Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Future of Compression: Google Attempts to Replace H.26X… Again
For a second time, Google is attempting to pitch a compression format as the replacement for an H.26X compressor. They tried to do it three years ago for HD video when they pitched VP8 as a replacement for H.264 and had little success. Now they’re back with a new angle: VP9 is the format for 4K, and they are putting it up against H.265, the new 4K compressor that is also referred to as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding). Should you care? Compression codecs can be fascinating, frustrating and their naming confusing. For example, everyone’s heard of H.264 and AVCHD, […]
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The Pirate Cinema: A Real Time Collage of File Sharing
Ever wonder what a data visualization of every file transfer bouncing around the internet airwaves might look like? The Pirate Cinema, from artist Nicolas Maigret, has rendered something close to it. Described as a “cinematic collage generated by peer-to-peer network activity,” the project is comprised of arbitrary clips from real time BitTorrent file sharing. Users IP addresses and countries are displayed in the upper corners, turning purportedly private transactions public. For Maigret, “this horizontal network architecture…recalls the utopian vision of openness and free appropriation that arose in the early days of the Internet.”
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Steven Soderbergh Mashes Up the Hitchcock and Gus Van Sant Versions of Psycho
This is kinda brilliant: a mashup by Steven Soderbergh of Hitchcock’s original Psycho and (now rendered in black and white) Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake from 1998. Soderbergh is retired from feature filmmaking, but his Cinemax miniseries The Knick is coming soon and, well, this is presumably something he just threw together in his spare time to stave off boredom!
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The Shape of Something Squashed Director Tom Noonan on How Jennifer Lawrence Inspired His New Play
Playwright, actor, director and screenwriter Tom Noonan is currently debuting his latest play, The Shape of Something Squashed, at New York’s Paradise Factory, but it might never have been written if it weren’t for an invitation to meet with Jennifer Lawrence one day. I’ll let Noonan tell the story below, but suffice to say that the bent emotions and darkly comic introspection that near-encounter produced are the stuff Noonan has memorably mined in his writing and directing work for years. Noonan’s film roles include singular turns in Heat, Mystery Train, Manhunter, Synecdoche, New York, and House of the Devil, to […]
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“Stop Making Indie Films,” Urges Kentucker Audley Change.org Petition
Responding to recent articles in the New York Times and Salon, filmmaker Kentucker Audley has launched a Change.org petition asking “mediocre” independent filmmakers to stop making films. The articles blame overproduction and too many films achieving theatrical release for the economic and artistic issues facing independent film. For the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis — who herself asked distributors to “stop buying so many films” at Sundance — too many films in theaters produces a noise drowning out the virtues of the fewer good movies that deserve critical and public support. For Beanie Barnes at Salon, overproduction has led to […]
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“Owning Your Own Copyright Is a Good Thing… Until It Isn’t.” Producer Jim Stark on Filmmaker Rights and Responsibilities
In today’s treacherous distribution environment, should filmmakers seize control of their destinies by controlling the copyright of their films? That’s the question posed — and answered in the affirmative — by Chris Dorr in a recent blog post, “We Own Our Own Copyrights.” But this argument isn’t one that’s just arisen in the digital era, and, I’d argue, Dorr’s conclusion isn’t one that filmmakers should automatically reach. Owning copyright and tending to a film’s needs over the course of a lifetime is a choice some filmmakers will benefit by making. Others will be better off taking a fee for their […]
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“Walter Murch: From The Godfather to the God Particle”
Legendary film editor, sound designer, writer, translator, amateur astronomer and director Walter Murch needs no introduction. (Oh, what the hell, his credits include The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Tetro and more.) In addition to being a great filmmaker, he’s also a great teacher and talker about film. Here, at the 2013 Sheffield Doc Fest, where he accompanied the doc, Particle Fever, he gives an inspiring speech on film editing, technology, audience expectation, how film grammar is changing with digital technologies, and physics. Don’t miss this.
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Rick Baker on How to Build a Shocking Rubber Prosthetic
Want horror-movie makeup tips from an Oscar-winning legend? Here, Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London, Videodrome, Men in Black) offers DIY tips while demonstrating how to make “Miss Shock,” a gruesome character created by Bob Burns in 1959 for a live event with The Tingler director William Castle. In this fast-paced 15-minute clip, Baker starts off by making a mold of his daughter’s face and then moves on to the artistic detail work he’s revered for. (Hat tip: Mutiny Co.)
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What the Olympics and Nazis Can Teach Us About Woody Allen and Women Directors
One friend on Facebook mentioned that offering an opinion on the Woody Allen scandal is like sticking your head into a turboprop plane on takeoff. That’s nothing — I say we might as well stick our collective heads into an Airbus A380 jet engine by throwing into the discussion the Olympics, Nazis, the scarcity of women directors and the Hollywood Blacklist. Let’s bring on the awkward! You see, last July, Entertainment Weekly — arguably the only national popular magazine devoted in large part to film coverage and criticism — did a list of their “All-Time Greatest Movies.” To be sure, […]
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Boom! Veronica Mars Breaks the Theatrical Window
Credit the Kickstarter-funded Veronica Mars movie with a distribution first: as the Wall Street Journal reports, the film will be the first major studio release to simultaneously premiere in movie theaters and on online platforms. Distributors like IFC and Magnolia have been doing such day-and-date releases for years, but Hollywood’s six major studios — under pressure from theater owners — have held tight to a “windowing” model by which films play exclusively in theaters for at least three months. For the Veronica Mars movie, Warner Bros. and AMC Theaters seem to be engaging in a bit of semantic sleight-of-hand to […]
