Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: Swiss Army Man: The Film That Polarized Sundance
Swiss Army Man, the debut feature from acclaimed music video directing duo The Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), divided audiences at Sundance 2016 like no other film. Now you can get a peek at the controversial film in its first trailer (above). Following its premiere, Variety declared that the film “could win the festival’s award for the most walk-outs, as a continuous stream of audience members kept standing up and bolting for the door throughout the film.” The premise of the dark comedy is certainly pretty bizarre. Paul Dano plays Hank, a man marooned on an island who is about to commit suicide. […]
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Watch: No Home Movie Room by Room
Chantal Akerman’s final film, No Home Movie, takes on a deeper resonance following the Belgian filmmaker’s death in October 2015. The film is a documentary tribute to her dying mother, Natalia a.k.a. Nelly and an exploration of their relationship. As with all of Akerman’s work, there’s a deeply autobiographical element to the film — even more so now that we know it was to be her last. In the above video essay from Fandor, Kevin B. Lee has reorganized the film’s footage by each room in the apartment to emphasize how Akerman explores each space to reflect her relationship with her dying mother. Beginning April 1, No Home Movie […]
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The Witch Gets a Creepy New Trailer for its Return to Theaters
Whether you missed The Witch in its first time in theaters or you’re ready to return for a second helping of horror, you’ll get a chance to see Robert Eggers’ stunner this weekend. In advance of its return to theaters on Friday, April 1, distributor A24 has released a new trailer (above) for the festival favorite, which initially premiered at Sundance in 2015. Back in February, The Witch gave A24 its biggest weekend opening ever, earning $8.8 million. Having already earned $24 million at the box office, it seems likely to edge out A24’s award-winning Ex Machina, which has grossed $25.4 million. Set in […]
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Watch (and Read): Video Tribute and Interview with D.P. Jeff Cronenweth
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 […]
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Watch: How Alfred Hitchcock Blocks a Scene
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.
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Trailer Watch: Ewan McGregor Plays Jesus and the Devil in Last Days in the Desert
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 […]
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Trailer Watch: Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship
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 […]
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Watch: What Does a Camera Operator Do?
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. […]
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Trailer Watch: Colin Farrell Seeks a Mate in the Absurdist Cannes Hit The Lobster
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 […]
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Joel and Ethan Coen Discuss How Their Editing has Evolved Over Thirty Years
“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 […]
