Fall 2014
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Editing Today: Beyond the NLE
David Lean once called editing the soul of filmmaking. Today it’s more like the Mission Control. You’ve got to understand pixel counts, bit rates, bit depth, color sampling, sampling frequencies, frame rates, codecs, RAW files, deBayering, audio channels, waveform displays, vectorscopes, audio levels, LUTs, proxies, file-wrappers, Log gammas, XML, titling, effects — need I go on? Arcane stuff that used to be the domain of video engineers with EE degrees. To ensure a smooth and efficient postproduction “workflow” (term borrowed from I.T.), you must know about cameras too: which frame sizes they capture, which codecs they employ, which gammas they […]
by David Leitner on Oct 20, 2014 -
Charting the Course: Data Visualization in Documentary Film
“Every single pixel should testify directly to content.” So says Edward Tufte, a professor emeritus at Yale and pioneer in the field of data visualization. And if this emphasis on clarity and, essentially, story is true in the world of static infographics, it’s exponentially so when content comes at 24 frames per second. In the short PBS film The Art of Data Visualization, Tufte reaches far back in time, before the mundane pie charts and bar graphs that school children are taught to decipher, finding the beginnings of data visualization in stone-age cartography and the rise of science during the […]
by Randy Astle on Oct 20, 2014 -
In the Eye of the Storm: Laura Poitras on CITIZENFOUR
Red tail lights glow in an inky black tunnel. In voiceover, a woman’s voice softly reads. “Laura,” the email begins. The sender writes of encryption, passwords, the government documents he intends to send and the reason he addressed this email to her. “You’ve been selected,” Laura speaks, as the sender goes on to explain that every phone call she makes, trip she embarks on, person she befriends will be observed, recorded, surveilled. “This is a story few but you can tell.” With this cool, measured voiceover, drawing us into her life at the moment it changed forever, documentary filmmaker Laura […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2014 -
Graphic Design: Jeff Soyk on Hollow
Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s award-winning interactive documentary Hollow employs a particularly bold use of graphics, using them to provide bursts of information quickly, to frame interview material and to even provoke calls to action. Of her approach, McMillion says, “I would provide photographs and quotes [to designer Jeff Soyk], and we would talk about what ways they would work in the piece. And then he’d do the graphic design. Below, Soyk talks about the above data visualization. Jeff Soyk, co-producer and lead designer: When reviewing the project assets, I came across Elaine’s photo of the abandoned police department in War, W. […]
by Randy Astle on Oct 20, 2014 -
Graphic Design: Joshua Ligairi and Darin Anderson on Plan 241
Plan 241 is an in-production, feature-length documentary about the FBI investigation into Alaska militia leader Schaeffer Cox, who was convicted of stockpiling illegal weapons and conspiracy to murder federal agents. From filmmaker Joshua Ligairi, it tells a human story enriched by the copious documentation and statistics generated by a criminal case. Below, Ligairi discusses his decision to incorporate graphics in his documentary, and designer/animator Darin Anderson elaborates upon the specific approach. Joshua Ligairi, director: The people who make the most interesting characters aren’t always the best choice for delivering information in a clear and concise way. Text, when created with […]
by Randy Astle on Oct 20, 2014 -
Fear of a Black Campus: Justin Simien on Dear White People
Justin Simien’s stylized comedy Dear White People takes place at the fictional Ivy League Winchester University, focusing primarily on four students but also capturing within its satiric gaze the campus as social microcosm. Each of the four undergrads takes on a different strategy for dealing with being a “black face in a white place.” Sam White (Tessa Thompson) is a biracial beauty who rocks a Lisa Bonet look. Perhaps in response to her own white privilege, she is trying on a radical identity: the school Angela Davis with a radio show called “Dear White People.” On her show, she leans […]
by Miriam Bale on Oct 20, 2014 -
A Roof over Their Heads: Jesse Moss on The Overnighters
When Jesse Moss headed to North Dakota to make The Overnighters, it was truly a one-man endeavor. He took no crew with him. He was on his way to meet Pastor Jay Reinke, who had been giving shelter to the many men who uprooted themselves and made their way to Williston, N. D., in hopes of finding work in the town’s booming oil industry. With so many desperate souls appearing in Williston, resources to feed and house them were quickly drying up. Soon, the offices, floor space and pews of Reinke’s church were filled with itinerant workers, and town residents […]
by Alix Lambert on Oct 20, 2014 -
Glory at Sea: Mike Leigh on Mr. Turner
Within a career that’s now in its fifth decade, Mr. Turner is only the third period film Mike Leigh has made, but, ironically, it’s the first he’s shot digitally. The picture captures the last 25 years of revered British painter J.M.W. Turner’s life — already famous, his days are filled with awkward visits from an ex-wife and daughters, confrontations with both artistic rivals and lesser painters, and the salon visits that constitute the business of being an artist in the mid-1800s. Timothy Spall deservedly won the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his turn as the eccentric Turner, who walks […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Oct 20, 2014 -
Positive Trauma: Editor Mathilde Bonnefoy on CITIZENFOUR
Paris-born editor Mathilde Bonnefoy has criss-crossed documentary and fiction, working with directors such as Wim Wenders (The Soul of a Man) and, most prominently, Tom Tykwer. Her first feature editing credit is the director’s time-bending international hit Run Lola Run, and she has continued to work with Tykwer on Heaven, Three and The International, among others. Long based in Berlin, Bonnefoy, as she relates below, was sought after by Poitras because of her work on Tykwer’s films and the “thriller” nature of CITIZENFOUR’s source material. Below, in the final days of post-production, I speak to Bonnefoy about encrypted workflows, working […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2014 -
Digital Tableaux: Cinematographer Dick Pope on Mr. Turner
“Turner was progressive,” says cinematographer Dick Pope. “He was not a Luddite. He was very forward-looking. And if he was making the decision today, whether to shoot on film or digital, with all the tools and control of the palette [digital] offers, Mike and I felt that he would choose digital.” “Mike,” of course, is Mike Leigh, and “Turner” is J.M.W. Turner, the 19th-century painter of roiling seas and fiery vistas containing a near-religious quality of apocalypse. Together, Leigh and Pope have made Mr. Turner, a rare artist biopic that imbues within its visual strategies a sense of its subject’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2014
