Columns
-
Managing Anamorphics in 16:9 and the HBO Learning Curve: DP Rachel Morrison on Confirmation
During our talk about her work on HBO’s Confirmation, cinematographer Rachel Morrison lamented that “as a DP you wish you had total freedom to tell whatever story you want to tell, however you want to tell it.” Of course, that’s not the reality of production. Parameters are always imposed – whether they are budgetary restrictions or technological specifications. Morrison talked to Filmmaker about working within her given parameters – including a 16:9 aspect ratio, losing the hero location shortly before production, and dealing with the garish decor of the early 1990s – to craft HBO’s reconstruction of the acrimonious Clarence […]
-
Unbuttoned: Maya Vitkova’s Viktoria
There is little navel-gazing in writer/director/co-producer Maya Vitkova’s Viktoria, in spite of the film’s specific focus and autobiographical elements. In fact, there is no navel at all on its principal protagonist, the young Viktoria (Daria Vitkova as a small child, Kalina Vitkova as a preteen and teenager, both nieces of the filmmaker). She is born in Bulgaria in 1979 without bellybutton or umbilical cord. Her birth falls on the anniversary of the Socialist Revolution, a pretext for the politically motivated anointment of the “Baby of the Decade” and adulation by the general population, at least until their system buckles. “We […]
-
Is Acting Really Just Being the Drunk Uncle Who Shows Up On the Couch with the Bag of Fritos? Andrew McCarthy on Directing TV
Two things distinguish director Andrew McCarthy’s television work: exceptionally loose, naturalistic performances, and a rigorously elegant sense of framing and blocking. An actor’s director in the best sense, in that he treats behavior as one component of a fully integrated, visually expressive whole, McCarthy’s episodes of any given series are almost always that program’s most emotionally and cinematically layered. Even on a show like The Blacklist that already has a strongly established visual style, McCarthy is able to integrate his own preoccupations with the preexisting framework to both serve the franchise and deepen it. (He also elicits delightful effects from […]
-
Through a Glass Darkly: Men & Chicken
I really wanted to be a Jew, and then I found out that I was really a Nazi, because my family is German. And that also gave me some pleasure. So, I, what can I say? I understand Hitler….How do I get out of this sentence? Okay, I am a Nazi. As for the art, I’m for (Nazi architect Albert) Speer. This is a mild example of the comments reported from the 2011 Cannes Film Festival by Jada Yuan in a May 18 Vulture article entitled “The 10 Most Controversial Things Lars Von Trier said at the Melancholia Press Conference.” After an […]
-
“All of a Sudden I Found Myself Creating Content on YouTube”: The Making of A Trip to Unicorn Island
Filmmaker and songwriter Scott David Winn was a working DP who turned himself into a YouTube star (ScottDW) before turning himself back into a filmmaker. In this interview he talks about making the documentary feature A Trip to Unicorn Island, which is about another YouTube star, Lilly Singh (known on YouTube as IISuperwomanII), going on her first tour. Filmmaker: How did you go from YouTube shorts to making a documentary film? Winn: Three years ago I was working as a director of photography, shooting commercials [and] music videos and I accidentally stumbled upon YouTube. I had a passion for coming […]
-
Spotlight: Gabriel Mascaro’s Neon Bull
“Sand that tail!” Iremar (rising star Juliano Cazare), a musky, melancholy young vaquero, or bull handler, is shouting at Ze (Carlos Pessoa), his flabby, more light-spirited compadre on the service crew at a vaquejada, a specialized rodeo popular in relatively impoverished northeastern Brazil. The crowd, comprised of local rural peasants whose taste and practice have evolved little beyond the age-old ways, gets all worked up watching two horsemen attempt to bring down by the tail an ornery animal bucking in a state only a little more frenzied than the one fans have entered. The game may be simple, but to […]
-
Collaborative Essay/Music Project March Sadness Enters its Final Four
With Paula Bernstein writing today about Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World, I was reminded to post about a cool internet essay/music project by Ander Monson with Megan Campbell, March Sadness. For those a bit blue, and no following college basketball — and, probably, more than a few who do — the month-long series has paired off sad songs for voters to up and downvote, mixing in essays on the music by Rick Moody, Juan Diaz, Megan Campbell and others. Explains Monson: So this March I’ve been running this project called March Sadness. Well, I’m already oversimplifying: we […]
-
DP Jeff Cutter on Shooting 10 Cloverfield Lane in Near-Sequence, Dragon vs. Alexa and Six Specific Shots
Because the wheels of the movie machine turn slowly, timeliness is not among cinema’s primary virtues. Thus when a movie reflects an aspect of the cultural zeitgeist, it’s either an act of Nostradamian foresight or sheer luck. I don’t know which is the case with 10 Cloverfield Lane, but there’s something about this tense three-hander—which finds a paranoid middle aged white man (John Goodman) fighting to preserve his notion of American ideals inside a bomb shelter alongside a young woman (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) who refuses to accept his envisioned role—that feels right at home in a world where a President […]
-
Lance Armstrong as Modern Crime Story: Stephen Frears on The Program
“When I’m out there, physically I’m not more gifted than anybody else. It’s just this desire. This hunger,” intones Ben Foster as Lance Armstrong in the opening narration of The Program. “My mom didn’t raise a quitter and I would never quit. That’s heart, man, that’s not physical. It’s not legs. It’s not lungs. That’s heart. That’s soul. That’s just guts.” That’s the great fallacy of the American underdog sports drama — if you have enough heart and enough guts, you can succeed. It’s the underlying myth of Rocky and even based-on-fact tales of athletic fortitude such as Hoosiers and […]
-
Blackmagic Ships URSA Mini 4.6K Camera Without Global Shutter
The Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K was supposed to ship back in October, but after encountering some engineering issues Blackmagic has finally announced that it is shipping, though minus one important feature: global shutter. In a press release announcing that the URSA Mini 4.6K and the Micro Cinema Camera are shipping, Blackmagic acknowledged that they had encountered problems with the global shutter in both cameras, though the problems were evidently different for each. Blackmagic decided to give up on the feature, in part because they think the key feature of the Mini 4.6K is really the high dynamic range, and when you […]
