Despite the rise of the digital medium, its constant comparisons to film are not likely to die down any time soon. In this short video for PBS Digital Studios, Shanks FX produces several animated juxtapositions of images captured by a digital Canon 5D versus a Canon 7E film camera. A few of the results may surprise you: digital filters can render filmic qualities — specifically its grains and imperfections — rather accurately. From the other side of the equation, you may be surprised to see just how deep color schemes appear on film relative to high-quality video. Take a look […]
Blocking is everything to Sam Levy, most recently the cinematographer of Noah Baumbach’s black-and-white feature Frances Ha. Levy talks about his approach to lighting – one that foregrounds blocking above all else. First comes the blocking of the actors in a scene, including their movements and pacing. Next comes the camera blocking which, according to Levy, works best if it’s responding to the setup of the actors. And finally, the lighting emerges as a natural consequence of these two things. As Levy says, “you block, you light, you shoot.” All of Levy’s interview with Craft Truck can be found here.
A couple weeks back, Netflix announced that it had acquired another “original” documentary, due for a world premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival: Mitt. Filmmaker Greg Whiteley tracked presidential hopeful Mitt Romney from Christmas 2006 up until the night of his concession speech in November 2012. With unprecedented access, Whiteley was with the Romney family through all of the campaign trail ups and downs, to provide what should be a unique and honest window into the mind of Mitt. The film will be available for viewing on Netflix beginning January 24, 2014.
“You always have to question when a director says, ‘Let’s go handheld.’” At Poland’s Camerimage International Film Festival a few weeks back, d.p. Sean Bobbitt gave an ARRI workshop keynote on the role of handheld cinematography in filmmaking. Far too often, directors, according to Bobbitt, resort to the use of handheld simply because they have no other ideas: “If we do handheld, it will feel kinetic!” and the like. But a knee-jerk instinct is not good enough — Bobbitt believes you should be able to justify every technical decision in the script: “The first and most important consideration is, does […]
When one thinks of an insightful, sardonic examination into the world of online film criticism, Shia LaBeouf probably isn’t the first name to come to mind. And yet, the actor’s directorial debut, HowardCantour.com, is just that. Starring perennial familiar face Jim Gaffigan, the short film tracks the eponymous character through junkets, brushes with former colleagues, and fallen directors, as he evaluates his profession in this increasingly consumer-driven industry. After stops at Cannes and Aspen Shortsfest, HowardCantour.com is now available online, courtesy of Short of the Week. Update: It appears that LaBeouf may have adapted (perhaps a generous euphemism) HowardCantour.com from Daniel Clowes’ comic Justin M. Damiano, without […]
If you want a quick crash course in music video today — its looks, styles, and assorted tropes — you could do a lot worse than spend seven minutes watching this stream from Beyoncé’s YouTube channel, which begins with the first 30 seconds of every video made for the singer’s surprise, self-titled release. (It just appeared on iTunes last night with no advance publicity.) Living up to her workaholic reputation, Beyoncé has made what look to be lavishly produced, cinematically striking and conceptually varied videos for every song on what she calls her “visual album.” A track list with directors […]
25 New Face Kirby Ferguson extends his popular Everything is a Remix series with this latest entry on the iPhone. I wrote about the series’ original four parts back in 2011. An excerpt: Rather than push a copy-left agenda or hype the latest mash-up artist, Ferguson uses the subject of the remix to discuss the history and nature of creativity. Everything is a Remix deconstructs the idea of originality, exploring the creative but also technological and business memes that recombine from one generation to the next, making us feel that we are encountering something “new” along the way. And it […]
Fans of Michel Gondry and his latest Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? may enjoy this peak inside his home studio, courtesy of The Creators Project. From his cluttered Brooklyn brownstone, Gondry demonstrates his hand-drawn animation technique with Sharpies and a 16mm Arriflex, which allow him to create “a texture that [he] feels is cinematic.” It is a rather time-consuming, detail-oriented trade that Gondry admits to wielding during his casting courtship of Audrey Tautou for Mood Indigo. He also speaks about his creative decisions behind Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?, and why animation was the necessary format for Noam Chomsky: “It was […]
This year we put Ewan McNicol and Anna Sandilands on our “25 New Faces” list on the strength of their excellent doc short The Roper but also because of how excited we were at the sneak peek we’d had of Uncertain, their debut feature about a remote “town of outlaws” in Texas. The pair has now started releasing clips from the film, which will be making its world premiere at a winter festival in 2014. The first of these is above, and you can check out more via the Vimeo page of McNicol and Sandilands’ production company, Lucid Inc.
In the latest video in our Craft Truck series, Sal Totino, who was the cinematographer on features like Frost/Nixon, Cinderella Man and The Da Vinci Code, advocates knowing the rules but only in order to break them. Using an apt metaphor of cooking, he says that one could follow a recipe step-by-step or break away and “put a little bit of your soul into it.” Nothing is guaranteed, as Totino cautions, especially not when straying from convention, but you have to know where the edge is — and sometimes fall off — to learn your limits. Watch the full interview here.