Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
Watch: Stitching Birdman Together in Post
If I was at all restless during Birdman, it had little to do with the stakes of the plot, and much more to do with deciphering Emmanuel Lubezki’s visual pyrotechnics. Apologies for the spoiler, but you’ve probably heard by now that Iñárritu’s latest is designed to look like one sweeping take, a nod to its theatrical subject matter and setting. The camera ducks in and out of darkness more than once, but surely the technicians in post found points for incision that are barely visible to the naked eye. In this video interview with Variety, the film’s digital intermediate colorist Steve Scott explains […]
-
Five Questions for Drone Boning Drone Porn Creators Brandon LaGanke and John Carlucci
Drones. Porn. Directors Brandon LaGanke and John Carlucci of Ghost Cow Films have taken what might have been a cynical, viral video SEO-mashup and delivered something deeply weird and oddly hypnotic. While Drone Boning features couples having sex (so, yes, it’s adults-only and NSFW), the eerie glide of the drone and the camera’s distance from these writhing lovers make them more like elements in a video art piece than reflections of desire. Filmmaker previously featured the work of Ghost Cow when we curated LaGanke’s short film, Play House, for the Northside Film Festival. When he sent me this latest out-there […]
-
Mocha 4: The Planar Tracker Gets an Update
Imagineer Systems has updated Mocha, their popular planar tracking tool. Mocha, which comes in multiple versions, makes it possible to track parts of a scene and then use that information to composite graphics and perform other manipulations to your image. In its Pro version, it’s capable of much more. The basic version of Mocha, Mocha AE, offers 2.5D Planar Tracking and comes bundled with all current releases of After Effects. Mocha Plus is $195 and adds export support for Adobe Premiere, Apple Motion and Boris FX. It also adds the lens distortion solving tool (it lacks the Insert, Remove, Stabilize […]
-
Men, Women and Children: The 8th Abu Dhabi Film Festival
In Abu Dhabi, it’s easy to let the smoke cozy up to your eyes. The festival, now in its 8th year, unfolds in one of the city’s most dazzling corners, with the mammoth, labyrinthine, five star Emirates Palace as its proverbial hub. Gold dripping from its vending machines and balconies alike, the place is sheer, 11 billion Dirham, stadium sized spectacle. As a festival guest, you are chauffeured from the seaside St. Regis tower to screening venues in a designated Mercedes, which, barring the unwanted sexual advances that come with being a long-haired, white American female, can make you feel […]
-
TWC and the Devaluation of Content
The notion of VOD as a stigmatized, modern update on the straight to video release has gradually and dramatically disbanded in the past handful of years. Day-and-date pioneers like Magnolia and IFC capitalized on the platform’s ability to cater to a wider, cross-country audience, demonstrating its economic viability, if occasionally at the cost of art houses. Though their sister label Radius-TWC has proven exceedingly adroit at the multi-platform rollout, The Weinstein Company has tended towards more multiplex fare, which makes their recent, free pre-theatrical release of One Chance on Yahoo! Screen even more bizarre than it sounds on paper. Originally intended for a 10 day “pre-release,” TWC […]
-
Paul Schrader on the Theatrical Experience, Web Series and the Death of the Three Act Drama
Last night at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP, Paul Schrader had a conversation with Marc Schiller, as part of the latter’s Future State of Entertainment Speaker Series. Perhaps more than any other director of his generation, Schrader seems to have embraced the democratic technologies available to today’s filmmakers, between crowdsourcing on The Canyons and his recent intent to make a web series. Indeed, if the protest surrounding his latest film is any indication, he may be done with studios for the foreseeable future. Throughout the two hours, Schrader and Schiller covered a variety of topics, from new technologies to the phasing out of […]
-
They Shouldn’t Have Killed his Dog: John Wick
John Wick‘s primary premise is lots of well-crafted action delivered by veteran stuntpeople-turned-directors finally given free rein to make sure their work is optimally served. Co-directors David Leith and Chad Stahelski deliver on this front: it doesn’t take much time before retired hitman Wick (Keanu Reeves) is sufficiently angered to leave his New Jersey pad, head into NYC (more inferred than seen) and unleash mayhem in a hotel, club and church. No one is going to confuse 50-year-old Keanu Reeves for prime Jet Li, but he’s more than credible in walking through each point of contact and delivering body blows. […]
-
Teen Horniness is Not a Crime: White Bird in a Blizzard
The nice thing about Gregg Araki’s movies is that he genuinely believes that teen horniness is not a crime: not for him Larry Clark’s pseudo-alarmed prurience or a Lifetime movie’s worth of dire consequences trailing teen sexuality. White Bird in a Blizzard‘s narrator/not-quite-heroine Kat Connors (Shaleine Woodley) is in the midst of an inexplicably celibate stretch in a hormonally-drenched first sexual relationship with neighbor Phil (Shiloh Fernandez) when her mother Eve (Eva Green) mysteriously disappears. Kat’s sexuality contributes neither to unearned guilt or poor decisions, and her relationship with the older investigating detective Scieziesciez (Thomas Jane) is never a source […]
-
Cinematographer Reed Morano on the Fight Against TV’s “Smooth Motion” Setting
“Stop motion interpolation!” is the call on a Change.org petition urging TV manufacturers to disable the default “smooth motion” setting on new televisions. As the petition explains, “Motion Interpolation was an effect that was created to reduce motion blur on HDTVs but a very unfortunate side effect of using this function is that is takes something shot at 24 fps or shot on film and makes it look like it was shot on video at 60i. In short, it takes the cinematic look out of any image and makes it look like soap opera shot on a cheap video camera.” […]
-
Ted Hope on the Need for a Sustainable Investor Class
“The best thing we can do as a film industry is make sure that investors earn risk appropriate returns on their money. We need to create a sustainable investor class,” explains Ted Hope in this video interview with Film Courage. In recent years, Hope has shied away from producing as a career, doing it purely out of love for the film while paying the bills as CEO of Fandor. In order to return to the trade full-time, he’d need for there to be guaranteed returns on investments, as it traditionally goes in the realm of startups and finance. The issue, […]
