Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: New Blackmagic URSA Test Footage
Last month we shared the first test footage shot with the Blackmagic URSA camera, and now we’ve got more samples to look at. This time around the footage was shot using Canon’s EF line of lenses and looks very sharp. Full tech specs can be found here; thanks to No Film School for the heads up.
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Watch: How Color Correction Alters a Film’s Tone
Color correction is often the least talked about, most overlooked portion of the post-production process. Alex Bickel has spoken out about how grading can alter the presumed production value of a film, and a recent guest post from Michael Medaglia and Jalal Jemison discussed the importance of communicating your story through the process. This video from the International Colorist Academy offers a nice visual supplement to the aforementioned claims, as it demonstrates the colorist’s ability to amend the tone and context of any given scene. When it comes to transforming day to night, and romance to horror, some things can be left […]
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Somebody: Miranda July’s Messaging Service
Remember We Think Alone? Miranda July’s investigatory aggregate into the emails of famous people? July is again re-examining how people communicate in the age of information with a new app/messaging service entitled Somebody. Some sort of sick combination of texting and Tinder, Somebody ensures human contact upon receiving a message because that message is not your own — it belongs to someone nearby, and you are tasked with delivering it. To promote the project, Miu Miu commissioned a short from July that premiered today at the Venice Film Festival. In the supplement, a varied cast of characters (including July herself) […]
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Trailer Watch: Jesse Moss’s The Overnighters
I was flat out floored when I saw The Overnighters a few months back. It’s a documentary that unravels with the jagged edges of a thriller, while managing to be both an individual character study and comprehensive portrait of blue collar middle America and the nation’s economic and environmental crises. Still, it is somewhat unsurprising that many critics are calling out the film’s so-called manipulative treatment of its subjects, in a manner not unlike The Act of Killing‘s dissenters. I’d recommend seeing it for yourself and coming to your own conclusions when it opens on October 10. In the meantime, there’s the first trailer for […]
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Watch: Visual Effects at Work in Pascale Ferran’s Bird People
“Confounding in a good way” is probably a cop-out way to describe a film, but I can think of few other ways to succinctly sum up Pascale Ferran’s Bird People. As you may have deduced from the title, this binary portrait features a supporting character of the avian persuasion, who turns in some of the most seamless VFX work this side of The Wolf of Wall Street. The above video from French special effects company BUF — who also handled The Matrix series, United 93 and The Dark Knight — reveals that nearly every background in the film was transposed onto a green screen. This would seem logical as […]
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Watch: David Lynch Takes the Ice Bucket Challenge
David Lynch’s broad sense of humor has always been a bit of an acquired taste, especially when he’s the one on-screen delivering it (recall all those deafness/earhorn jokes in Twin Peaks). This minute-ish video gets the much-discussed ice bucket challenge right, as Lynch is drenched by two buckets — one with coffee added to it for Laura Dern, one straight-up for Justin Theroux — while giving a game stab at playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on his trumpet. It ends (spoiler alert?) with a good punchline, as Lynch nominates Vladimir Putin to step up and take the challenge next. No […]
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Watch: Gina Telaroli on Smaller Cinema as an Extracurricular
Ricky D’Ambrose consistently runs some of the most revealing, worthwhile video interviews over at MUBI Notebook, and his latest is no exception. This go around, Ambrose converses with Gina Telaroli, one of our brand new 25 New Faces, about her process, the “classic Hollywood system,” and the potential drawbacks of having your hand in too many of the industry’s depleted honeypots. Most significant are Telaroli’s opening remarks: “I think there’s really a lot of people who still have this idea, either filmmakers or film writers, that they will be the person that somehow makes it, that somehow is the genius. […]
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Watch: Richard Attenborough on Satyajit Ray
Here’s a video from a less-explored part of the late Richard Attenborough’s career. In 1977, Attenborough went to India to take a supporting part in the great Satyajit Ray’s The Chess Players. In this rare fragment from a TV interview at the time, Attenborough marvels at the all-encompassing nature of Ray’s craft: “He writes the screenplay, he composes the music, he directs it, he operates the camera. He half-lights the set. Certainly he works with the lighting cameraman in such detail that any source of light or change that he wants he gets. He edits his own films, almost as […]
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Are Too Many People Calling Themselves Storytellers?
Award-winning designer Stefan Sagmeister blasts the current co-option of the label “storyteller” in this provocative video. If you’re a novelist or filmmaker then, yes, Sagmeister says, you are a storyteller. But if you’re, for example, a roller coaster designer, then, he says, “No, fuckhead, you are not a storyteller!” Sagmeister’s absolutist stance has angered quite a few — check out the video’s comments thread. From my point of view, storytelling is as much a practice as job title. I think it’s possible to apply an understanding and embrace of narrative in multiple fields, not just writing and film. And if […]
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Can Makeup Become Electronic? Projection Mapping a Model’s Face
We know that electronic actors are on the horizon, but what about electronic makeup? Technical producer and director Nobumichi Asai has projection mapped on buildings, cars and other physical objects, but in this concept video he maps in real time onto the human face. Writes Chris Davies at Slashgear: It’s the incredible handiwork of a team led by Nobumichi Asai, which brings together digital designers, CGI experts, and make-up artists. Combined, they create what seems to be the electronic equivalent of makeup. Technical details are scant at this stage, unfortunately. Judging by the video, however, there’s an initial scanning stage […]
