Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: Martin Scorsese on The Films of Rossellini, Cassavetes, Minnelli and More
More than any other American director working today, Martin Scorsese retains perhaps the most encyclopedic set of knowledge when it comes to his cinematic forbearers. Two years ago, Fast Company distilled 85 references made throughout the course of a four hour interview on Hugo, and dubbed it “Martin Scorsese’s Film School.” Flavorpill went ahead and paired the majority of those titles with pre-existing commentary from the filmmaker’s documentaries, A Personal Journey Through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy, to create a comprehensive video essay. Watch above for Scorsese’s insight into everything from Two Weeks in Another Town to Faces, Italian Neo-Realism (Rossellini) to pre-noir gangster films (Walsh), and much more.
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Trailer Watch: Kink, the BDSM Documentary from “25 New Faces” Alum Christina Voros
“If pornography were high school, we would be the goth table,” says one of the subjects of Christina Voros’ forthcoming documentary Kink, which looks at Kink.com, the web’s largest generator of BDSM porn. Voros was one of our “25 New Faces of Film” in 2008; you can read that profile here. Since then, she’s been very busy, especially as a cinematographer. Notably, since 2009 she’s regularly served as James Franco’s DP on shorts and features, including the recent Child of God and As I Lay Dying. Kink promises to delve deep and familiarize viewers with the producers of BDSM porn. […]
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Watch: The Evolution of Title Sequences
Title sequences just aren’t what they used to be. Nowadays, if they aren’t entirely absent, opening credits are relegated to the corner of the frame, an afterthought accessory to a film’s first scenes. This video from Nora Thös and Damian Pérez entitled “The Film Before The Film,” examines the history of credit sequences from the first Edison films to the age of pioneering designers like Saul Bass and Maurice Bender, through the advent of AfterEffects in the 1990s. Ironically, with all the more tools now at filmmakers’ disposal, titles have recessed into something of a lost art outside of Bond films and other (relatively) aesthetically high-brow big-budgets. “The […]
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Watch: A New Algorithm Near-Seamlessly Edits Footage from Multiple Cameras
Disney has a research division, and this video demonstrates something pretty cool they’ve been working on: an algorithm that automatically cuts together footage from multiple cameras. This isn’t entirely a new development: in the video above, the research team compares their results with those obtained using Vyclone, which kind of does the same thing. But Vyclone has trouble sorting footage in an orderly fashion if the camera pans between two separate actions happening in the same area, tending to randomly cut between the two. There are other advantages to Disney’s algorithm, which respects the 180-degree-rule when cutting between multiple sources, […]
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Watch: Breaking Down the Essay Film
With the Chris Marker series underway at BAM this week, it seems like a topical time to share this 2013 rumination on the essay film from Kevin B. Lee. Lee purports that the essay diverges from the rest of cinema in how it “[explores] its subject and at the same time [explores] how it sees its subject.” Words, images and sound interact and inform one another, producing a commentary that is often relegated to the external, or the conscience of the viewer. In his visual discussion of the three pillars of an essay film, Lee draws on Marker’s own Sans Soleil, Godard […]
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How Do You Show a Text Message in a Film?
Not too long ago I was asked to read a script, and when I finished I had one question: what year was this script set in? I wondered because the whole script revolved around people in different cities being completely unable to communicate with each other, to know what was going on in each other’s lives. Yep, this present-day film took place in a world where mobile phones had not been invented. You’d be surprised at how often screenwriters ignore today’s modern means of communication. And not just phones — in order to be truly contemporary, filmmakers must incorporate text […]
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Music Video: Daphne Guinness’ Evening in Space, Directed by David LaChappelle
Artist, designer and model Daphne Guinness adds music to her CV with this new single, “Evening in Space,” produced by long-time David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti. The video is directed by photographer and director David LaChappelle and, according to the notes, “features custom fashion by many of Guinness’ favourite houses, including Iris van Herpen and Noritaka Tatehana, alongside pieces from her own celebrated clothing collection.”
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Trailer Watch: David Wnendt’s Wetlands
Perhaps I’m being contrarian, jaded and/or anti-clickbait, but David Wnendt’s Wetlands isn’t as wildly gross out as it’s cracked up to be. I have a harder time digesting, say, Pink Flamingos. There’s substance behind the film’s good humored gags, coalescing as they do around the liberated but fundamentally unhappy protagonist, Helen. Which brings me to another bargaining chip amongst all its provocations: one of the most enjoyable performances of late, courtesy of the emotionally acrobatic Carla Juri. Brandon Harris and I at least agreed on that in our respective takes from Treefort and SXSW. In any event, Strand Releasing has the film slated for a September 5 release […]
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Apple’s Beats Music Celebrates Do the Right Thing‘s 25th Anniversary
Revisiting the characters and locations of Spike Lee’s classic, Do The Right Thing 25 Year Anniversary: A Beats Music Experience is a 22-minute short documentary just released under the banner of, yes, Apple’s newly acquired Beats Music. Lee, Danny Aiello, production designer Wynn Thomas and others from the film stroll its Bed-Stuy block, recalling moments, interviewing current residents, and trying to remember just which apartment Rosie Perez lived in. Unlike Lee’s recent Old Boy, it’s an official Spike Lee Joint — spirited, not too nostalgic and capped with a block party performance by Public Enemy doing “Fight the Power.” Sadly, […]
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What is a Music Supervisor?
“Music supervision is creative and business, married together,” says music supervisor Tracy McKnight in this Variety Artisans roundtable featuring a group of professionals who oversee the use of music in movies. Watch here as McKnight, who has a rich career in both studio and independent film, and a group of colleagues with credits ranging from Boardwalk Empire to Breaking Bad, discuss the dimensions of what can seem to be a mysterious position.
