In one of my favorite recent video essays, “Rohmer’s Guessing Games,” Kevin B. Lee explores the POV shots and blocking in A Summer’s Tale as a means of muddling character motivations. The above inquiry, from Joel Bocko, into eye contact throughout Satyajit Ray’s The Big City as a mode of character development, makes for a rather nice companion piece, and also a nice reminder of how storytelling is consistent in the finer details.
Today GoPro announced the release of their first brand new camera in nine years: the GoPro HERO4 Session. The reviews trickling in thus far are fairly positive, despite noting the trade offs that accompany a design that is 40% smaller than the current HERO4 line. (For starters, the camera will reorient itself based off a 180 degree axis, but it cannot rotate at a 90 degree angle.) On the plus side, the Session comes waterproof (up to 33 feet) straight out of the box, and has an in-camera microphone that drains as you move from liquid to air. It’s available July 12 for […]
Last seen as the source of much squabbling in the Sony hacks, here is the first official look at Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender. Sorkin, who scripted, seems to be giving the late entrepreneur a similar treatment to his handling of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, painting Jobs as a ruthless CEO. Steve Wozniak, who is portrayed by Seth Rogen in the film, has already weighed in, claiming “[he feels] a lot of the real Jobs in the trailer, although a bit exaggerated.” It opens October 9.
Shirley Clarke’s filmography is witnessing a much needed resuscitation thanks to the efforts of Milestone Films, and one specific title, Ornette: Made in America, is of particular pertinence given the untimely passing of its subject, Ornette Coleman. Kevin B. Lee has taken Clarke’s ever unusual documentary portrait — filmed over the course of 20 years — and divvied its often psychedelic tinged frames over a widescreen to analyze the visual patterns and rhythms Clarke achieves with her offbeat editing style. Watch above.
25 New Faces Michael Tyburski and Ben Nabors have teamed up yet again on their latest short film, Actor Seeks Role. Starring Alex Karpovsky as an aspiring method actor who resorts to medical acting in lieu of a silver screen gig, Actor Seeks Role is a witty, efficient rumination on the downsides of a theatrical affliction. Watch above.
Anyone who’s seen Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack knows that the Angulo brothers have a flair for costuming, and those talents are on full display in Mukunda Angulo’s Mirror Heart, a rather abstract short film made for Vice. Billed as “an imaginative tale about a cast of dreamlike characters who unify around the necessity to create,” Mirror Heart also employs the voice acting of a handful of the brothers as that nagging, negative portion of one’s creative conscience. Check out the short above and a making of video at the link.
Chicago filmmakers Jerzy Rose and Halle Butler are currently fundraising for their feature length satire Neighborhood Food Drive, about two egomaniacal restauranteurs and their unpaid intern as they throw a series of lavish and disastrous fundraisers. Below, Rose interviews his casting director Samy Burch about the process of pulling together both professional actors and otherwise for a cast headed up by Bruce Bundy and Lyra Hill.–SS Jerzy Rose: I have a vague memory of you telling me, after you’d seen Crimes Against Humanity, that you’d love to help me cast my next movie. I followed up one year later. I think I simply asked “How […]
We’re saddened to learn of the death of composer James Horner, whose well-known film scores include the highest-selling orchestral score of all time (Titanic), and a bevy of other beloved titles. In this interesting clip, Horner talks about writing the score for The Rocketeer — some 100 minutes altogether — in just two and a half weeks’ time. As he discusses, the film was originally cut with temp music, leading executives to feel that certain scenes were too long and needed to be cut to shreds; with his score added, scenes played better and could be restored to their original, necessary […]
Straight from BAMcinemaFest where it preceded Krisha last Friday is Sam Fleischner and Iva Gocheva‘s short film, Porcupine. A far cry from the subterranean world of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Porcupine features Gocheva as a woman holed up in her sun-drenched Brooklyn apartment, trying and failing to reconnect with her partner through a series of unanswered phone calls. Strung together, her voicemails intimate a relationship — and several household items — lost. Check it out above.
In honor of Vimeo’s updated Cameo app, filmmaker Paul Trillo created a short film entirely shot and edited on an iPhone, appropriately titled “The Life and Death of an iPhone.” Trillo utilizes the phone’s POV to create the illusion of a constant “feed” between cuts, which he accomplished in camera: Believe it or not the transitions are deceptively simple like a slight of hand. At the end of each take, we just did a quick wipe into black. The key is to do these moves at the same speed each time and make sure you’re cutting on precisely the right frame. I found that […]