Authors — Vadim Rizov
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Watch: Seven Ways to Hide Lavalier Microphones
This video has been up for a while, but it serves well as a primer for the inexperienced on how to conceal lavalier microphones. With the opening warning that you’re better off not doing that at all, video expert/enthusiast Izzy Hyman demonstrates seven ways to conceal a lavalier microphone on your person while keeping it from making distracting crackling sounds when it brushes against fabric. Starting with a button-down shirt and tie for extra concealment options, he eventually strips down to a t-shirt to show that even there, hiding the mic is possible. Thanks to No Film School for the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 15, 2014 -
Watch: Gone Girl‘s Post-Production Team on their All Adobe Workflow
The video’s issued by Adobe itself, so take the endorsements contained therein with more than a few grains of salt. Still, for those interested in David Fincher’s ever-evolving post-production process, here’s a little over five minutes of his Gone Girl post-production team talking about their all-Adobe workflow. The big takeaway is how this integrated workflow has made it easier to incorporate f/x into the image sooner rather than later, eliminating the sprawl of coordinating efforts from special effects houses spread out all over and accelerating everybody’s timeline.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 14, 2014 -
Gone Girl, Mon Oncle d’Amerique and Mutually Negotiated Self-Destruction
[Massive spoilers from the first sentence onwards.] Gone Girl‘s plot in one sentence: dunce-ish Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is the prime suspect when wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) disappears; halfway through it’s revealed he’s been set up for her murder in a fiendishly well-plotted revenge for his infidelity. The pivot point for Gone Girl arguments is whether “Amazing Amy” is merely an anomalous sociopath in a self-contained story or whether she stands for All Women and heavy-drinking adulterous dullard Nick is All Men. If that’s the case, it doesn’t matter that an innocent man is set up for capital punishment by […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 9, 2014 -
Watch: Sight & Sound’s 30 Greatest Documentaries in 6:24
Kevin B. Lee’s new video takes the top 30 documentaries of all time (at least as voted upon in Sight & Sound‘s poll earlier this year) and stitches them together in reverse order, building from #30 (Leviathan) to #1 (The Man with the Movie Camera) by finding a logical chain of association from one film to the next. The on-duty policeman in Chronicle of a Summer) who refuses to talk about his personal happiness on the job (off-duty he might have given a different answer) sets up the recreated killing of a cop in The Thin Blue Line, whose night-and-fog-machine […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 9, 2014 -
Watch: A Short Test of the Koji Color LUT Suite
For those interested in using a LUT (lookup table) to obtain a more filmic look, our friends at No Film School have drawn attention to Koji Color’s new suite, which attempts to preserve the appearances of six different 35mm film stocks. The program works with most NLE and post applications, and above we’ve got test footage shot by Paul Schefz. It has a strong look; whether it succeeds at preserving 35mm’s textures and colors exactly is obviously up for anybody who wants to debate that. For those convinced enough to buy, the No Film School link above will allow you […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 8, 2014 -
“Set Up like Drama, Shot like Documentary”: 20,000 Days on Earth Directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard
The Guardian recently republished a 1988 profile of Nick Cave in which the infuriated musician veered over the course of days from open, insightful and analytical to infuriatedly seething “I have to spend hours talking to fucking idiots like you who have no kind of notion about anything” and throwing a boot at his interlocutor. As with Richard Hell — who over decades went from alarming Lester Bangs for his nihilistic abandon to writing poetry reviews for The New York Times — Cave is a former self-destructive dark messiah turned elder statesman, a respected screenwriter and still recording/touring musician who’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 8, 2014 -
Watch: William Friedkin Visits Criterion’s Offices
In the latest edition of “a famous person visits the Criterion Collection’s offices,” William Friedkin drops by to browse. Sighting Sunday Bloody Sunday, he remembers that as another film nominated for Best Picture the year he won with The French Connection. Segeuing from memory to pro-digital polemic, he says that the Criterion’s editions preserve films as they were meant to be seen, unlike movie theaters, where prints are “scratched up.” He also praises “one of Walter Huston’s greatest performances, The Devil and Daniel Webster” and talks up Jules Dassin’s Brute Force. “I never thought I’d see this again,” he says, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 7, 2014 -
Watch: The Teaser for Twin Peaks’ Unexpected Return in 2016
This is unexpected but welcome: in 2016, 25 years after its abrupt and terrifying finale, Twin Peaks will return to Showtime in 2016. Variety has the story, but for now here’s a teaser trailer with zero new footage that’s still mildly bonechilling. Fans, you may recall that abrasively loud Frost/Lynch production company logo that ended every episode; it’s the stinger here, so maybe turn down the volume.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 6, 2014 -
Watch: P.T. Anderson and Inherent Vice Cast’s NYFF Press Conference
Stoking the fires of anticipation for P.T. Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice, here’s the press conference from Saturday morning’s NYFF press screening. The questions may not always be on point, but you’ll probably want to stick with it for P.T. Anderson quoting Crazy People to explain why he shot in 1.85 rather than widescreen (it’s like a Volvo: “they’re boxy but they’re good”), Owen Wilson explaining that “I had one shirt that I really wanted to wear, and I guess it wasn’t ’70s enough” and that his look was equally modeled on Dennis Wilson and Zoot the sax player from […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 6, 2014 -
NYFF ’14: David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars and Consumed
There’s something about anti-Hollywood satire that brings out the worst/most facile in otherwise great filmmakers. The prime example is probably Robert Altman’s The Player, which pretends to be aghast that studio executives have never heard of The Bicycle Thief and concludes that’s why everything sucks. Oddly, Scream 3 may be the only satire in this vein with real teeth, since its murderous mayhem is instigated by a need to avenge a decades-old casting couch act of sexual aggression, something of more consequence than the usual “those philistines rewrote my script by committee” japery. David Cronenberg is decidedly not calling from […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 6, 2014
