35mm
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It’s a Small World: Sean Baker on The Florida Project, Shooting 35mm and Going Union
I experience a bit of a disconnect when setting up my interview with Sean Baker about his indelible new feature about childhood, The Florida Project. The publicist tells me to meet Baker at the storied Stonewall Inn, where, before me, Baker will be doing an interview about the iPhone. It takes me a second to piece that together, but then I get it — Baker’s last film, Tangerine, starred trans actors and was shot on the iPhone, which marks its 10th anniversary this September. Baker, I guess correctly, is being interviewed for some tech website’s history of the transformative tech […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 14, 2017 -
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 […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 1, 2017 -
“Was Everything in Focus?”: Wonder Woman DP Matthew Jensen on Shooting 35 and Digital and How Tequila Sunrise Inspired His Career
I have to admit I can no longer distinguish 35mm film from high end digital cameras when I go to the movies. I can spot 16mm or anamorphic lenses, but the line between digital and 35mm celluloid has become impossibly blurred. Wonder Woman cinematographer Matthew Jensen can still spot the subtleties, but for Jensen the aesthetics of film are only one of the reasons he enjoys working in that format. “It’s very hard to tell the difference, especially when you’ve gone through a DI (digital intermediate) process and you’re projecting digitally. We have some shots that are digital in Wonder […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jul 18, 2017 -
DP Sean Price Williams on Shooting 2-Perf 35mm for the Cannes Competition Film Good Time
“Hey, it’s me,” said Sean Price Williams as he walked up to me at the after-party for Josh and Benny Safdie’s simply fantastic Good Time in Cannes last week. It did take me a second to recognize Williams — cleanly shaven, in a spiffy tux and strolling around a Dior-sponsored event for a film in the Main Competition of the Cannes Film Festival. If Williams seemed like a bit of a happy anomaly there, it’s because, like Good Time itself, the DP has ascended to cinema’s most revered platform with work that’s wholly of a piece with the raw, street-level […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 30, 2017 -
The F Word: Five Reasons Film Is Still Relevant in a Digital World
I’ll be honest. I’d all but written film off, except for the few rolls that live in my Pen-F and my Mamiya RB67. In the days of the original RED, the Viper and VariCam, sure, video was a compromise. Those Kodak ads made sense. But now shooting a movie or a commercial on an ALEXA Mini shooting in ARRIRAW — I don’t feel that way anymore. The images are great. Better than great — they’re hard to break, and they grade well. And as film has faded from the independent-moviemaking scene, I can’t emphatically say I feel like I’ve lost something […]
by Sean Porter on Apr 13, 2017 -
Four on the Floor: The Quad Cinema Returns
Six years ago or so, when I was still a struggling freelance critic, a trip to NYC’s Quad Cinema was something to anticipate with dread. The theater had recently dipped its toe into four-walled exhibition, and much of what was on tap were films that should not have existed, the results of dumb money being thrown at terrible documentaries and even worse narratives. When the Quad closed in May 2015, it felt more like a mercy killing than anything else; its reopening this April starts a new, brighter chapter. The theater’s history as an institution of NYC filmgoing started in […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 13, 2017 -
~29 Movies Shot on 35mm Released In 2016
This is my third time rounding up the previous year’s US theatrical releases shot in 35mm, and this year’s number is substantively lower than 2014 (39) and 2015 (~64). This seems like an anomaly, not a permanent trend: following the high-profile push by J.J. Abrams et al. to force studios to pony up for a certain amount of Kodak celluloid for the forseeable future, the company seems solvent enough (and they’re bringing back Ektachrome!). Some celluloid regulars (Spielberg, Nolan, Abrams, Tarantino) sat the year out, while Woody Allen jumped to digital, and there are fewer straggler releases that were completed three […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 22, 2017 -
A New Kind of Magic: Douglas Trumbull on Magi, HFR and Dynamic Frame Rates
With the passing of Douglas Trumbull, the great visual effects pioneer, we’re reposting Sam May’s 2017 article from Filmmaker’s Summer, 2017 print edition on his innovative late-career work on high-frame-rate cinema. –Editor You might not recognize the name Douglas Trumbull, but you will certainly recognize his work. He is the man behind the special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and also the director of Silent Running and Brainstorm. In recent years, he has dedicated himself to “figuring out the future of cinema.” The result: Magi cinema, a means of shooting […]
by Sam May on Feb 8, 2017 -
“When I Shoot Film Today The Set Seems to Move Faster”: DP Nancy Schreiber on Moving from Film to Digital Throughout Her Career
When director of photography Nancy Schreiber receives the Presidents Award at the 31st annual ASC Awards this Saturday, she’ll make history as the first woman to be honored with the award. It’s an appropriate – some might say overdue – recognition of an innovator who has consistently broken new ground in the fields of documentary, narrative features, and television. An early proponent of digital technology (she won the cinematography prize at Sundance in 2004 for her mini-DV work on November), Schreiber is also a fierce advocate for celluloid who creates stunning, expressive images regardless of the format. Her range is second to […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jan 31, 2017 -
Dolby Atmos, Dr. Strange, Laser Projectors and True Blacks
I’d seen none of the Marvel movies outside the Iron Man trilogy and wasn’t planning to dive into the MCU with Dr. Strange. But positive early responses piqued my interest, and then I got a curious invitation to a screening preceded by a technical demonstration of the Dolby Atmos sound system. Never having gotten the financial willpower together to shell out the super-premium price to check out what 128 channels of sound (including speakers on the ceiling), it seemed worth a listen. The presentation turned out not to be about just Dolby Atmos but the Dolby Cinema, a package deal theater space you can currently only track down […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 7, 2016
