In Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, Jason Schwartzman plays a precocious prep school student whose interests include staging age-inappropriate plays like Serpico. Rushmore’s crew had its own precocious teenager in 16-year-old Brandon Trost, who worked on the film as an assistant to his dad/special effects coordinator, Ron. “I grew up on set with my dad. I’ve never had a job outside of the film industry,” said Trost, who was working on set by the age of 12. “You would think that growing up in movies would ruin the magic for you, because you know everything that goes into putting a movie together. But […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 19, 2017Because 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 […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 23, 2016A few weeks back, I posted a breakdown of the camera packages selected by this year’s Oscar-nominated cinematographers. RED was nowhere to be found. After a long delayed release, the 6K RED Dragon finally hit shelves this summer alongside some pretty nice test footage from Mark Toia. Making another case for ARRI’s underling is some new airborne footage from Freefly, shot with a 11-16 mm lens. In places, the images are so clean, they almost look computer generated.
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 6, 2014Director and cinematographer Mark Toia at the RED User Forum has his hands on the new 6K RED Epic Dragon, and he calls it “the real deal,” writing, “It’s the first camera ever that I have used that captures exactly what I see with my own eye. Never have I seen this before!” From Toia’s post: The Red Dragon sensor has 3 F STOPS more than before. 1 in the hight lights which rolls over wonderfully !, 2 solid extra stops in the darks…. maybe 3 once the colour science has been perfected. But there is still noise, but nothing […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2013