As photographers we often get our visual references from film, and our ideas can originate from a single scene in a movie that blew you away. It's the combination of sounds, the anticipation and fear, and all the emotions that the director gets to capture and convey for the viewer to experience. But, it's also worth noting that most movies and series have visual cues that originate from older, classic movies too.
An example is how Quentin Tarantino used the yellow outfit Bruce Lee wore to give Uma Thurman's character that same look, while empowering it with nostalgia and repetition.
The most recent series to use these direct references from the 70s and 80s films is Netflix's Stranger Things. If you haven't yet, it might be good to watch on Netflix. It uses references from Alien, The Goonies, E.T., Nightmare on Elm Street, and many more. It's the styling, the angle of the shot, the scene, choice of characters, and the music used. It's obvious, but done with respect, and, it's done very well.
You can even get an hour long Soundcloud mixtape from DJ Yoda that uses all the musical influences for the series, as well as the music used in the series.
What I've realized is that even the great directors of our time and those that gave us the classics used references in the same way we all do.
They did a good job with props like the kids bikes and Realistic CB radios from radio shack...LoL
I liked seeing a photo that I shot for a movie poster used in it as well :)
The kid had a poster the cult hit "Evil Dead"
I'm thinking someone else around here (besides me) must read a lot of Ars Technica.
Hi Pete, it's been updated. Thanks for the error-reporting.
I thought that the reason we saw the 70's and 80's references in Stranger Things is because the show's settings were in 1983. I don't think they were doing it stylistically, as in Kill Bill, but they did it due to the story's time era.
Hi William,
I hear you. I do think the references they use add to the experience the viewer, now 33 years later, has. It's a very layered experience. We're viewing something that takes us back in time, with it set in 1983, but also with the stylistic method used to give us the feeling of something we've viewed back in the day when the referenced films first came out. I think Kill Bill uses the same approach, but it might not be as layered as Stranger Things. It was a mere example of references and influences used successfully. Thanks for the comment, I hear you!