In this Q&A from a recent Toronto screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, stars Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood are in fine form as they take to the stage to discuss why all the actors in the film were Canadian (Canadian actors didn’t need visas to live in the UK at the time), trade interpretations of what that ending means, and share a plethora of production anecdotes. Other highlights include Dullea’s reminiscences of how he came to be involved in the sequel 2010 and the two recalling Gene Hackman and Warren Beatty’s post-screening reaction: Beatty told the pair they were […]
Blood can’t be any other color, but there are plenty of things — like spacesuits and bathroom walls — that can. In this punchy, to-the-point supercut, Rishi Kaneria draws from 2001, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, Barry Lyndon and other Kubrick films to make a case for the director’s love of the crimson.
This new video by Sergei Prokhnevskiy follows up on his initial “20 Useful Tricks in After Effects You May Not Know About” tutorial from a few weeks back. This time he tackles another 22 aspects of the video effects software, keystroke commands and all: how to find missing effects, footage or fonts, flexible masking options and so on. Nothing fancy here, just clear audio explanations illustrated on-screen.
Pulp fans, take note: via Pitchfork, US viewers can stream the entirety of Florian Habicht’s new documentary about them for free. Part concert film from their 2012 reunion, part tribute to and investigation of their Sheffield roots: enough said. Miss the window of opportunity? It enters limited release on Wednesday and is available for digital download starting Friday.
Footage from Sony’s PXW-FS7 new camera is starting to make its way online. Michael Murie ran down its tech specs in September, and now we have this intriguing test from DP Ed David, who put together this short video of footage captured at 180 fps. As he told No Film School, David enjoyed the “incredibly ergonomic, small, and intuitive” camera but had some trouble figuring out waveforms and with the non-intuitive zebra feature.
Within an overly crowded film festival landscape, it takes something special for a new event to stand out. Such is the case with New York’s newest festival, scheduled for February, 2015: the New York City Drone Film Festival. While the FAA’s drone filming rules are still being developed, festival founder and cinematographer Randy Scott Slavin intends to use the event to celebrate robotic aerial filmmaking and to change the public’s perception of drones. He told the New York Post’s Chris Perez, ““These flying robots are amazing and exciting technologies, but because the word drone is so controversial, its constantly being […]
Sometimes enemies can be misperceived as friends… and vice versa. From Portland animation studio HouseSpecial is this short, A Tale of Momentum and Inertia, directed by Kameron Gates showing why the “shoot first, ask questions later” approach isn’t always the best. Gates has previously contributed effects works to such films as Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, King Kong and Hellboy. The short is currently on the festival circuit, but you can watch it above.
There’s a lot of talk in the independent film community about building new audiences through internet technologies but far fewer actual attempts at doing so. One person who has thought deeply about today’s challenges and developed a tool in response is filmmaker Artel Great, whose Project Catalyst attempts to combat “the Hollywood-ification of our thinking” by connecting multicultural audiences to the music and films most relevant to their lives and communities. It is, he writes, “the first application software to distinctively showcase narrative short films, documentaries, and music videos all made by talented indie artists from Black, Latino/a, and Asian […]
In the second trailer for 50 Shades of Grey, we get a much clearer overview of the plot trajectory: successful corporate boy meets shy journalist girl for interview, later runs into her and asks her “Are you free?” Meaning, presumably, both schedule-wise and also with reference to her soul/libido. Then out come the S&M tools. The big change from the first trailer is that the emphasis is equally split between the softcore elements and what Tom Wolfe once deemed the “plutographic,” i.e. the graphic depiction of the acts and vices of the rich. Look for lots of private jet plane rides and […]
Here’s the first U.S. trailer for the Dardenne’s Two Days, One Night, which arrives stateside on December 24 from Sundance Selects. An allegory for human empathy and compassion, the film follows a fragile Marion Cotillard as she goes door to door, begging her co-workers to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job. At times too glossy for its subject matter — which has little to do with its star — the film proves an interesting exercise in repetition, with a closing act that is as heart-wrenching as it is cleverly calculated.