Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Twin Peaks: The Return: Last Looks Before the End
I took a break from writing about Twin Peaks: The Return to let things shake down a bit, but now seems like a good time to make a few more notes before the end. The first 2.25 of 18 parts were almost total abstraction, and it seemed a matter of necessity to largely abandon that mode for extended stretches before increasingly reintegrating it. We seemed, for a long time, very far from where we started, but The Return has allowed for increasing interventions of the abstract and fantastical alongside its rising dramatic arcs, which have finally run long enough to allow nearly […]
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Reed Morano on Successfully Pitching for and Directing the Intense Dystopian Drama, The Handmaid’s Tale
Reed Morano was told she wouldn’t get to pitch on The Handmaid’s Tale: “Don’t get too excited about it.” Someone showed her the pilot just so she had an idea of what Hulu was up to, but there was already a “very big male director” they were out to, as Morano discussed at an IFP Q&A earlier this year. When Morano heard that her long time collaborator and friend Elisabeth Moss was attached as the lead of the show, she reached out — not taking no for an answer. “A week and a half later, I got a call: ‘The producers […]
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Through You: Stopping and Feeling Through Dance and VR
Although dance and virtual reality seemingly lay at polar ends of the creative spectrum, they can come together to make incredibly moving artistic experiences. That, at least, holds true for co-directors Lily Baldwin and Saschka Unseld in their new piece Through You, a VR film heavy on physical choreography that premiered at Sundance earlier this year and on August 1 was released on Samsung Gear VR via the Oculus Video app. The piece features a couple as their relationship evolves over the course of decades through discovery, fulfillment, loss and rejuvenation. It uses handheld camera movement to create a very visceral […]
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Shooting From Dock to Dish with the New Canon C200
For the launch of the C200, Canon hired producer Andrew Fried of Boardwalk Pictures to create a short introduction video, From Dock to Dish. Boardwalk Pictures specializes in nonfiction programming, most notably producing the Chef’s Table series for Netflix. The team, including DP Bryant Fisher, shot From Dock To Dish over the course of two days using pre-production units loaned from Canon. In this interview producer Fried and DP Fisher talk about the camera and their experience shooting the video. Filmmaker: How did you become involved in this project? Fried: Canon approached me to see if I had any ideas for a short […]
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Cinematographer Lucas Alvarado-Farrar on Shooting Whose Streets?
Opening today in theaters is Sabaah Folayan’s Whose Streets?, co-directed by Damon Davis. Both visceral and thoughtful, it looks back at the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in September, 2014, capturing all the turbulence and outcry of the moment before moving forward and following the activist energies ignited by the event. There’s archival and citizen-shot material, most only on cell phones, in the movie, but also expertly-captured footage of the original protests and following actions shot by the film’s DP, Lucas Alvarado-Farrar. Here, in an interview conducted just prior to the film’s premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film […]
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Color Grading with the Blackmagic Micro Panel
I’m a video editor, not a color grader, but for most projects I have to do my own color adjustments, and I’ve been using three-way color correction tools to manipulate video color since the days of Final Cut Pro 5. When you first start playing with a three-way color corrector it can be both fun and very disorienting. Small adjustments in color can look right at first, then look horribly wrong when compared to another scene. It can be easy to know what you want, but very hard sometimes to get “there.” In short, color correction is hard. It’s part […]
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“Think About Baldwin’s Words”: DP Henry Adebonojo on I Am Not Your Negro
Begun as a recollection of Medger Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House tells the story of race in America. Director Raoul Peck used this manuscript as the basis for his film I Am Not Your Negro, currently available on Amazon Prime. Though primarily composed of archival film and still images, it also includes several sequences specifically shot for the film. Director of photography Henry Adebonojo talks about the sequences he shot for the film. Filmmaker: How did you get involved with this project? Adebonojo: Raul’s brother Ebert contacted me. He set up a meeting […]
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Kafka, Renoir and the 99 Percent: Ten Thoughts about Twin Peaks: The Return
“…there would remain the terrified feeling of the return.” — Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond. 1. Whatever else you say about Twin Peaks: The Return, it seems that to talk about it, if you are in good faith, you must begin by talking about the difficulty of talking about it. 2. Twin Peaks: The Return issues some fairly unique challenges to summary or description. It is difficult to describe what is happening in the story, if there truly is a story, if one of its many threads has some kind of priority over the rest. The original series had, […]
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4 Days in France and This Time Tomorrow: Limited Release Friday x 2
There’s a critical cliche often lobbed at limited-screen-time players who make big impressions: that they seem to “have their own lives that go on before and after the movie.” Generally speaking, this doesn’t mean anything more than that characters have been written and performed in such a way that they don’t come off as crude ciphers merely delivering exposition or enabling plot pivots, but this really does apply in a meaningful way to Jerome Reybaud’s 4 Days in France. The title is literal: one morning, Pierre (Pascal Cervo) wakes up and, for no apparent reason, leaves the apartment he shares with […]
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Alexandre Rockwell on Restoring and Preserving the Unique Black and White of In the Soup
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Alexandre Rockwell‘s landmark indie In The Soup, which is currently crowdraising funds for a badly needed restoration and re-release. We’re happy to share this interview with Rockwell, conducted by Factory 25’s Matt Grady. Click here to learn more and check out the Kickstarter campaign, and here for a video interview for more from Rockwell. What’s so unique about how you made In the Soup? One of the most defining things about In the Soup is its look. The stellar cinematography of Phil Parmet comes across in a rich, high-contrast look, deeply saturated blacks and brilliant […]
