Citizen Kane.”> Deep focus mise en scene from Citizen Kane. When it comes to a making a movie, the arrangement of a scene has a huge impact on the audience’s perspective. If the audience is intended to feel a particular emotion, or notice a particular detail, mise en scene visually does the work. Without putting proper…
Reports of the death of film may be greatly slightly exaggerated. Kodak has announced a partnership with Kickstarer which will see the former industry giant supplying free 35mm and super 16mm stock to selected feature film projects, correlated to the amount the project raises on the crowd-funding platform. Reports of the death of film may be greatly slightly exaggerated. Kodak has announced a partnership…
Aspiring screenwriters are often told that all their characters sound the same. The grandma sounds the same as the teenager. The professor sounds the same as the stripper, etc. The advice generally given to remedy this problem is to: “Give each character a unique voice, speech patterns, inflections, and vocab,” and / or, “Give each…
Filmmaker education has been a cottage industry for many years. There are a plethora of books on the subject and thousands of film schools around the world offering training in every aspect of the craft. But forging a career as a filmmaker is an individual path – no two people share the same route in….
The VFX reel shows a range of shots from the film and provides great insight into the blend of practical and digital effects the make up many of the sequences in the film. Needless to say… SPOILERS!
Kodak is probably the largest victim of the digital media revolution, famously missing the boat as the world shifted from an analogue film world (which Kodak dominated) to one made of CCDs and pixels. However film, at least in the motion picture arena, never completely went away, thanks to feverish support from advocates such as Quentin Tarantino…
In this featurette for the release of the film, Quentin Tarantino and others talk about the experience of shooting on 65mm and using the now rare Ultra Panavision aspect ratio.
The Film Theorists take a look at how Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Oscar-winner Birdman achieves the feel of being shot in one continuous take (when it wasn’t). If you’re interested in other truly long take films, check out the opening shot of Orson Welles’ 1958 thriller, Touch of Evil or Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 film, Russian Ark which is the real deal: shot in a single 96 minute Steadicam…
Screenplays are the all-important bedrock for any movie. Great filmmakers may be able to make improvements on the script during production, but it is difficult to overcome a weak foundation. Scripts, like all types of writing, are rarely, if ever, perfect on their first go, however. This is where rewrites come in. Ideally, scripts will emerge…
Anyone who’s worked on a creative project knows that one of the hardest things is managing the review and feedback process, particularly when you can’t always get everyone in the same room. Feedback and direction in emails or on the phone only goes so far. As always, it’s way more effective to be able to show someone what you…
Call sheets are the oil that keeps the machine moving smoothly during principal photography on any film project. While there are probably very few line producers or 2nd ADs who write out call sheets by hand these days, more often than not they are still printed and handed out each day. Or in a more…
There is a long history of literary writers crossing over into screenwriting, whether it be to adapt their own work, create something new, or adapt the work of others. Some of them have made this transition with great success, and have been able to translate their written voice into a visual medium. Many others, however, this transition…
