Tag: film production

RocketJump Film School breaks down film cuts

Our staff will be out for a few days for a library conference, so we want to leave you with something substantive to chew on for the week. Enter RocketJump Film School, a film production education group that has been releasing dense, informative videos about specific aspects of filmmaking. It gets pretty wonky; see their … Continue reading “RocketJump Film School breaks down film cuts”

Our staff will be out for a few days for a library conference, so we want to leave you with something substantive to chew on for the week. Enter RocketJump Film School, a film production education group that has been releasing dense, informative videos about specific aspects of filmmaking. It gets pretty wonky; see their video about the difference in camera lens quality for an example.

RJFS’s latest video, embedded above, is an 11-minute crash course on cuts, wipes and transitions. This is an excellent overview of the types of cuts filmmakers use and, more importantly, why they use them. Even regular movie fans will learn something from here. Take “cutting on action,” for instance: it’s a fairly common trick to enhance the action of a movie, and it can help your appreciation of film to look for those techniques.

The entire RocketJump Film School video collection is worth watching if you want to dip you toes into learning about film production, and even for those who are just fans, they’ll help you appreciate the film a little more.

Apply for a paid internship on the set of Veep in DC!

Attention to AU film students! You might be aware that a whole bunch of productions film in DC, and you might have wondered how to become involved in one of them. The opportunity is finally here: HBO is taking applications for a week-long production assistant training program on the set of Veep, filming in DC … Continue reading “Apply for a paid internship on the set of Veep in DC!”

Attention to AU film students! You might be aware that a whole bunch of productions film in DC, and you might have wondered how to become involved in one of them.

The opportunity is finally here: HBO is taking applications for a week-long production assistant training program on the set of Veep, filming in DC at the end of this month. DC’s Motion Picture and Television Development points out that this is not a job, but instead, it’s a paid seven-day internship “designed to provide career exposure in a limited time frame.” Working on the set of the one TV’s biggest comedies is an excellent opportunity for an up-and-coming SOC student – and there’s money, too.

We’re sharing this now because the deadline to apply is this Wednesday. Get thee to the program’s website and fill out the application ASAP. HBO seems to be hiring for production, art, and props, so this should be tantalizing for more than just future cinematographers or key grips.

How We Made looks at the inauspicious production of My Beautiful Laundrette

We hadn’t stumbled across it until now, but since 2012, The Guardian has been publishing “How We Made,” a weekly column that invites creative types to talk about the history of their works, including films and television shows. This leads to all sorts of great anecdotes, often about the emotional, personal side of production. This … Continue reading “How We Made looks at the inauspicious production of My Beautiful Laundrette”

We hadn’t stumbled across it until now, but since 2012, The Guardian has been publishing “How We Made,” a weekly column that invites creative types to talk about the history of their works, including films and television shows. This leads to all sorts of great anecdotes, often about the emotional, personal side of production.

This week, The Guardian rounded up the director and co-star of My Beautiful Laundrette, a groundbreaking romance story that tackled the class, race, and gender identity climate of 1980s England. The filmmaker and actor reveal tidbits about the budget and filming process, but most interestingly, they both admit that they never expected the film to find much success or audience. Director Stephen Frears assumed the film would go direct to television because “Who in their right mind,” he recalls, “was going to go to the cinema to see a film about a gay Pakistani running a launderette?”

The film went on to be a classic, and the fact that no one would even bat an eye at My Beautiful Laundrette‘s themes or political humor today speaks to its importance. We always enjoy hearing human element stories like these, and if you do too, consider adding “How We Made” to your regular reading rotation.

My Beautiful Laundrette is frequently reserved for class use, but given its popularity, we have a copy you can always take out of the library (HU DVD 3451*).

The Hobbit featurette shows the emotion toll of filmmaking

Campus is mostly deserted today, what with everyone leaving early for Thanksgiving. Enjoy the trip! This happens to be the time of year when courses assign final projects, and for film students, that might mean producing a short or a demo reel. It can be stressful… but you don’t know the agony of filmmaking until … Continue reading “The Hobbit featurette shows the emotion toll of filmmaking”

Campus is mostly deserted today, what with everyone leaving early for Thanksgiving. Enjoy the trip!

This happens to be the time of year when courses assign final projects, and for film students, that might mean producing a short or a demo reel. It can be stressful… but you don’t know the agony of filmmaking until you’ve seen director Peter Jackson behind the scenes on The Hobbit.

