Filmmaker Videos
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“If You Selfie I’ll Delete You”: Alessio Fava on Selfie Addiction
Filmmaker Alessio Fava, whose Yuri Esposito was one of the inaugural films at the Venice Biennale College Cinema, has directed this ironic, fantastical social media campaign about… selfie abuse. (I supposed whether that abuse is self-abuse or abuse towards others might depend on the shooter/subject.) This video has gone viral in Fava’s native Italy; check it out above.
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Watch: Walter Murch Talks Editing with Jon Favreau
“Cutting is not just something that we have to do because of the discontinuous nature of the way we shoot films,” Walter Murch muses in this clip from a recent conversation with Iron Man/Chef director Jon Favreau. “We actually, both as filmmakers and as audiences, like these sudden juxtapositions of concepts.” Editing, of course, is Murch’s beat — his livelihood and the subject of multiple books he’s both written and been interviewed for. A little overlap with past comments is to be expected, and his thoughts about understanding editing as what happens when you blink and your eye moves from […]
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Sexploitation and the Bechdel Test
As a woman/feminist, I put little stock in the Bechdel Test. Yes, it’s a quick means of exposing the macho-centric ways of Hollywood, but the picture grows hazier in independent and experimental film. Kevin B. Lee addressed this in a recent video essay, where he makes the case that Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours contains a richly drawn female character, despite the fact she confides in a gay man and not another woman. In a follow-up of sorts, Lee considers sexploitation films in the context of the Bechdel Test, noting that questionable motives can nonetheless earn a passing grade. While Doris Wishman’s bold melange of genres frequently downplays […]
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Breaking Down the DIY Visual Effects in A Truncated Story of Infinity
Paul Trillo’s A Truncated Story of Infinity considers the limitless schema of possibilities that unfold over the course of a series of moments. The eight minute film — recently featured on Short of the Week — also boasts some pretty impressive practical effects for a budget of $10,000. I asked Paul to break down the means behind each technique, which he notes may not “the correct way” to render an effect, even if they look pretty fine to me. Hall of Mirrors at :00 “Our ‘mirror’ was just a framed piece of green on a wall. We did a simple dolly into the green so it […]
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Trailer Watch: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar
Fresh from Comic-Con is a new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which appears to be sitting out on the fall festival circuit. The circumstances aren’t exactly discernible from the footage, but Matthew McConaughey is summoned away from his simple Texas life and family to take to the solar system, for a long enough duration that his pre-pubescent daughter turns into Jessica Chastain while he’s away. The dialogue and thematic tendencies point towards the topical, diminishing sources of life on earth as a possible cause for his intergalactic adventure, and the visual effects look to be on point. The film is set to open from Warner Brothers […]
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Watch: Matt Brown’s DIY Set-Building Tutorial on Making Flats
Via our friends at No Film School, here’s an instructional tutorial from Matt Brown on how to make flats when constructing your own DIY film sets. Brown decided building his own elevator set was more practical and economical than finding a real one to shoot in; the flats are the fake walls necessary to build a set. For those not intuitively comfortable with tools or even navigating a Home Depot, Brown walks you through the necessary purchases, choosing the right sizes of wood, and the construction process, complete with detailed on-screen written instructions for pausable reference.
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Watch: “From Paper to Screen,” Two Minutes about On-screen Typography
A hat-tip, as usual, to David Hudson at Keyframe Daily for directing us to this graduate student short from Thibault de Fournas. In a brisk two-plus minutes, Thibault first explains the art of typography on the printed page — size, style, type, forms — then concisely summarizes the history of type’s on-screen presence, from its introduction as static intertitles to the opening credits innovations of Saul Bass. The short summons memories of a century of movies through letters that copy source fonts exactly: “Every single movie got one,” says a sentence about opening credits, each word in the style of […]
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Kickstart Ian Clark’s Extraterrestrial Sci-Fi A Morning Light
Earlier this year, we released an exclusive stream to former “25 New Face” Ian Clark’s MMXIII, which functioned as an experimental self-portrait, partially related through Clark’s Oregon environs. From the celestial-driven imagery of said film, Clark devised a sci-fi alien abduction follow-up, A Morning Light, that’s now sourcing funds on Kickstarter. Produced by fellow 25 New Faces Jim Cummings and Ben Wiessner of ornana, and starring filmmakers Zach Weintraub and Celia Rowlson-Hall, the film looks at a pair of estranged exes who experience inexplicable phenomena. For those interested in lush and aesthetic low-budget genre, it’s not a bad bet. Below, copied from […]
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Trailer Watch: Mad Max: Fury Road
As someone old enough to remember the visceral theater experience of Road Warrior as well as the kitschy letdown of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, count me intrigued and hopeful after this first trailer for George Miller’s franchise reboot, Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s plenty that’s familiar from the series here, but replacing the dusty grain of the original films are DI-enhanced oranges and blues that give some of these shots a near-abstract quality. Still, when it comes to effects, Miller told the L.A. Times that he’s gone for the practical approach: Well, we made a big, big point to go […]
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Watch: “Satoshi Kon – Editing Space & Time”
We recently spotlighted Tony Zhou’s video essay on Michael Bay’s editing techniques, and now he’s come up with another fascinating editorial analysis. “Satoshi Kon — Editing Space & Time” examines the work of the late anime legend (Paprika, Perfect Blue) purely from an editor’s perspective, finding analogical techniques in Wes Anderson’s work while unpacking the director’s use of graphic matches, imaginative wipes and other transitions that underlined his concerns with the slippage between dreams and reality. It concludes with Kon’s final work, the one-minute short Ohayo (Good Morning). This is well worth a look, both for anime buffs and editors […]
