How do you make a mil­len­ni­al peri­od piece?

They say every­thing hap­pens in cycles – the past few years, mil­len­ni­als have start­ed to expe­ri­ence a minor exis­ten­tial cri­sis at the sight of Y2k fash­ion plas­tered on the cov­ers of Vogue and GQ, shiv­er­ing at the real­i­sa­tion that Mur­der on the Dance­floor was 23 years old when it stormed back into the charts last year. Much like music or fash­ion, cin­e­ma too is cycli­cal – trends wax and wane with the years.

I remem­ber sit­ting with my mum, one Jan­u­ary night in 2006, Jaf­fa Cakes in hand, watch­ing the first episode of the BBC’s sci-fi peri­od dra­ma Life on Mars. My mum, a child of the 1970s, couldn’t stop talk­ing about how her first boyfriend had that exact hair­cut, how her sis­ter had played that T. Rex album until the record was dis­tort­ed. The 12-year-old me may as well have been watch­ing The Age of Innocence.

Yet as I sat in my local cin­e­ma on a Novem­ber evening in 2022 to watch Char­lotte Wells’ blis­ter­ing After­sun, I won­dered if the sound of the Macare­na and the sight of men in buck­et hats would play in much the same way to Gen Z view­ers. Recent years have pro­vid­ed us with no short­age of films set in an era of flip phones and low-rise jeans: Salt­burn, I Like Movies, Bad Edu­ca­tion, Black­Ber­ry, and Uncut Gems are just a few. But how, exact­ly, do you make a mil­len­ni­al peri­od piece?

First thing’s first – you might want to think about shoot­ing on film. The 2000s and ear­ly 2010s saw one of the biggest tech­no­log­i­cal shifts in film­mak­ing since The Jazz Singer pio­neered sync sound, with the likes of David Finch­er, Michael Mann, and even Agnès Var­da eschew­ing cel­lu­loid for the flex­i­bil­i­ty promised by dig­i­tal cin­e­matog­ra­phy. To Gen Z the HD images of Mar­vel films might be what defines the aes­thet­ics of cin­e­ma, but to film­mak­ers whose ado­les­cence was spent brows­ing the VHSs at their local Block­buster, their cin­e­ma is defined by cel­lu­loid. It’s no won­der Salt­burn and Bad Edu­ca­tion were shot on 35mm – they emu­late the tex­ture of the films that shaped their for­ma­tive movie-going expe­ri­ences, all while giv­ing No Fear t‑shirts and brick phones a dis­tinct­ly cin­e­mat­ic sheen.

How­ev­er, film isn’t the only for­mat at your dis­pos­al. Both After­sun and Chan­dler Levack’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal 2003-set I Like Movies, open with boxy cam­corder footage shot by their pro­tag­o­nists. With so many mil­len­ni­al peri­od pieces being exer­cis­es in auto­bi­og­ra­phy, it seems VHS tapes, defined by their track marks and rewind wear, are per­haps the most tan­gi­ble way to cap­ture mil­len­ni­al youth. Using a medi­um that doc­u­ment­ed the hol­i­days and school plays that made up our child­hoods not only sub­merges audi­ences in a time and place, but cre­ates an inti­ma­cy and tac­til­i­ty that the 8mm cam­eras of Spielberg’s youth pre­date and the sharp res­o­lu­tion of an iPhone cam­era postdate.

Much was made of Saltburn’s nar­ra­tive sim­i­lar­i­ties to Antho­ny Minghella’s adap­ta­tion of Patri­cia Highsmith’s The Tal­ent­ed Mr Rip­ley, but where Minghel­la time stamps the 1950s set tale with the sounds of Chet Bak­er and Dizzy Gille­spie, Emer­ald Fen­nell plants us firm­ly in the 2000s with nee­dle drops from Bloc Par­ty and The Cheeky Girls. While the genre-defin­ing work of jazz leg­ends might not seem imme­di­ate­ly com­pa­ra­ble to Flo Rida’s Low, this blur­ring between what’s con­sid­ered ​‘high’ and ​‘low’ art, is key to mak­ing a mil­len­ni­al peri­od piece.