BoingBoing recently found seven startling minutes of footage on the Blu-ray of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies showing the improvised, chaotic production of the final chapter of the trilogy. The crew finished sets, costumes, and scripts at the last possible moment, shooting battle scenes with no context and eventually delaying filming for a year. This speaks to the troubled final state of the films, but the most distressing part is Peter Jackson’s visible fatigue.

In every shot, Jackson looks near-death – haggard, sad, tired, and reportedly going on only three hours of sleep a night. At one point, he took an extended lunch break just to figure out how to make the next scenes work. Look at his thousand-yard stare: if The Hobbit didn’t break Jackson, it came close.

So, the film project you’re working on over break will not be as stressful as The Battle of the Five Armies. And it definitely won’t let down Andy Serkis as much.

A grueling look at making The Simpsons, start to finish

Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. South Park can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of The Simpsons have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to … Continue reading “A grueling look at making The Simpsons, start to finish”

Digital techniques have greatly sped up the rate at which animation is produced. South Park can turn out a full episode in a week, and some topical YouTube videos can be cranked out even faster. But the producers of The Simpsons have opted to keep things slow, spacing our production over nearly a year to ensure that every little background detail and facial tic has been revised and remastered. For maybe the first time, The Verge offers a look behind-the-scenes, telling the story of how an idea for a Simpsons script grows into a full episode.

Despite the lengthy turnaround, it sounds like this process still often comes down to the last day, and the staff certainly never gets a break. Of particular interest is the work of the “timer,” a production member who breaks down every action and detail frame-by-frame as a blueprint for contracted animators. Ongoing quality issues aside, you’ll develop a lot more respect for the show’s craftsmanship when you see how every single detail – even character fidgets and mouth movements – have to be spelled out for an entire 22-minute episode.

If you want a practical example of why all the revision matters, check out our DVD copy of “Some Enchanted Evening,” the last episode of The Simpsons‘s first season (HU DVD 14324, disc 3). That episode had a famously troubled production cycle, eventually produced twice and resulting in the quality control process described by The Verge. The DVD includes commentary explaining the process as well as a few select clips of the doomed original episode. It’s a great complement to the article to prove why the show needs a longer production cycle.

The Flintstones was the ultimate warning about cohesive writing

The second season of HBO’s True Detective has not received kind reviews, but in defense of its creative ambition, it is the singular product of creator Nic Pizzolatto. He has almost exclusive writing credit for the series, and for better or worse, it undeniably carries his signature. That’s a rarity in commercial film and television … Continue reading “The Flintstones was the ultimate warning about cohesive writing”

The second season of HBO’s True Detective has not received kind reviews, but in defense of its creative ambition, it is the singular product of creator Nic Pizzolatto. He has almost exclusive writing credit for the series, and for better or worse, it undeniably carries his signature. That’s a rarity in commercial film and television production, where rooms of writers edit each other’s work down into something slicker. This often results in better scripts, but too many participants can create a tonally confusing work.

That was certainly the case for the John Goodman-fronted The Flintstones, which legendarily had over 35 screenwriters. Den of Geek recently dug into the convoluted history of this committee-driven disaster, and the tale serves as a lesson in terrible writing practices. After roughly a decade with at least six total overhauls and two directors, the final product bore so many contributions that the Writers Guild of America had to rewrite its rules when the studio only credited three names. At least one writer doesn’t even recognize their additions anymore.

Though both were disliked, True Detective and The Flintstones may be polar opposites. One failed for indulging a single author; the other floundered from the chaos of dozens. Pick your poison.

A tribute to analog computers in film

Continuing this week’s accidental theme of production design, we came across a terrific article summarizing the history of analog technology in science fiction films. Minority Report‘s gesture-controlled holographic interfaces and touchscreens changed the popular idea of a futuristic interface, but before that, the future in film looked a lot like the 70s: toggle switches, dials, … Continue reading “A tribute to analog computers in film”

Continuing this week’s accidental theme of production design, we came across a terrific article summarizing the history of analog technology in science fiction films. Minority Report‘s gesture-controlled holographic interfaces and touchscreens changed the popular idea of a futuristic interface, but before that, the future in film looked a lot like the 70s: toggle switches, dials, and LCD displays. These tactile computers had a unique, lived-in aesthetic that’s still fondly remembered.

The authors at Hopes and Fears assembled a great collection of some of film’s best physical interfaces, most of which came out before 2000. Among the famous examples including Star Trek and Blade Runner, the article includes interesting tidbits from the designers themselves. The ship from Alien, for instance, was built as a single contiguous set. Many ships in Star Wars were apparently built from airplane scrap for the sake of authenticity.

