There are a lot of videos that offer how-tos and hacks for creating a relatively affordable bullet time effect by marshaling a little technological ingenuity. This one from last year is probably more elaborate an effort than most people will care to make: in a bit over five minutes, you can watch the condensed six month process, which comes with a recipe-like ingredient list up front: 40 tin cans, 10.8 kilograms of sawdust, using 60 meters of 35mm film and so on.
You know the best way to fall in love again with your city? Invite a friend to visit and see it anew through their eyes. Despite the truth of that statement, however, I can’t say that’s exactly what happens in Gooses, a lovely short film by directors Shawn Sullivan and Joe Peeler. Lucinella visits her “spirit animal” (actually, her sister Lore) in Los Angeles, and her trip is both an impressionistic journey through the sights of L.A. as well as a more nuanced tale of sibling rediscovery. Gooses, which premiered on NoBudge and stars Zena Gray and Katy Knowlton, is […]
The tropes of American independent filmmaking — in this cast, the tale of a latchkey child wandering the city — are a deceptive red herring in the surprising and rewarding short film Bag Man, by commercial directors Jonathan and Josh Baker. Currently making the online rounds, the film blends a sensitive, character-based tale of a Harlem youth left on his own with… well, I won’t spoil the surprise. The directors were interviewed over at Short of the Week: BAG MAN feels like it takes a narrative-first approach to filmmaking, serving up its audience an intriguing and well-considered storyline, how did […]
Has it been too long since you saw the Trimark pyramid logo? Would you like to revisit an ill-spent vidiot past but you’re in a hurry? This efficiently quasi-nightmarish video exploits the inherent strangeness of logos derived from primitive computer graphics and rudimentary synth tones, layering about 50 such specimens on top of each other. The dual visual and sonic pile-up is hypnotic in a vaguely unnerving way.
Formally exacting where The Act of Killing was dazzlingly brazen, The Look of Silence is no less staggering of a feat than its talked-about predecessor. Joshua Oppenheimer’s unflinching look at the victims behind the Indonesian genocide will not hit theaters until next Spring, but the documentary continues to ride a nice critical wave from the fall festival circuit, where it picked up the FIPRESCI prize in Venice, amongst other plaudits. I, too, was wowed by the film’s unflinching probe of military and neighborly antagonization at my NYFF viewing, and look forward to revisiting it in the coming months.
The match cut, “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” HAL — it’s all here, along with praise from Christopher Nolan and Alfonso Cuaron, in this brand new trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001. Here’s the Hollywood Reporter: Ahead of the digitally restored film’s special limited U.K. release on Nov. 28 as part of the British Film Institute’s “Sci-Fi: Days of Fears and Wonder” season, a new trailer commission by the BFI and Warner Bros. has now been unveiled. Created by Ignition Creative London, the trailer is the first for this title in four decades, and uses Hal as the central figure to create […]
It’s March 2012. I’m standing outside a warehouse with 18 people. We’re about to watch a pig die. Three cameras are ready to roll: two for the movie and one for legal purposes. My actors have the morning off; because of my agreement with SAG, they’re not allowed to be on set for this particular scene. Rory Royston, the operator of an independent slaughterhouse, as well as his assistant, stand in for my lead actors, dressed in their wardrobe; they will make sure the slaughter about to be performed is both safe and humane. Rory looks to me; it’s time. […]
How precisely does one go about building an entire beach on a soundstage? That’s one of the many challenges posed by master Swedish director Roy Andersson’s regular working method, which involves constructing meticulous sets to stage his mordant tableaux and droll takes on despair and death. This brief video shows his crew building a beach from the ground up — not a photo-realistic set, but pretty close, complete with meticulous arrangement of sand and one friendly dog roaming around. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence will be released here next year by Magnolia Pictures.
Noir is a “challenge to dominant values,” according to critic Peter Labuza in this concise visual essay on one of cinephiles’ favorite “modes.” Bridging The Classical Hollywood Cinema with the writings of Linda Williams, Labuza considers film noir as a method of subverting the building blocks of melodrama, thus imbuing its viewers with a “feeling of displacement.” Perhaps most disorienting is that in everything from Mildred Pierce to My Name is Julia Ross, there is no weepy sense of satisfaction for the taking.
Action cinematographer Lawrence Ribeiro forwards this short video of an afternoon’s work — literally. Below, he explains how, with a camera and two top stuntmen, he can mock-up a dynamic fight scene. From Ribeiro: Here’s a chase and fight sequence we shot, in five hours, using two top stunt professionals and one camera. In 2nd unit, we’d consider this type of shooting a level above pre-visualization (previs). Previs is a critical tool for designing action sequences. Sometimes all a script will say is, “…and they fight.” So videos like this allow us to experiment with choreography, and save time and […]