Filmmaker Videos
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Watch the Michael Cera-Starring Sundance Short Gregory Go Boom Online
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 […]
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Astonishing Surfing Video Shows Power of Camera Drones
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 […]
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The Wolf of Wall Street’s Seamless Visual Effects
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.
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Test Footage from Letus’ GoPro Anamorphic Adapter
Since Leviathan, I’ve been more curious than ever about the functionality of GoPros. Often categorized as toys and far more prevalent on ski slopes than sets, it took Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel strapping the pocket-sized gizmo to the underside of a fishing vessel to illustrate its cinematic advantages. A little while back, Letus announced the release of a 1.33X Anamorphic Adapter for the camera, to be known as the AnamorphX-GP. Scheduled for shipment on January 31st, the first wave of test footage has arrived from Jared Abrams at Wide Open Camera. Though the characteristic fish eye traces remain intact, the wide aspect […]
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Joseph Gordon-Levitt Premieres Collaborative Show “Hit Record on TV”
A streamlined extension of his open collaborative site, Joseph Gordon-Levitt will premiere “Hit Record on TV” on Pivot, next Saturday at 10 pm. The first episode, which is currently available online, promises an amalgam of forms and tastes, as “Regular Joe” and his merry band of global collaborators stitch together short films (featuring Elle Fanning), musical interludes and animated sequences. Being that it is the inaugural affair, the episode centers on the number one, its connotations and translations, as told through said media and its fair share of webcams. The hitRECord address is one well worth visiting, as it encourages artists […]
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Cinematographer Gordon Willis Explains the Elegance of Simplicity
The simpler the better, or so says Gordon Willis, celebrated cinematographer of The Godfather, Manhattan and Annie Hall. Willis echoes Steve Jobs in his belief that simple outshines complex and stresses sticking only with the necessary in making choices. As he sees it, one natural window light can do much more than six artificial ones, and the bare bones of an idea often do the heavy lifting in communicating the story to an audience. The full Craft Truck interview with Willis can be viewed here.
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Behind the Scenes of All is Lost
The cover story of our 2013 Fall issue, All is Lost proved a herculean exercise in filmmaking. Nearly dialogue free, J.C. Chandor’s sophomore feature plots its arc from the timeless motif of man versus nature, miraculously abstaining from repetition. Chandor exhibits a clear confidence in silence, allowing the surroundings and sun-stained face of Mr. Robert Redford to propel the story forward. Despite its effortless looks, making the movie was surely no cakewalk. In this behind the scenes video from HitFix, key players including underwater d.p. Peter Zuccarini, production designer John P. Goldsmith and editor Pete Beaudreau discuss their experiences in realizing […]
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What Richard Stanley Learned from the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Along with Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time, a book — an essay comprised of diary excerpts, actually — I recommend to all aspiring directors is Richard Stanley’s “I Wake Up Screaming.” It originally appeared in the 1994 third edition of the film anthology Projections, and it’s now published (with permission, the site claims) at the director’s unofficial website, Between Death and the Devil. “I Wake Up Screaming” documents Stanley’s attempt to make an ambitious Namibia-shot art horror-thriller called Dust Devil years after an earlier production fell apart. The movie Stanley went on to make instead, […]
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Why Your Film Needs a Good Gaffer: Watch How Lighting Changes a Face
Here’s a hypnotic video showing the importance of film lighting. Watch as this woman — yes, this is just one woman — finds her features altered as the lighting shifts around her. The plans of her face move, the vibe she projects alters, and the genre of film she’s in morphs from drama to horror to comedy. (Hat tip: Sploid at Gizmodo.) The video, “Sparkles and Wine,” features music from the band Opale and was directed and produced by Nacho Guzman. According to Petapixel, the video was shot “using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR and two lenses (a Canon […]
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Samah Tokmachi Finds Creativity at the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab
Launched in 2011, the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab is an intensive program for artists working “at the convergence of film, art, media, live performance, music and technology.” This Fall, it completed its third Lab, bringing together artists with an impressive variety of mentors from all of these fields. Among the folks traveling to the Sundance Resort was filmmaker Samah Tokmachi (Living in a Global Society) in the role of Creative Observer. Sundance invited him to make a short video, posted above, “in hopes that his reflections would enrich the wider discourse about media innovation and the future of storytelling.” […]
