April 27th, 2012

What all of these examples show—other than how the unique styles of experimental cinema have become embedded in certain filmmakers’ techniques—is how vital it is to challenge the norms or ideas behind “traditional” moviemaking. If it weren’t for the risks of a select group of filmmakers, most directors would still be thumbing through Hollywood’s Rolodex of remake-ready titles.

Friend and fellow Chicago filmmaker Nelson Carvajal bridges the gap between experimental and mainstream in his video essay celebrating Maya Deren.  The accompanying text also discusses one of my favorite films, Chris Marker’s La Jetée.

~ü

[Video: Nelson Carvajal Where Experiment Meets the Mainstream]

15 notes·
Experimental art
April 25th, 2012
The person who runs the @popcornflix Twitter account suggested an alternative, and I believe superior, form of the Indie Triangle.   Pick Two: Fast + Cheap = Not Good Fast + Good = Not Cheap Cheap + Good = Not Fast ~ü

The person who runs the @popcornflix Twitter account suggested an alternative, and I believe superior, form of the Indie Triangle.  

Pick Two:

  • Fast + Cheap = Not Good
  • Fast + Good = Not Cheap
  • Cheap + Good = Not Fast

~ü

78 notes·
production Budget
April 25th, 2012
I recently worked on a project with a client that got ahead of themselves.  We spent some money in places that we really shouldn’t have in an effort to get the product out the door faster.  When they saw the result, we immediately slowed down in an effort to ensure that we won’t be making any more hasty decisions.  In order to explain this, I sent them over the “indie triangle.”  The “indie triangle” dictates that you can only pick two.   If you want Quality you either need Time or Money.  If you don’t have Time, then Money must solve the problems that you’ll enviably encounter in production.  If you don’t have Money, then Time must be the way you solve problems. If you don’t have Time or Money, you’ll likely not get Quality. Independent film producers never have to worry about having abundant Time and Money.  With rare exception, this does create problems in Hollywood productions.  Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate is the product of actually having too much Time and Money where Quality suffered as a result. ~ü

I recently worked on a project with a client that got ahead of themselves.  We spent some money in places that we really shouldn’t have in an effort to get the product out the door faster.  When they saw the result, we immediately slowed down in an effort to ensure that we won’t be making any more hasty decisions.  In order to explain this, I sent them over the “indie triangle.”  The “indie triangle” dictates that you can only pick two.  

  • If you want Quality you either need Time or Money.  If you don’t have Time, then Money must solve the problems that you’ll enviably encounter in production.  If you don’t have Money, then Time must be the way you solve problems.
  • If you don’t have Time or Money, you’ll likely not get Quality.

Independent film producers never have to worry about having abundant Time and Money.  With rare exception, this does create problems in Hollywood productions.  Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate is the product of actually having too much Time and Money where Quality suffered as a result.

~ü

61 notes·
production
April 24th, 2012

There is no honest discussion that can be had about this Hobbit footage without emphasizing the 48fps presentation. The film was shot this way and will be digitally projected this way, as well as presented in 3D. So what does 48fps movie footage look like as opposed to your usual 24fps theatrical movie experience? In this reporter’s opinion, it looks like live television or hi-def video. And it didn’t look particularly good. Yes, this is shocking, but I was actually let down by the Hobbit footage, as were a number of the other journalists that I spoke with afterward.

It looked like an old Doctor Who episode, or a videotaped BBC TV production. It was as shocking as when The Twilight Zone made the boneheaded decision to switch from film to tape one season, and where perfectly good stories were ruined by that aesthetic. Here, there were incredibly sharp, realistic images where colors seem more vivid and brighter than on film, but the darker scenes were especially murky (and the 3D only dims that image even more). Frankly, it was jarring to see Gandalf, Bilbo or the dwarves in action against CG-created characters or even to move quickly down a rocky passage. The whipping of a camera pan or the blur of movement was unsettling.
~ Jim Vejvoda after watching 10 minutes of The Hobbit presented at its native 48 fps (rather than the normal 24 fps)

(Source: movies.ign.com)

61 notes·
technology film
April 23rd, 2012

I like making films more than watching them. Who’s with me?

~ü

82 notes·
April 20th, 2012

Throughout the mid to late 1970s and upwards, Hiroshi Sugimoto packed up a folding 4x5 camera & tripod, surreptitiously entered matinees (and, one can only presume, evening film events) and documented the interior of movie theaters across the United States - invoking a classic procedure borrowed from Conceptual Art. He would open the shutter just before the ‘first light’ hit the screen and close it after the credits finished rolling and before the house lights came on. Using this method he was able to invert the subject/object relationship of the movie theatre and use the film itself to illuminate the proscenium and interior. However - it’s MORE than that, isn’t it? There is also a social and political critique implicit to the gesture. The rendering of a ‘blank’ movie screen carries with it a whole series of alternate implications that are highly relevant to a culture of consumption.  The unavoidable allusions of mass social programming and lack of content are implicit in the act. This content, largely unaddressed critically, is what lends the images their incredible power - along with the natural fascination of being made privy to the photography’s divine birthright - allowing us to see the normally invisible - to experience a finite collapse of time.