Fennel’s min­ing of our col­lec­tive pop cul­ture con­scious­ness began in Promis­ing Young Woman; despite its con­tem­po­rary set­ting, her debut reclaims socialite and noughties tabloid reg­u­lar, Paris Hilton’s Stars Are Blind (which fea­tured in Complex’s 50 Awe­some Guilty Plea­sure Songs We’re Ashamed to Like (But Not Real­ly)) in one of its most vibrant moments. Mil­len­ni­al peri­od pieces are as much about recla­ma­tion as they are nos­tal­gia. Saltburn’s use of Sounds of the Under­ground by Girls Aloud is less about recog­ni­tion than it is a tak­ing back of cul­tur­al arte­facts pre­vi­ous­ly deemed kitsch by Boomers and Gen X.

Much like the era’s music, the fash­ion of the ​‘90s and ​‘00s have, until recent­ly, been wide­ly con­sid­ered as… regret­table. We may all cringe at the cap bean­ies and copi­ous den­im that once filled our wardrobes, but much like Howie Rat­ner embraces the tack­i­ness of his bejew­elled Fur­by in Uncut Gems, film­mak­ers and the wider cul­ture have now embraced gar­ish Y2K fashion.

To prop­er­ly deploy a wardrobe of mil­len­ni­al throw­backs, it’s impor­tant to know your char­ac­ters. Jacob Elordi’s eye­brow pierc­ing and polo shirts tell us almost every­thing we need to know about a char­ac­ter that oozes indie sleaze, Paul Mescal’s Brit­pop-cod­ed out­fits in After­sun go a long way to help­ing us under­stand a father old beyond his years, mourn­ing a youth he feels he’s lost. Whether your char­ac­ters lis­ten to Brit­ney or Avril Lav­i­gne, under­stand­ing who needs a crop-top and who needs car­go trousers, can make your mil­len­ni­al peri­od piece get to the root of its characters.

Music and for­mats aren’t the only way to ground your audi­ence in an era, and weav­ing real life events with­in a fic­tion­al tapes­try has long been used as a short­cut to place char­ac­ters with­in a past its audi­ence recog­nis­es. Whether that’s Mad Men cen­tring an episode around the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion or the teens from Stranger Things walk­ing past a cin­e­ma mar­quee adver­tis­ing The Ter­mi­na­tor (the clos­est equiv­a­lent for the Block­buster gen­er­a­tion is Saltburn’s aris­to­crat­ic fam­i­ly gath­ered round to watch 2007’s Super­bad). Mil­len­ni­al peri­od pieces are no excep­tion. The plot of Uncut Gems hinges on the 2012 NBA sea­son, I Like Movies’ protagonist’s excite­ment for the release of Punch Drunk Love plays a key role in its char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and Matt Johnson’s Black­Ber­ry uses the smart­phone race of the 2000s to trace an entire decade. Adding a ker­nel of truth to a fic­tion­al sto­ry can help to estab­lish a sense of authen­tic­i­ty while also acti­vat­ing nos­tal­gia sirens for the audi­ence, but it can also serve as a con­ve­nient way of indi­cat­ing a time peri­od with­out resort­ing to irri­tat­ing exposition.

Film­mak­ers have always been drawn to look­ing back­wards at the eras and times that shaped their lives, and in these uncer­tain times it may be increas­ing­ly com­fort­ing to do so. As more mil­len­ni­als forge careers in the film indus­try, it’s like­ly we haven’t seen the last of these aching­ly unhip peri­od pieces, imme­di­ate­ly trans­port­ing us to a time before Insta­gram, where the jeans were bag­gy, the phones with­out touch­screens, and The Ketchup Song could sell over sev­en mil­lion copies.