Akira Kurosawa - blocking and camera

The scene below is from  The Bad Sleep Well  

Kurosawa and Mifune - 2 masters.

It is a video essay by Tony Zhou and it's very effective. When watching, I would add that the simplicity of the coverage serves the scene so well. By not covering the scene in the traditional way: CS/MS/WS, there is more tension in the scene as we feel like we are a part of the interior, right there, seeing/hearing/feeling what happens. Which is what we all want to do; engage the audience in the highest manner we can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGc-K7giqKM#t=127

women in film

For those of you in NYC, try and catch this. One hip woman!

Films by Jessie Maple in Lincoln Center Series

The work of Jessie Maple, a filmmaker and the first African-American woman to join New York’s camera operators union in 1975, will be celebrated on Monday with the program “An Evening With Jessie Maple” at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 West 65th Street). Ms. Maple, who wrote a book, “How to Become a Union Camerawoman,” about her life and hard-fought battle to join the union, directed two narrative features.

When she couldn’t find a theater to hold the premiere of her first film, “Will” (1981), the story of a former athlete recovering from drug addiction, she and her husband, Leroy Patton, a cinematographer, founded the Harlem independent cinema 20 West in 1982. “Will” has been called “the first post-civil rights feature film directed by a woman.” The second feature, “Twice as Nice” (1989), is an intimate story of twin basketball players.

There will be a Q. and A. with Ms. Maple. Both features will be shown as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s series “Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986.”

Feature film shot on iPhone premiers at Sundance

Here's a real example of how to be the New Gorilla and shake the tree!

How one of the best films at Sundance was shot using an iPhone 5S

Tangerine, a breakout hit from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, is full of surprises. There’s the subject matter: transgender prostitutes working in a not-so glamorous part of Hollywood. And there are the characters: flinty, funny, nobody’s victim. But the story behind the camera is as surprising as what’s in front of it. Particularly because the camera used to shoot Tangerine was the iPhone 5S.

Plenty of amateur films have been shot using iPhones, but by all reports, this is the first movie at the Sundance Film Festival to be shot almost entirely on an Apple device. It was a decision that indie writer and director Sean Baker made to accommodate the film’s small budget. But you’d never guess the camera, to look at it: Tangerine was shot in a widescreen, 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and its camera zooms through the streets of LA with a fluidity you’d never expect from a handheld device. And yet despite his camera of choice, Baker says the iPhone made for a good partner. "It was surprisingly easy," Baker says. "We never lost any footage."

So how do you make a Sundance movie for iPhone? You need four things. First, of course, the iPhone (Baker and his team used three). Second, an $8 app called Filmic Pro that allowed the filmmakers fine-grained control over the focus, aperture, and color temperature. Third, a Steadicam. "These phones, because they’re so light, and they’re so small, a human hand — no matter how stable you are — it will shake. And it won’t look good," says Baker. "So you needed the Steadicam rig to stabilize it."

For full article:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/28/7925023/sundance-film-festival-2015-tangerine-iphone-5s

Cameras Used by Sundance 2015 Filmmakers & Why They Chose Them

We can probably all agree that every film requires a different set of tools.

This is certainly clear at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, with films being shot on anything from an iPhone 5S, a burgeoning arsenal of Blackmagic cameras, to regular (that is, 4:3) 16mm. Although all feature films eventually ended up as digital in the festival's first ever year with no 35mm masters, there's no shortage of different shooting formats. Here is a smattering of excerpts from our soon-to-be released video interviews with Sundance filmmakers, compiled to give you insight into not only what they shot on, but why. 

http://nofilmschool.com/2015/01/cameras-filmmakers-2015-sundance-film-festival

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles

Support your local filmmakers! And these are SHORT FILMS!

http://www.newfilmmakersla.com/about-us/newsletter/

Director Richard Linklater for a Special Live Q&A!

BOYHOOD & DAZED AND CONFUSED

Join Award-Winning Director Richard Linklater (BEFORE SUNRISE, BEFORE SUNSET, BEFORE MIDNIGHT, BOYHOOD) for a Special Live Q&A!

Friday, February 6, 2015 - 7:30 PM - Double Feature:  

BOYHOOD

2014, IFC Films, 165 min, USA, Dir: Richard Linklater

Among the most remarkable films of recent memory, BOYHOOD was shot over a 12-year period to follow the fractured family life of Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he moves from grade school to college. As his divorced parents, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are equally affecting despite taking different approaches to raising kids. Impressive as the logistical hurdles Linklater and his team surmounted, what’s most memorable about this coming-of-age drama is how right it gets the little moments of this boy’s life - a sad stare as mom drives him away from his hometown for the last time, an encouraging note passed to him at his new school, or an early morning walk with a girlfriend. Discussion following with filmmaker Richard Linklater.

DAZED AND CONFUSED

1993, Gramercy Pictures, 102 min, USA, Dir: Richard Linklater

The last day of class at a Texas high school in 1976 brings together jocks, nerds and stoners in this cult teen comedy set to a classic rock soundtrack. Jason London, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich and Renée Zellweger are among the students gearing up for the summer; Matthew McConaughey is unforgettable as the older guy who still parties with the kids.

website

TICKETS:

$11 General, $9 Student/Senior, $7 Member. 

No vouchers accepted.Purchase advance tickets online on www.fandango or come in person to the box office.

buy tickets 

AERO THEATRE 

1328 Montana Avenue 

Santa Monica, CA 90403

STANLEY KUBRICK SHOOTS THE N.Y.C. SUBWAY, 1946

In the summer of 1945, Stanley Kubrick, many years before he was the acclaimed director of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, had a series of photographs published in LOOK magazine, a competitor to LIFE. He was just 16 years old. Thus would begin a relationship with the magazine that would last several years, until he began making movies in earnest around the age of 23, in the early 1950s. 

For full article:

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/stanley_kubrick_shoots_the_n.y.c._subway_1946