With Josh Maczinski’s tribute to Jeff Cronenweth popping up around the interwebs, here’s a good time to post, alongside it, Jamie Stuart’s 2014 interview with the cinematographer. Maczinski’s supercut surveys favorite scenes from films like Gone Girl, The Social Network, Hitchcock and One-Hour Photo. Stuart’s interview gets deep into it regarding digital technology, lens choices and a lot more. Here is Cronenweth on Fincher’s use of digital tools: But it’s part of David’s tenacity in making sure that every image supports the story and nothing ever unsettles an audience member unintentionally. In other words, you see everything you’re supposed to […]
In this video, The Nerdwriter meticulously breaks down how the blocking and staging of a key expository scene from Vertigo, showing how choreography and camera placement serve as visual language for the themes that’ll dominate the movie. If you haven’t seen Vertigo, a) what’s up with that? b) spoilers galore.
Written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, Last Days in the Desert premiered way back at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and it’s finally getting its first trailer. The film in which Ewan McGregor plays both Jesus and the Devil is an imagined episode from his 40 days of fasting and praying in the desert. On his way out of the wilderness, Jesus (McGregor) struggles with the Devil (also McGregor) over the fate of a family in crisis. Ciarán Hinds, Ayelet Zurer and Tye Sheridan co-star, but the big draw is the cinematography by two-time Academy Award-winning DP Emmanuel Lubezki. Could his work […]
Following its well received world premiere at Sundance 2016, Love & Friendship, Whit Stillman’s latest comedy of manners, gets its first trailer. Stillman reunites his Last Days of Disco co-stars Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny for this adaptation of Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan. Beckinsale plays the titular Lady Susan Vernon, “the most accomplished flirt in all England,” who visits the estate of her in-laws where she schemes to marry off her daughter and perhaps find her own husband. Sevigny plays her visiting American friend. Xavier Samuel, Stephen Fry, Tom Bennett, Jemma Redgrave, James Fleet, Justin Edwards and Emma Greenwell round out the cast. As Filmmaker‘s Vadim Rizov notes […]
A reader, Dylan Toombs, passes along this video shot earlier this month at the The Banff Centre for Story Summit 2016 and featuring his interviews with three top Hollywood camera operators: Mitch Dubin (Saving Private Ryan, Bridge of Spies), Steve Fracol (Songs of Anarchy, Scandal), and Dave Thompson (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook). At the head of the video, Dubin offers perhaps the most concise description of the camera operator’s job that I’ve every heard, and the rest of the short, four-minutes-and-change interview contains other perceptive insights into how these three men view the nature and definition of their job. […]
Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, Alps) makes his English-language debut with the absurdist comedy The Lobster, which premiered at Cannes 2015. The satire stars Colin Farrell as a newly single architect looking for love. The newly released trailer depicts a bizarro world in which a seemingly ordinary hotel serves as a twisted dating service of sorts. Unless guests hook up with a mate within 45 days, they’ll be turned into an animal of their choice and released into the wild (Farrell’s character chooses a lobster, thus, the film’s title). In his report from Cannes 2015, Filmmaker‘s Aaron Hillis called the film a “wickedly laugh-out-loud, quasi-dystopian […]
“I think it’s absurd to say there isn’t a difference” between shooting on film and on digital, says Joel Coen in this short interview found on Adobe Create and filmed in the cutting room of the Coen Brothers’ latest, Hail, Caesar! Coen goes on to say that he hopes for a kind of format-neutral future, where choices of all sorts can be made on purely artistic grounds. That said, neither filmmaker is naive, and they realize that digital technology provides the new standards. As Ethan goes on to say, one of the reasons they finally began cutting on a digital […]
While screenings continue throughout the week, 2016 SXSW Film Festival had its official awards ceremony last night, with director and comedian Mike Birbiglia — whose Don’t Think Twice was well received at the festival — hosting. Awards went to features about a famous mass shooting, a misfit romance and the KKK while, as always, the festival gave prizes as well to shorts, music videos and poster designs. In addition, Austin favorite Lee Daniels, well known for his work with Rick Linklater, received a special cinematography award for his lensing of Laura Dunn’s The Seer. Our friends at Keyframe have assembled […]
When actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde signed on to direct No Love Like Yours, the latest video from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, she knew she wanted to shoot the project on an iPhone for both financial and stylistic reasons. But her DP, Reed Morano (who directed Wilde in last year’s Meadowland), a self-described film snob, initially resisted, fearing the quality would be sub-par. But eventually, Morano came around to the idea of shooting on an iPhone 6S Plus along with a makeshift camera rig and the Filmic Pro app, the anamorphic adapter which was used to shoot Tangerine. In the resulting 6-minute video, lead singer Alex […]
Two-time Academy Award nominated director Hany Abu-Assad follows up Paradise Now and Omar with The Idol, which now has a U.S. trailer. Inspired by the true story of Palestinian Mohammad Assaf, who was crowned Arab Idol champion in 2013, the film focuses on Assaf’s childhood in Gaza where he dreams of a successful musical career. The Idol, which premiered at TIFF 2015, was partially filmed on location in Gaza, the first feature to be shot there in decades. Adopt Films will release the film in New York on May 6 and nationwide on May 13.