional because it's not like this well lit stage, it still
looks good.
Like the quality is still there, you can still see what you need to see.
(35:37):
So it's just me and then I have a couple of tripods, I can toss them in my tote bag and then
I have my stabilizer, my Gimbal, which is what I use when I'm doing the tour portion
so that I can not be shaky after all my coffee.
I always think it's good to wipe their eyes, make sure they're nice and clean.
(35:58):
And I also use some sort of a noisy toy to get them to look at the camera.
That's always a very successful shot.
Watch out for resting concerned face, helicopter ears.
Like what is this person doing in my face right now and do I need to run for my life?
(36:24):
PSA moment y'all.
I really don't think it's entertaining to film cats or any animal in distress, especially
staging experiences like that for them, like startling them, provoking negative reactions,
putting them in unsafe or unnatural situations, places they didn't choose to be in, or bullying
them just to go viral.
(36:45):
That's like the exact opposite of what we're trying to do here.
I don't need to tell you listeners that, but maybe spread the word and report stuff like
that.
You know, we can train the algorithm.
This is actually kind of tied to the zeitgeist if you really think about it.
(37:06):
One of the four properties of a zeitgeist is media and carriers of it.
I think we've made the case that cats and media, especially film and video, are the carriers
of this particular zeitgeist.
So if you're on social media or YouTube, tag "6DegreesOfCats on any of the videos
you post.
We'll share them and we'll definitely enjoy watching them.
(37:27):
Why not keep the momentum going?
Well, I think I've just made a real for USC to hire me to teach film.
And obviously an expert now.
Just kidding.
In the next episode, which is coming out a little bit later, we're going to be taking
(37:47):
an extra week off for a team retreat to facilitate some team building between Peanut and Binky,
who have been having very unprofessional exchanges lately.
I am both HR and labor relations.
This is not going to go well.
I want to thank my wonderful experts Angelica Jade Bastién, Mye Hoang, Rob Bennett and BriAnne Wells.
(38:12):
While the opinions are my own, the research and the work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them, please check out our show notes, which also include
the references and research that went into this episode.
And if you love us, the podcast or just want to keep positive cat content in the zeitgeist,
please consider sponsoring us.
You can upgrade your subscription to The Captain's Log, our companion [Substack] newsletter, or send
(38:35):
us $1.5/$10.00 monthly on Kofi.
Head on over to the show notes to make it happen.
And if you so choose, do tag us in your own cat videos or share your favorite film starring
a cat.
We would love to add it to our Letterboxed.
Every cat shown lovingly on screen shifts the zeitgeist towards a kinder, quirkier, more
(38:56):
open world.
Because remember, everything is connected.
Six Degrees of Cats is produced, written, edited, and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to l-i-n-k-t-r-d-e-e/60greas of
(39:19):
cats, or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient, and the
weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
(39:45):
I respect parents a lot because, wow, that shit has to be hard, especially today, especially
now in the world we're living in.
I have so much respect for parents, but I think we as a society, we as a people need to admit
that some babies aren't cute.
And that's fine.
Not everything has to be cute.
But don't lie to me.
(40:06):
Tell me that baby is cuter than my cats, because it's probably not.
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