Luís Azevedo: In this video essay we look at how Wes Anderson’s style has changed since making his first animation feature The Fantastic Mr Fox. Featuring films such as Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Isle of Dogs.
See also: The Art of Storytelling: Free online course from Pixar and Khan Academy
Vice News: These promos are “that one form of advertising that you actually want more of,” explains Jon Penn, CEO of the National Research Group. And thanks to an increase in online availability, they’re also easier to find, watch, rewatch, analyze and share theories about.
This trailer boom has lead to an increase in the number of trailers being cut and a robust job market for professional trailer makers. More work can mean more competition, too, as a studio will often hire several vendors to work on the same trailer, picking their favorite as the face of their film’s campaign. That means trailer makers are constantly one-upping each other to be the most eye-catching and innovative of the bunch.
See also: How to make a blockbuster movie trailer and other posts tagged ‘trailers’.
Film Courage: What is a high concept movie idea? It’s something that has been brought up a handful of times in our interviews. We know it can be an elusive topic. Here is the best of what we have, hope you find it helpful.
Douglas Trumbull painstakingly crafted the visual effects for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Faced with an impossible timeline, him and his team completed more composites in six months than both Star Wars & Close Encounters of the Third Kind combined.
The first Star Trek film is often jokingly referred to as ‘The Slow Motion Picture’, and this sequence revealing the refitted Enterprise for the first time is by any reasonable standards hugely overlong. But honestly… I love it!
See also: Other posts tagged ‘Star Trek’
The Collection is a short documentary about two friends, DJ Ginsberg and Marilyn Wagner, and their discovery of an astonishing and unique collection of movie memorabilia, comprised of over 40,000 printer blocks and 20,000 printer plates used to create the original newspaper advertisements for virtually every movie released in the United States from the silent period through 1984, when newspapers stopped using the letterpress format.
The collection, which spans nearly the entire history of the film industry from the silent era to 1984, was recently appraised at ~$10 million and is available for acquisition. (via Kottke)
What appeals to me about this story is less the collection itself, and more the opportunity to enjoy a project like this! To unpack all of these plates, clean them, print them, catalog them… Fun! One day I hope I make a similar discovery.
A video essay exploring how Star Wars’ editors recut and rearranged Star Wars: A New Hope to create the cinematic classic it became.
This RocketJump video essay has been doing the rounds, but it’s well worth watching if you haven’t seen it. It is full of examples that demonstrate the power of editing and includes some quality Star Wars trivia and fascinating deleted scene footage.
Alan Warburton: It’s 2017 and computer graphics have conquered the Uncanny Valley, that strange place where things are almost real… but not quite. After decades of innovation, we’re at the point where we can conjure just about anything with software. The battle for photoreal CGI has been won, so the question is… what happens now?
The future of visual effects in films, TV, and VR; from crossing the uncanny valley in human animation, to light-field camera technology that will change the way moving images are captured.
The Royal Ocean Film Society: I’ve been asked a lot what the process of making these essays is like, but rather than just droll on about recording voiceover, late night editing sessions, and falling into despair upon seeing the first cut, I want to take these few minutes to talk about how that working process has evolved creatively over the past year, and about where I’m trying to take these essays in the future.
kaptainkristian: A look at the hidden visual effects work of David Fincher’s filmography.
I knew that Fincher used a lot of CGI, but I had no idea how far he had taken this trickery. It’s hugely effective stuff.
This Guy Edits: “The Room” by Tommy Wiseau is one of the best movie experiences you’ll ever have. I’m nerding out on Wiseau’s blocking, but there’s so much more to his genius. I truly am a big fan.
Also by This Guy Edits: Why Video Essays are just plain AWESOME →
You won’t hear the “Star Wars” theme in “Rogue One,” but the newest movie’s score does pack a bunch of other little musical references to the original saga. And if you reeeaaally strain your ears, you might actually hear that main theme after all. (via digg)
See also: Lord Of The Rings: How Music Elevates Story — Evan Puschak talks about Howard Shore’s use of leitmotifs.
TechCrunch: Pixar’s previous Khan Academy courses include topics like virtual cameras, effects and animations, but this is the first to focus on the less technical aspects of movie creation.
Chez Lindsay: I wanted to do a brief overview of three non-dialogue elements from Mad Max: Fury Road — The silver spray, Max’s blood and Max’s boot. Your basic narrative planting and payoff will include a setup, a reminder, and the payoff.
