The Cannes Film Festival. The mere mention of this event conjures up images of red carpets, glittering premieres, and of course celebrity parties. Each year, the population of this small French town virtually triples overnight as movie fans, filmmakers, and of course the press, descend on the Riviera for a taste of the world’s most…
International co-production can be a powerful tool for closing the gap in the funding of your independent film production. International co-production is, in essence, when production companies from two or more countries unite to work on a single production. By doing so they share costs, mitigate risk, and most importantly, create a basis for the…
“Do I need a film permit” may be high up on your list of questions. Well, if you want to make sure everything is done by the book and avoid headaches or liability down the line, the answer is a resounding yes. Getting film permits or location releases represents a crucial part of pre-production for…
How do I define Cinematography? I can take the Google / Wikipedia definition of cinematography and describe it thus, ‘cinematography is the art and the science of recording light either electronically onto an image sensor or chemically onto film’. That is the literal definition of the word, but if we break down the word it…
New Zealand director Taika Waititi talks about success, failure, and how he deals with the ups and downs of pursuing a filmmaking career. Waititi’s credits include What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit, and Thor: Love and Thunder.
In this podcast, director Quentin Taratino talks about how he used music and sound to evolve the late 1960s feel for ‘Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood’. Listen to the podcast for free on Spotify
The deeply collaborative nature of filmmaking can be both beautiful and terrifying. When the chemistry is right, the crew is on their game and the creative juices are flowing, being on set is a high like nothing else. If, on the other hand, directions are unclear, departments are scrambling and frustrations start to build, being…
Sundance Film Festival marquee over the Egyptian Theater, Park City, Utah. Since it’s meteoric rise to prominence in the 1990s, the Sundance Film Festival has maintained its position as both America and the world’s premier event for independent film. Sundance now sits comfortably in the top five most prestigious film festivals (alongside Cannes, Venice, Toronto,…
Using a pair of publicly-available enhancement tools, artist Denis Shiryaev was able to take one the Lumeire Brothers’ most famous early works and present a convincing UHD version. The original footage, captured on the Lumiere’s pioneering cinematograph, was shot near their photographic factory in Paris in 1896. It achieved fame after its early presentations, as…
Virtual set technology has been around for a decade or more. But the biggest limitation has always been the need to put the sets into the shot during post. Not only does this make post longer and more expensive, it also makes it harder for the actors and onset crew to deliver realistic outputs. Case…
The perfect camera, the right lens, and the best lighting. All these elements play an essential role in the filmmaking process. None of them draw in an audience like sounds and effects. When we’re watching horrors, it’s the sound intensity that keeps us at the edge of our seats, alerting us to how close the…
In this profile SoundWorks Collection talks with Sound Designer Tom Myers of Skywalker Sound about his work on Pixar Animation’s latest film, Monster University. There are more great videos on the sound design for high-profile Hollywood films over at the awesome SoundWorks Collection website.