Film production designers pour clear love into their scenery, and this demonstrates the lengths they go to in order to make such memorable technology. We may have left behind the bulky metal boxes from 80s science fiction for the intuitive shiny floaty boxes of the 21st century, but we miss attention to detail like this.

Production design in an HD world

For all the brouhaha about greenscreen effects changing filmmaking, props, costumes, and sets still matter. Production design continues to be vital to even the most effects-heavy movies: just ask the craftspeople who hand-made all the chainmail armor for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, embedded above. But as high-definition cameras, Blu-rays, and auto-smoothing televisions produce … Continue reading “Production design in an HD world”

For all the brouhaha about greenscreen effects changing filmmaking, props, costumes, and sets still matter. Production design continues to be vital to even the most effects-heavy movies: just ask the craftspeople who hand-made all the chainmail armor for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, embedded above. But as high-definition cameras, Blu-rays, and auto-smoothing televisions produce increasingly higher quality images, this traditional side of the film craft has struggled to keep up with the level of detail needed to keep up the illusion.

A terrific article last week from Bloomberg Business of all publications looks at the new lengths propmasters are taking for the sake of onscreen magic. David Marais mentions that props in wider shots used to need to look realistic within two-inches of detail. Now, detail matters down to an eighth of an inch. Plastic props made to look like wood now look like… well, plastic props made to look like wood. For more detailed props like soda cans, names and branding need to look as close as possible without infringing on the actual designs, something that has raised serious legal dilemmas.

There’s plenty of other great anecdotes in there. Give the article a read to get a better appreciation for the work that film crews are putting into keeping the illusion of reality in movies and television. The next time you see a big spender with a briefcase full of money, your television might reveal that they say “In Dog We Trust.”

How Hollywood’s color correctors are playing with your emotions

We’ve talked about the color correction process in the past and how a once-cosmetic technique has become a fundamental part of the film production process. Total control of a film’s color range and palette allows filmmakers to tailor create visually resplendent works and sometimes to ignore other steps in the process. But the colors their … Continue reading “How Hollywood’s color correctors are playing with your emotions”

We’ve talked about the color correction process in the past and how a once-cosmetic technique has become a fundamental part of the film production process. Total control of a film’s color range and palette allows filmmakers to tailor create visually resplendent works and sometimes to ignore other steps in the process. But the colors their choose are a separate consideration, one rooted one psychology as much as filmmaking.

A new article from Fast Company dives into how certain color schemes can trigger emotional responses in everything from blockbuster movies to political campaign commercials. Through interviews with colorists, the authors reveal how certain tones can change the mood of scenes for dramatic effect. For instance, greens rarely appear at night in life, so emphasizing those colors in film for an unsettling effect. Or in a case of genuine artistry in Transformers, alien worlds intentionally lack normal white and black light to create the illusion of an unknown space.

This is an interesting insight into why filmmakers employ color correction to suck us into their creations. There’s a dark side to these techniques, though: the article also mentions how political campaign ads will play with warm and cool colors to make opponent appear out of touch or distant. We put a lot of stock (no film joke intended) in post-production to sway us emotionally, and like any talent, that can be used for good or ill.

How did movie trailers evolve into tiny blockbusters?

Internet nerd-dom had an outrage flashpoint recently when trailers for the upcoming movie Terminator: Genisys revealed multiple major plot twists, effectively spoiling what may have been the most interesting (or only interesting?) parts of the movie. Contrast that with the ominous trailer for the first Terminator movie. How did we go from brief teasers to … Continue reading “How did movie trailers evolve into tiny blockbusters?”

Internet nerd-dom had an outrage flashpoint recently when trailers for the upcoming movie Terminator: Genisys revealed multiple major plot twists, effectively spoiling what may have been the most interesting (or only interesting?) parts of the movie. Contrast that with the ominous trailer for the first Terminator movie. How did we go from brief teasers to mini-movies that leave out everything but the ending?

Culture website Hopes & Fears put together an excellent, extended article exploring the timeline of  the movie trailer and, drawing on other writing by film critics and experts, figuring out how film trailers became their own industry in miniature. Author Matthew Schimkowi presents a convincing chronology, starting from their origins as advertisements for serials and following all the way up to the advent of the Inception “BWAAAM” noise. Influential individual trailers get mentioned too, including The Public Enemy, Jaws and Dr. Strangelove. By 2015, he argues, the familiar trailer structure for conveying characters and plot arcs has become its own form of entertainment.

This is a highly recommended read for people interested in the film business, but we warn you that it might ruin trailers for you in the future. You’ll be the one yelling about “turn lines” the next time you go to the movies.