Interviews
Interviews
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Opening Doors: Jessica Jones Creator Melissa Rosenberg
The more money involved in any industry, the more timid and conservative the financiers become about what they are willing to back. When deciding what to greenlight, they cling to outdated ideas of what audiences will want to watch, often lagging behind what the rest of us have always known: both men and women alike will watch, love and cheer a badass female protagonist. Props, then, to Netflix for recognizing that a series based on the Marvel character of Jessica Jones and created by Melissa Rosenberg could be fed to a hungry audience waiting like chicks with tiny beaks open […]
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The Jaunt ONE — Development of a VR Camera
The past year has seen a lot of development in VR cameras – cameras that can shoot 360-degree video. Offerings range from inexpensive rigs for mounting multiple GoPros to custom units that cost many thousands of dollars. It’s an interesting field for sports and experiences, though it remains to be seen how this will impact narrative film making. We recently spoke to Koji Gardiner, Jaunt’s Director of Hardware Engineering, about their Jaunt ONE camera. This is a single unit that contains 24 camera mechanisms. After two years of development the unit is now being used for a variety of production […]
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A Suburban Megachurch in John Hughes Territory: Stephen Cone on Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party
Simultaneously a rebellious yell against Christian authority and an appreciation for growing up with evangelical values, Stephen Cone’s Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is neither religious condemnation nor agitprop. Its title character is a gay teenager celebrating his birthday with friends and family; the film, unfolding over 24 hours, keenly observes how temptation and buried secrets can rise to the surface when theological and political debates make their presence known. A rather sexy movie — in part because premarital sex is presented as something risqué or taboo — Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is a beautifully rendered, impeccably scored experience that makes a profound, heady impact. There’s an interesting moment featuring a conversation […]
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5 Questions for Yosemite Writer/Director Gabrielle Demeestere
Distracted fathers and sons left to their own devices; father surrogates and the salve of friendship — these are the themes that circle around Gabrielle Demeestere’s lovely and composed feature debut, Yosemite, which opens today in New York from Monterey Media at the IFC Center. Based on two short stories by James Franco (taken from the same collection that led to the film Palo Alto), as well as Demeestere’s own original material, Yosemite is set in 1985, when pre-adolescent dangers are symbolized by mountain lions descending from the wilds into this Northern California town, and when father-son bonding trips into […]
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“Looking for False Performance Beats”: Editor Fred Raskin on The Hateful Eight
As the first film to be shot in the Ultra Panavision 70 format since Khartoum in 1966, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight has deservedly garnered a lot of attention for its cinematography; shot in an extra-wide aspect ratio on a 65mm negative, it’s undeniably a spectacular showcase for director of photography Robert Richardson’s visual gifts. Subtler, but perhaps even more impressive, is the contribution of editor Fred Raskin, who assembles the 2.76:1 images like a maestro of space, timing, and movement. At over three hours in its Christmas Day “roadshow” edition, The Hateful Eight doesn’t have an extraneous frame – […]
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“Front Street Gym is the Heartbeat of the Film”: Production Designer Hannah Beachler on Creed
When the original Rocky hit screens in December of 1976, the underdog tale’s titular pugilist was a slightly doughy, none-too-bright palooka who guzzled beer after fights and collected for a loan shark. Rocky even loses the climactic bout, but earns a personal victory by going the distance. In a decade cinematically defined by Travis Bickle, Deep Throat, and “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” that qualified as a rousing crowd pleaser. By the time Rocky IV arrived less than a decade later, Stallone’s southpaw was now a ripped, perfectly coiffed millionaire who practically ends the Cold War by breaking a hulking Soviet […]
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20 Years of Collaborating with Tarantino with Zero ADR: Production Sound Mixer Mark Ulano on The Hateful Eight
Few directors this side of Joseph Mankiewicz are as attentive to the clear, crisp presentation of dialogue as Quentin Tarantino, giving the always important role of production sound mixer even more weight on his sets. Since Jackie Brown in 1997, Tarantino has relied on Academy Award winner (for Titanic) Mark Ulano to capture his production sound. Tarantino’s latest, The Hateful Eight, represents some of Ulano’s finest work to date – which is saying something considering that he has over a hundred credits to his name, including The Master, Iron Man and Inglourious Basterds (for which he was nominated for another Oscar). […]
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A Neighborhood Movie Mentored by Spike Lee: Michael Larnell on Cronies
Michael Larnell grew his black-and-white debut feature Cronies through New York University’s Graduate Film program. Executive produced by NYU professor and project advisor Spike Lee, Larnell’s film follows three young men living in St. Louis as they discuss women, drugs, and other salacious topics of interest to innocently pass the time over a twenty-four hour period. A nonchalant, unassuming look at how men externalize their emotions, Cronies’ pleasures derive from its layered, amusing screenplay, documentary-inspired character interviews, and conflicted study of how far one will go to protect their brethren. As Cronies opens this Friday in IFP’s Screen Forward screening series, I spoke with Larnell about the decision […]
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This Animated Documentary Won the IDA Award for Best Short
Last Day of Freedom is a hand-drawn animated documentary which chronicles Bill Babbitt’s relationship with his mentally ill brother, Manny, a Vietnam veteran with PTSD who was sentenced to the death penalty after murdering a woman. Using a confessional format to tell a compelling story encompassing the treatment of veterans, PTSD, mental illness, the criminal justice system, racism and family, the film won the Best Short Award at at the International Documentary Association’s IDA Awards Saturday night. Directed by Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, Last Day of Freedom has taken top prizes at a number of festivals, including the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, where it won the Jury […]
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Why Ed Lachman Chose to Shoot Carol in Super 16mm
Carol is getting raves not just for Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett’s subtle performances, but also for Ed Lachman’s cinematography, which was inspired by mid-century street photographers such as Ruth Orkin, Esther Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier. In a first-person story for Indiewire, the veteran cinematographer, who has worked with Werner Herzog, Sofia Coppola, Todd Solondz, Robert Altman and Steven Soderbergh, writes about why he and director Todd Haynes chose to shoot the film in 16mm in order to achieve the look of 1952. “We wanted to reference the photographic representation of a different era,” Lachman said. “They can recreate grain digitally now, but […]
