As you may have heard, Lena Dunham recently took some time out of her stacked schedule to appear on the cover of Vogue. As is the magazine’s custom with women who weigh more than a hanger and call comedy into their line of work, the spread lacks any semblance of effort, though the article is worth a read. A couple days ago, Vogue released a supplementary short, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, that plays up this indulgent image of Dunham as a clumsy thing, lost in the world of high fashion. The sitch is this: Dunham is so nervous the […]
For their Op-Doc collaboration with Sundance Institute grantees, The New York Times tapped 25 New Face Andrew Droz Palermo and his cousin Tracy Droz Tragos, filmmakers behind the Sundance title Rich Hill, to produce a short profile of Sarah, a pregnant Midwestern teen, struggling to strike out against her familial trajectory. Sarah’s Uncertain Path acts as a microcosm for what Droz Palermo and Droz Tragos call “a myth in America.” “If you have a strong moral compass, work hard and make good choices, you will have equal opportunity,” they write of this unfulfilled promise. “But after two years of listening to and documenting low-income […]
Editing Tyler Durden out of a Fight Club sequence may seem like a (spoiler alert) self-explanatory hijink, but Richard Trammell, the man behind “Fight Club Minus Tyler Durden” actually cooked up the idea while watching the trailer for Lawrence of Arabia. “I thought it would be funny to take Peter O’Toole out of it,” says Trammell, “Before I realized it would be more interesting to remove a character who doesn’t really exist within the world of the movie.” Trammell then perused Fight Club for scenes in which Brad Pitt’s character did not obscure the background, before taking to AfterEffects. “I made freeze frames of […]
It’s a strange time in the post-Netflix Original landscape. While more and more brand-name talent seems to be drifting from film towards premium cable, a new study reports that HBO and Showtime subscribers are dwindling — and potentially jumping ship to Netflix. Indeed, the streaming service has enjoyed a 4% rise in viewership over the last two years, whereas premium cable channels have lost 6% of their subscription base. So what does HBO, with its barrage of new and returning shows, do? Court viewers through the most public of streaming forums: YouTube. As such, Looking, which premiered on Sunday night, is […]
A new video from Shanks FX and PBS Digital Studios illustrates the process behind front screen projection. The technique, famously used by Kubrick in the “Dawn of Man” sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, combines foreground action with background footage to allow for substantial depth of field that cannot otherwise be achieved on location. Merely reflecting a projection off a one way mirror, and capturing the results with a camera, can produce footage that rivals most computer generated images.
Using Spike Jonze’s her as a springboard, Lance Bangs shot a documentary about the modern person’s relationship to love. Culling a wide range of perspectives — from Charlyne Yi to Olivia Wilde to Bret Easton Ellis — Bangs asks us to consider how we relate to Jonze’s unusual tale of boy meets girl. Offers Yi, “Recently, I was thinking about relationships like shoes, and how it’s cheaper to buy new shoes than work on the shoes that you really love and care about.” If the trailer’s any indication, we can expect an eclectic offering. Keep an eye out for Her: Love […]
In advance of its world premiere on Monday, Alex Ross Perry has released a teaser trailer to his latest, Listen Up Philip. Clocking in at under two minutes, the clip features various men and women addressing Jason Schwartzman’s titular character. One gets the sense that Philip’s not the most agreeable fellow, and his ego has grown even more insufferable on the eve of the release of his second novel. Co-starring Elisabeth Moss, Krysten Ritter, Jonathan Pryce, Josephine de La Baume, Jess Weixler, Dree Hemingway and Keith Poulson, this idiosyncratic ensemble looks to promise some of Perry’s brand of quick wit. Watch above.
With the instant gratification and popularity that can accompany a YouTube upload, filmmakers are questioning whether the internet or the traditionally prestige festival circuit is the ideal forum to premiere a short. As Ryan Koo suggested back at the IFP/DCTV “Short Takes” panel last summer, why choose? Indeed, while some festivals rule out previously seen shorts, others welcome online buzz with open arms. One of those festivals, it so happens, is Sundance. Three shorts that will screen in Park City within the coming days were all originally available on YouTube, including Janicza Bravo’s Gregory Go Boom, a black comedy starring a […]
The technology cited by Filmmaker‘s Michael Murie in his 2013 Camera Tech Year-End Review is behind a beautiful surfing video by Eric Cheng that seems to be embedded on just about every site this morning. Five minutes of surfing bliss captured at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, California, the video features aerial shots of surfers, singly and in formation, that previously would have required expensive helicopter shoots. According to Cheng’s Tumblr, the footage was “taken with a DJI Phantom quadcopter, GoPro HERO3 Black edition camera, Rotorpixel HERO3 gimbal (http://rotorpixel.com), ReadyMadeRC FPV transmitter, receiver, and remote monitor, and modified DJI Phantom […]
The Wolf of Wall Street is chockfull of successes. With its performances, pacing and formality resting comfortably on the more transparent end, a new video demonstrates that its visual effects department is no slouch either. Seamless, just the way they should be, the VFX renderings transform Aunt Emma’s probable American brownstone into a white-washed London flat, and hangar siding into the waterways of Venice. Watch above.