Spring 2013
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Secrets of the Glam Squad: Inside the World of Film Hair and Makeup Departments
You’re the producer of a low-budget movie, and, as usual, there isn’t enough money. Each department is straining against their budgets, and you don’t want the production value of the film to falter. So you are forced to prioritize. More lights? Well, that’s hard to argue with — the movie has to look good. Another van? No way around that; you have to get people to the next location in time. But makeup and hair needs a space heater? Um … can’t they just put on sweaters? “If the electric department says they need two hours, no one questions it,” […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Apr 23, 2013 -
Caught On Film
In Medan, Indonesia, when the government was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar Congo was one of many small-time gangsters who hawked movie tickets and plotted petty crimes in front of cinemas showing American movies. He and his buddies, who translate “gangster” as meaning “free men,” were enlisted as death squads after Communists cut off imports of U. S. films, such as their beloved Elvis Presley musicals. More than a million intellectuals, ethnic Chinese and alleged Communists and leftists were murdered. The “movie theater gangsters” were always eager to dance across the road to garrote an alleged Communist or […]
by Ray Pride on Apr 23, 2013 -
Pod Wants to Know You
Cinematic innovation is often driven by creative needs. The desire to help viewers connect to stories has resulted in the development of new camera systems, visual effects processes and advancements in audio capture and presentation. Stanley Kubrick’s determination to shoot by candlelight, in order to be authentic to the 18th-century setting of Barry Lyndon, birthed the Zeiss high-speed prime lens. A frustration with the state of theatrical sound in the early 1980s inspired George Lucas to develop THX to ensure pristine audio playback in theaters. When James Cameron wanted a realistic look for Pandora in Avatar, he innovated “performance capture” […]
by Lance Weiler on Apr 23, 2013 -
Berlin International Film Festival 2013
It was the festival of bear traps, digital ghosts and love battles. The 63rd Berlinale featured a strong competition lineup bolstered by great new films from Jafar Panahi, Denis Côté, Hong Sang-soo and Steven Soderbergh, none of which received major awards. However, Côté’s Vic+Flo Saw a Bear picked up a Silver Bear, known as the Alfred Bauer Prize, which, if you examine its history, has a better track record than the more questionable Golden Bear. Last year, this prize “for a feature film that opens new perspectives” went to Miguel Gomes’ Tabu. One of the best Canadian films in recent […]
by Adam Cook on Apr 23, 2013 -
Load & Play
Side Effects Open Road – May 21 Perhaps Steven Soderbergh’s swan song as a theatrically distributed director (his Liberace biopic with Michael Douglas and Matt Damon will premiere on HBO this spring), Side Effects is a masterfully made noir thriller, although one that, at least initially, obscures its genre coding by deploying a setup that has “mental illness TV movie of the week” written all over it. Rooney Mara is a depressed, downwardly mobile young woman whose formerly high-rolling financier husband (Channing Tatum) went to jail for insider trading. When she goes on some new antipsychotic for her clinical depression […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 23, 2013 -
Relative Truths
Over the course of two narrative features, and now a documentary, Sarah Polley has made a habit of taking on unexpected subjects, all the while managing to produce a remarkably consistent body of work. Polley’s films explore the vagaries of relationships and intimacy, and in particular, the challenges of marriage. Filled with tonal shifts and narrative reveals, Polley’s naturalism is always accompanied by flights of fancy and spontaneous moments of romance that may twist against the viewer’s sympathies. Her 2006 debut, Away from Her, stars two aging icons of cinema, Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent and the ever-radiant Julie Christie, as […]
by Paul Dallas on Apr 23, 2013 -
Super 8
1 This Long Century Tucked away in a remote corner of the Internet is THIS LONG CENTURY, a remarkable collection of artistic contributions from some of the great creative minds of our time. Founded by New Yorkers Stefan Pietsch and Jason Evans, the website gives its mission statement as: “Bringing together such intimate work as sketchbooks, personal memorabilia, annotated typescripts, short essays, home movies and near impossible to find archival work.” The more than 200 luminaries who have shared their work include Luc Sante, Vivienne Westwood, Richard Hell, Albert Maysles, Kelly Reichardt and Miklós Jancsó. 2 Drag City books Drag […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 23, 2013 -
Back to the Future with 4K: Large-Sensor Motion Picture Cameras in 2013
A motion picture camera used to be a light-sealed box with a strip of film running through it. Was it easy to thread? Did it run quiet? How bright was the viewfinder? Today’s cameras are exponentially more complex. They are literal bundles of separate technologies, each lurching forward at a different rate. To understand today’s cameras, you must understand the parts to understand the whole. This is my third annual overview of digital cinema cameras for Filmmaker, and it is being written in the run-up to NAB 2013 in Las Vegas, the world’s largest trade show devoted to digital video […]
by David Leitner on Apr 5, 2013
