Today teenagers interested in the world of special effects are a few tutorials and some affordable software away from getting their feet wet. In 1977, the requirements were a bit more elaborate. It involved woodshop, sheets of styrene, and maybe a few surreptitious pictures taken at a screening of Star Wars. That’s how a teenaged Bill George got his start – making models from scratch dedicated to George Lucas’s space opera. Four years later, George was working on the crew of Return of the Jedi. Now in his 33rd year at Industrial Light & Magic, George has been a part […]

The major studios’ current preference for selecting the shepherds of their franchise properties is to pluck directors from the relatively obscurity of indiedom. Colin Trevorrow went from Safety Not Guaranteed to Jurassic World. Josh Trank moved from Chronicle to Fantastic Four. Jon Watts leaped from Cop Car to the reboot of the reboot of Spider-Man. Alex Ross Perry opted for the opposite approach. After his breakthrough film Listen Up Philip, Perry stripped down his budget, cast, and crew for a character piece about a pair of female friends (Elisabeth Moss, Inherent Vice’s Katherine Waterston) whose relationship unravels during a week-long […]

The settings for Craig Zobel’s 2012 behavioral experiment Compliance and the director’s new post-apocalyptic tale Z for Zachariah couldn’t be more different. The former takes place almost entirely in the claustrophobic confines of a fast food restaurant’s employees-only areas. The latter unfolds amidst lush, bucolic tranquility. Yet at the heart of both films is a study of group dynamics. Set in an idyllic valley mysteriously immune to an extinction-level catastrophe, Z for Zachariah begins as a two-hander featuring Margot Robbie as a Christian farm girl who believes she’s the last person on earth until the arrival of an atheist scientist […]

Amongst a summer movie season awash in sequels, remakes and presold tentpole properties, it’s rare to find a sleeper at the multiplex, an unknown quantity with the ability to surprise an audience. Such is The Gift, an unnerving psychological thriller that begins as a post-Fatal Attraction variant before veering into the domain of Roman Polanski and Michael Haneke. Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall star as a married couple leaving behind personal tragedy in Chicago to start a new life in Los Angeles. Shortly after their arrival, Bateman bumps into former high school classmate Joel Edgerton, who begins to insinuate himself into […]

My gripe with most found footage horror films is that the subgenre strips away so many of a filmmaker’s paintbrushes in the name of verisimilitude. Score, editing, composition and lighting are sacrificed at the altar of faux reality. Unfriended strains under some of those same constraints, but the film diverges in the way it uses perspective. Instead of limiting point of view to a single shaky handheld camera wielded by one of the characters, Unfriended unfolds entirely on the Mac laptop of Blaire, a high schooler who, along with five or her friends, is terrorized by the spirit of a […]

The Judd Apatow-directed Trainwreck is being hailed as a breakthrough for much of its cast. It’s turned Amy Schumer – who stars as a monogamy-challenged New York magazine writer — into a movie star, Bill Hader into a leading man and LeBron James into his generation’s Bruno Kirby. But the film is an equally big break for the man behind the camera – Trainwreck cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes. In the past, Apatow has opted for veteran d.p.’s with intimidating credits. Unforgiven’s Jack Green shot The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Schindler’s List’s Janusz Kaminski lensed Funny People. On Trainwreck, Apatow turned the camera over to […]

When I ask cinematographer Tim Orr if – after ten feature films together with director David Gordon Green – their references are most frequently their own movies, Orr replies, “Well, you don’t want to make the same movie over and over again.” No one is going to accuse the duo of that. In a collaboration that dates back to their days at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Orr and Green have made everything from lyrical Malick-esque meditations and medieval stoner comedies to surreal odes to lovelorn locksmiths. The latter describes Manglehorn, an odd mixture of magical […]

In the late ’90s, a pre-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger nearly headlined a version of Richard Matheson’s post-apocalyptic classic I Am Legend before budget concerns derailed the project. Almost two decades later, the 67-year-old Schwarzenegger is starring in a decidedly different futuristic plague film. In the indie Maggie, Schwarzenegger plays a farmer who brings his infected daughter (Abigail Breslin) home for the last days of her life. No gunfights, no car chases, no “get to the choppers”: it’s essentially an ephemeral mood piece, photographed in widescreen with an emphasis on tight close-ups and naturalistic lighting. The film’s cinematographer, Lukas Ettlin, spoke to […]

In writer/director Alex Garland’s Ex Machina, a coder (Domhnall Gleeson) for a Google-esque tech giant is summoned to the remote compound of the company’s CEO (Oscar Isaac) in order to test his latest creation – an alluring humanoid robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander). Gleeson’s mission is to conduct a Turing test – a series of questions designed to determine if a form of artificial intelligence has achieved human consciousness. Ex Machina cinematographer Rob Hardy was faced with a similar mission – convincing audiences of Ava’s humanity despite her obvious mechanical parts. Hardy talked to Filmmaker about using everything from lens choices […]

The Copa Shot: It’s one of the few shots in the history of cinema readily identifiable by name, instantly conjuring the image of Goodfellas gangster Ray Liotta leading Lorraine Bracco – and by extension the audience – through the back entrance of New York’s legendary Copacabana nightclub, as Steadicam operator Larry McConkey glides along behind them. How long did one of film’s most famed tracking shots take to pull off? It was in the can before lunch — which isn’t to say it was easy. With a 25th Anniversary screening of Goodfellas set to close the Tribeca Film Festival on April […]