Filmmaker Videos
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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.” […]
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“I Don’t Know Where to Put the Camera”: Martin Scorsese on his Toughest Set-Up
Why is Martin Scorsese a great director? Because he’s always wondering where to put the camera. Here’s a priceless and little-viewed French television clip of Martin Scorsese traveling to the airport to present The King of Comedy in Cannes in which the director talks about his toughest set-up. Warning: it’s not from any of his films. Indeed, the clip, in addition to capturing great ’80s NYC street ambiance, is a good illustration of what makes Scorsese Scorsese. After telling the interviewer about all the decisions a director must make when it comes to framing a shot, he answers her question […]
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Happy Holidays to All!
Wishing all of our readers a very happy holiday season!
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Fred Armisen Stars in Alix Lambert’s Superhero Comedy Ambiance Man
Ambiance Man is a new comedy web series from MOCAtv created and directed by filmmaker (and sometime Filmmaker contributor) Alix Lambert and starring, as the eponymous superhero, Portlandia‘s Fred Armisen. The concept, Lambert says, hails from her teens, when she imagined a superhero who would sweat the small stuff. She tells MOCA, “Ambiance Man is a series about a super hero who fixes what we really need fixed in our day-to-day lives. While most super heroes are focused on preventing the end of the world, Ambiance Man is focused on transforming the moments that feel like the end of the […]
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Film Versus Digital: the Canon 7E and 5D
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 […]
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D.P. Sam Levy on How Blocking Determines Lighting
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.
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Trailer Watch: Mitt
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.
