Thursday, March 27, 2014

short film done with only ONE SHOT!

THE LAST TEN

short film with only one shot

Really good sound design, lighting, and I love the challenge of one shot.

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2014/03/27/the-last-ten/

Monday, March 24, 2014

Thoughts on casting

Casting 

Audience Remembers the Characters, Not the Camera Work

"The two most important elements of a movie are the story and the acting. I’ve already hit you over the head many times on the importance of developing the right idea, the process, and that writing is rewriting. So you’re all aware that everything begins with story. What happens when you have a great script and bad acting? Right, you have a bad film because untalented actors will kill good writing. I’ll take a good story with great acting over a great story with bad acting. Good acting can make good writing seem great. So that’s why I’m saying out of the big three, casting is the most critical."

-- Savoca , James  "How To Make a Feature Film For Under 25K " The New Gorilla. Kindle Edition. 


To read more,  click here:




Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Network

"But first, you've got to get mad! You've got to say I'm a human being goddamn it!"

Yes, the old mad as hell scene. Watched Network the other night. Wow. Have read the script and have watched this film many times over the years. Amazing. Here's a great clip, with great camera moving in on him and so good cut-aways to Faye.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE


Monday, March 17, 2014

perfectly framed shot!


Monica Vitti in Antonioni's L'eclisse.

Perfection. When do we see tree branches when looking at someone in real life? We don't. We see them face on. This angle is so great. She's framed perfectly. There's even a small triangle.

The beauty of the trees, their dark contrast to her. The telephone lines. The isolation and loneliness comes screaming through.


Wednesday, March 12, 2014

What is neorealism?

Created for Sight & Sound magazine // May 2013
“The only great problem of cinema seems to be more and more, with each film, when and why to start a shot and when and why to end it.” – Jean-Luc Godard

Great video essay on the American cut and the Italian cut of the same film. A must watch!

Click below to view:

Monday, March 10, 2014

Kubrick // One-Point Perspective

Yeah, the One-Point Perspective in cinema is interesting. In drawings, it's rather simple. But I think in film, in can be jarring and very much to the point, as you can see in this Kubrick series.

It's definitely a strong perspective, in the way he uses it. Really powerful.






Click on the below to watch an amazing collection of Kubrick One-Point Perspective shots:


Friday, March 7, 2014

Walter Murch: From The Godfather to The God Particle

Tomorrow at USC:

SCA Events

Walter Murch: From The Godfather to The 

God Particle

March 8, 2014, 2:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.
SCI 106, Interactive Media Building, 3470 McClintock Ave (corner of McClintock and 34th Street), Los Angeles, CA 90007

About the Masterclass

Join film editor and SCA Alumnus Walter Murch in this fascinating masterclass covering his body of work, including his new feature documentary Particle Fever, which screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2013 and won the Audience Award. Universally acknowledged as a master of picture editing and sound design, Murch has worked with, among others, director Francis Ford Coppola on such cinematic milestones as The ConversationThe Godfather III and III, and Apocalypse Now. From the point of view of someone who started working in theatrical features when computers were completely absent, to now 45 years later when they are omnipresent, Murch will explore the constants that nonetheless remain after the "bones" of celluloid and sprockets have dissolved away, and examine the salient technical, artistic, and philosophical differences between the post-production of a theatrical scripted film and a feature-length documentary.

About SCA Alumnus Walter Murch

Universally acknowledged as a master in his field, he is revered for his work as a film editor and sound designer, a term that he coined. Murch has worked with, among others, director Francis Ford Coppola on such cinematic milestones as The Godfather III and III, andApocalypse Now, for which he won his first Academy Award in 1979. He also worked on Anthony Minghella’s film The English Patientfor which he won an unprecedented double Academy Award in 1996 for Best Film Editing and Best Sound. He has also been nominated for Oscars for The Conversation, Julia, The Godfather: Part III, Ghost, and Cold Mountain. Murch has written a beautiful book on film editing, In the Blink of an Eye (2001).



Final Draft screenwriting contest

Big Break Contest - Now Open for Entries

If interested, click on link below:


Early Bird Deadline– $40 (Save up to $25!)

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Film Comment's 50 Best Films of 2013

1. Inside Llewyn Davis 
Joel & Ethan Coen, U.S.

History was brought to life in the top films in our 14th annual poll. The Coen Brothers’ portrait of a failed Sixties folk singer pulled ahead of Steve McQueen’s harrowing trip back to life under slavery. Not too far behind was The Act of Killing’s exposé of Indonesia’s thriving genocidal legacy, and Andrew Bujalski’s doubly retro experiment in old-school video Computer Chess (plus, further down, Sarah Polley’s tricky family-saga hybrid Stories We Tell). Immersion cinema of a more contemporary sort—fromLeviathan and Gravity, to the different deep ends of Spring Breakers and Upstream Color—also came on strong in a lineup featuring fewer foreign-language titles than usual. A note on the poll’s workings: over 100 North American colleagues ranked their favorites in two categories: 1) those that received theatrical runs and 2) those viewed this year but currently with no announced plans for U.S. theatrical distribution. For each ballot, a first-place choice was allotted 20 points, 19 for second, and so on.

For full list, click here:

http://filmcomment.com/entry/50-best-films-of-2013

HER #17? Oh well.

Los Angeles Turkish Film Festival

March 6th - 9th, 2014 at the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre 

And this Saturday, they're screening SHORT films!

Click link below for festival's site:

http://latff.org/category/uzun-metraj-en/film-2014-en/?lang=en

Monday, March 3, 2014

HER wins Best Screenplay

Great that a character driven, sensitive film won best screenplay. A script with real characters and real wants, real flaws, real troubles. Good news!

Oscars 2014: 'Her' wins for original screenplay

In the movie equivalent of hitting a home run on a first at-bat, Spike Jonze won the Academy Award for original screenplay on Sunday for “Her,” the first feature film script he wrote on his own.
Jonze’s sci-fi romantic dramedy follows a lonely writer (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with the disembodied voice of his computer operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). It beat out nominees from “American Hustle,” “Blue Jasmine,” “Dallas Buyers Club” and “Nebraska.”
Jonze shared screenwriting credit on his last movie, “Where the Wild Things Are,” with novelist Dave Eggers, and Jonze's earlier films -- “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation” -- were written by Charlie Kaufman. Until now, Jonze was distinguished more for his quirkily singular aesthetic than for his ability to write dialogue.
The filmmaker's Oscar arrives on the heels of wins for the “Her” script at the Golden Globes and the WGA Awards. It has also been recognized by the Critics' Choice Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle. Although he was nominated for an Academy Award for directing (1999’s “Being John Malkovich”), Jonze’s Oscar for “Her” stands as his first.


http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/moviesnow/la-et-mn-oscars-2014-her-wins-best-original-screenplay-20140302,0,2232179.story#ixzz2uv4vWKX0