~ urbanautica © C4 GALLERY

[Images: Hiroshi Sugimoto]

Reblogged from urbanautica
163 notes·
time
April 19th, 2012
Hilarious.  By the way, there are only two ways to make it in showbiz: Be born in it. Ignore it. If you ignore it and stick to your convictions, you have a chance of standing out just enough to break in.  That is, if the timing is just right.   Striving to be the next Michael Bay isn’t good enough.  Michael Bay is already a better Michael Bay than you are. ~ü (via Check The Gate)

Hilarious.  By the way, there are only two ways to make it in showbiz:

  1. Be born in it.
  2. Ignore it.

If you ignore it and stick to your convictions, you have a chance of standing out just enough to break in.  That is, if the timing is just right.  

Striving to be the next Michael Bay isn’t good enough.  Michael Bay is already a better Michael Bay than you are.

~ü

(via Check The Gate)

(Source: jessicanncats)

Reblogged from
87 notes·
industry directing art
April 18th, 2012
The Newest New Wave

Peter Webber opines on the discrepancy between talent and available technology in his latest post:

Film maker Aaron Stewart-Ahn who tweets as @somebadideas (and is a must-follow) touched on this when he tweeted (and I paraphrase) that the average 24-year-old has better tech than Jean Luc Godard and his cameraman Raoul Coutard, but that we don’t see films as brave, funny, entertaining, ambitious or unashamedly intellectual as the ones they made together. The technological advances of that era such as lightweight cameras also liberated the imagination of these film makers and led to the French New Wave. Nowadays there seems to be an overall diminution of ambition, an unfortunate limiting of horizons.

Peter laments the lack of virtuosos on YouTube while ignoring the fact that these are two different audiences.  Even in the 1960s, people that went to see Goddard films were engaged and active.  YouTube audiences are largely passive.  A stronger video community, Vimeo, still has trouble delivering long-form content because of how audiences engage the small screen.  However, yielding to what has become idiosyncratic to the medium, there is amazing short form work to be found.  Just to help him out, here are my Vimeo Likes.  They aren’t all approaching Bresson or Kurosawa but there is some good stuff in here.

To be fair to Peter’s point, we filmmakers are in the shadows of giants.  Today’s musicians and artists defer to their mentors too often.  Regressive, referential work is pervasive.  The plague of the familiar haunts our remixes and our genres.  As long as creative-types serve the meme, the sort of pedestrian art will remain the norm.

~ü

32 notes·
creative art industry online
April 17th, 2012
Movie Studios Are Forcing Hollywood to Abandon 35mm Film. But the Consequences of Going Digital Are Vast, and Troubling

This is the most complete analysis of the issue of going 100% digital from Production to Distribution to Exhibition.  Christopher Nolan sums up my issue as a filmmaker:

“The danger comes from filmmakers not asserting their right to choose that format,” Nolan says. “If they stop exercising that choice, it will go away. I tell people, ‘Look, digital isn’t going away.’”

As a filmmaker, I love digital.  I just want a choice.  Film is a very different practice.

The issue of costly upgrades forced on exhibitors sums up my issue as a film-goer. DCP, the format, is simply not robust enough to last even ten years.  Even if an exhibitor can afford to upgrade now, they will have to upgrade again in less than a decade.  This is after a little under a century of stable projection costs.  We’re going to see independent exhibitors go out of business faster than what happened between 1927 and 1930 (the adoption of talkies).  

~ü

69 notes·
exhibition distribution production industry
April 16th, 2012

Life is but an Oneiric

Life is but a dream; it’s what you make it

Always try to give; don’t ever take it

~ The Temptations

I like living, breathing, better than working… My art [is] that of living: each second, each breath is a work which is inscribed nowhere, which is neither visual nor cerebral, it’s sort of constant euphoria. 

~ Marcel Duchamp

Row, row, row your boat; Gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily; Life is but a dream.

Part of my disillusion with conventional cinema is how ubiquitous the dull blade of logic is seeded within the narrative.  Everything must have a reason.  Everything must be explained.  Even in something as unique as The Artist, the dream sequence is rationalized, not as a tangible event, but as a pandering metaphor known as an oneiric.  

Life is not linear.  Life is not rational.  The most exciting parts of life consist of not knowing.  An artist like Marcel Duchamp or a director like Ingmar Bergman isn’t afraid to approach that within life which is intangible.  This is what makes them great - a sense that within their work there is something more.

~ü

21 notes·
dream technique oneiric
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@dschmudde

Techniques for directing film. More than the script, bigger than the screen - the tangible and mystical characteristics of truly great filmmaking.