See also: Other posts on this blog about Fury Road
“Slice Of Life” is an original short Science Fiction film set in the Blade Runner universe.
While I’m not convinced that this will be a succesful a tonal match for Blade Runner, it has certainly nailed that 80s dystopian look. Most interestingly, this film is being made using old-school special effects techniques, like miniatures, matte paintings and rear projections.
For the huge advertising billboards we wanted to use rear projections. In a way because that’s how it was done in the 80’s, but also because if you film something with a camera it’s going to look much better than if it was added digitally. So we needed to design and animate a dozen of different advertisements, and then we project them on the buildings. It can’t get more analogue than that.
The Croatian filmmakers are uploading video production diaries as they go.
(via The Verge)
Slice Of Life is an original short Science Fiction film set in the Blade Runner universe.
Filmmaker IQ: Explore the role of music in film from it’s importance in silent film to the elements and tools that modern composers use to create music for the silver screen. See how minor changes in momentum, depth and power can drastically alter the feel of a scene.
These creative movie posters are made by recreating a film’s set design in miniature.
Prints are available on Etsy and Amazon. (via ARCHatlas)
See also: The man who made some of cinema’s most iconic movie titles & these wonderful animated movie posters by Pablo Fernández Eyre.
These creative movie posters are made by recreating a film’s set design in miniature.
Nerdwriter: Today I want to look at how Sherlock gets from point A to point B－from problem to solution; mystery to clarity－in one of the show’s most extraordinary visual revelations. It’s a sequence that lasts 3 minutes and 42 seconds with a fresh, weird idea in almost every beat.
Will Schoder explains Dan Harmon’s story circle. (via Kottke)
Previously on this blog: Dan Harmon’s 8 point story structure, in text form.
Lewis Bond takes a detailed look at the history and application of editing in film.
If there were one technique that distinguishes cinema, it’s the craft of editing.
See also: Editing as Punctuation in Film
Wolfcrow: In this video and article we’ll cover what shutter speeds and shutter angles are, how the shutter speed or shutter angle can be used to control motion and exposure, and which settings to use to get the “film look”.
This is how we’ve been programmed after more than a century of watching film.
I’ve posted quite a lot of Mad Max: Fury Road stuff on this blog (for which I make no apologies).
Every Frame a Painting is back with a new video about the use of ‘temp music’ in modern moviemaking, particularly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Tony Zhou: Off the top of your head, could you sing the theme from Star Wars? How about James Bond? Or Harry Potter? But here’s the kicker: can you sing any theme from a Marvel film? Despite 13 films and 10 billion dollars at the box office, the Marvel Cinematic Universe lacks a distinctive musical identity or approach. So let’s try to answer the question: what is missing from Marvel music?
Now You See It: Are jump scares cheap? Should we get rid of them? Short answer: No. They suck, but they have more potential than you may think.
Nat and Lo: After making (and uploading) videos to YouTube for about a year, we finally decided to go behind the scenes of YouTube and ask the YouTube engineers how YouTube actually works.
Despite whatever presets there are in Premiere, scene transitions are not limited to wipes, fades, or dissolves. Let’s examine the work of David Lean and see what unique ways we can find of cutting picture and sound together to make transitions really shine.
The Royal Ocean Film Society is a video essay series by Andrew Saladino devoted to the style, craft, and analysis of everything film.
Explore the origin story of Overwatch’s inquisitive transforming robot in our fifth animated short: The Last Bastion!
The Nerdwriter on uber-vlogger Casey Neistat.
“Though there are plenty of imitators, I think it’s pretty much impossible to duplicate the style of Casey Neistat.”
If you’ve never watched a Neistat video before, I recommend this recent installment.
It’s a fairly typical episode with an unexpected turn and the subtitles made me laugh out loud.
Academy Originals: Title designer Dan Perri explains how he designed movie titles for films such as “Star Wars,” “The Exorcist,” and “Raging Bull.”
(via Wired)
“The overused and unearned moment is DC’s greatest foe.”
And in this video The Auralnauts finally explain the Flash dream from Batman v Superman…
Batman V Superman tried setting up the new Justice League movie with some dream sequences, but they were… confusing. We help make sense out of The Flash sequence.
See also: Comparing the soundtracks of ‘Man of Steel’ and ‘Superman: The Movie’.
Sockrotation 