Film Theory

[deanb]

So this was mentioned on Empire Podcast other day (though I think it was one of their backlog episodes).

http://www.cinemorgue.com/

 

It's a site that catalogues the various on-screen deaths of actors.

 

Has a wiki version, which I guess means able to edit it n such too
http://cinemorgue.wikia.com/wiki/John_Hurt

 

I like the opening line of both sites being "Let's not bicker and argue about who killed who..."

[deanb]

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/film-studies-101-movie/

 

Maybe a decent read to get an idea of the folks involved in a film, since most people only know of directors and producers (and usually not always the difference).

[deanb]

So as some of you may or may not know recently been involved in shooting a short film as part of a sort of Job Centre initiative thing.

 

So I initially started in the Art Department. Since we were sort of the property of the JCP we weren't allowed to help with the joinery work of building a set in case like say one of us sawed off a hand or something, it tends to look a bit bad. Art Department started a few days before the main shoot since it's hard to film on a set if the set isn't constructed. First day was being set across Newcastle looking for potential props and room dressing so I have like 120 photos on my phone atm for all that stuff. (I managed to pick out the "perfect" wallpaper). Then spent wallpapering the set, painting other bits etc. I also constructed some blinds n curtains too. I'll maybe make an imgur album or something.

Director turned up on the ...Saturday iirc. He was super approachable (in fact in general everyone was quite nice and only person I had an issue with over the event was another trainee and I'm to gather not the only one he rubbed wrong way). In fact one of the lasses dad turned up to pick her up n Director pops out n brings him in on the set to show what we're working on n the film n such.

 

Come Monday, when the rest of the trainees started, a couple didn't turn up including one for "DIT", or "digital image technician", so I ended up taking on that role since it seemed up my street. At first I'd hoped to straddle both roles but the way DIT worked it wasn't hugely possible apart from the Monday where there was no shooting going on.

So a DIT, since it's not in the above article and was also a totally new role to me, at least in name, if not in a "well duh it makes sense this person exists". So films these days are mostly shot on digital which means fancy pants SD cards and image files to deal with. The DIT role is to take these cards once a shoot is done and "offload" them across to (in our case) 3 back up drives, give everything a visual check to make sure there's no issues with the footage. We picked up on some strobing (turned out a software issue on our end), the edge of set on some shots (already cleared, it's white wall so fixing in post), and a bit of the camera rig in a window reflection (not an issue cos that scene is cropped to 4:3). Also sort out colour correction (in our case a lot of the images are originally kind of washed out cos of how the image data is stored, and easily brought to normal colours), and occasionally doing some further tweaks for the director to get an idea of the finished shot will be like (in our case tweaking the whites/highlights on a scene set in purgatory). And once we also get the sound, the fun task of syncing up the clapper board audio with the clapper board visual. Not always possible if they forget to do it.

Then at the end of the day distributing the back up drives to relevant people to make sure they're spending the night a good distance apart from each other. Loads of other technical things too, but I'm still processing (and researching) some of those terms myself. 

Oh yeah, producing "dailies" too to be sent off to like the producer, director, director of photography, and a bunch of other people too. We used this really fancy piece of kit called iMovie for doing that (basically just to downgrade it to 720p for most of them to watch off an iPad).

 

Then on the Friday I got to be an extra (all trainees were since it helped flesh out a night club scene and there was 15 trainees). Not the greatest experience but I think most of us were like "goddamit we all signed up for roles behind the camera for a reason". I'm also tall so I got shunted around in shots a lot too to help flesh things out. Main beef i think we all had was this same sort of techno loop played pre-shooting to get us all synced to a beat for our weird dancing which was a horrible earworm. Because I was on set rather than in the production office for much of this it means while I've seen much of the short film already I've not seen myself on screen (though we're all wearing the same hoodies and back to camera so not sure I'd be able to tell anyway).

Then all done went out to the pub for a wrap party drinks session.

 

Big thing now is following up on this. I think there's a bunch of BBC n CBBC shows that shoot up here which seem to be the go to for work in the area. Recently finished a totally new CV specific to film (since I basically have to remove all my previous work, and stick in film credits so the format is completely different). Been super fun week n half, kinda having a slight slip n slide after the fact but I'm sure that'll pick up. Kinda between a rock n a hard place though cos Job centre kinda like to push you towards office and retail work, traditional jobs. Today was a bit of a surprise to see Ubisoft postings since there's normally never creative listings.

 

Imgur Album:

http://imgur.com/a/0ktt9

 

Another thing about doing a shoot is you also learn about shooting block busters in your city centre...months after the fact

We're a stand-in for London. Though probably making London look better than it is given they're racing down what's considered to be one of the best streets in UK. (It is a really nice street)

[deanb]

 

Fun little mini documentary about squibs. I feel their shot shown during the main body rather than during the credits worked a lot better mind. That's editing for you.

[deanb]

https://streamable.com/fitup

 

So I woke up hearing about the flub of La La Land been announced Best Picture when in actuality it was Moonlight. Only just watched it, didn't expect it to last so long in the limbo. The guy apologises, but it was totally the womans fault. He was unsure, rightly so, and she went ahead and announced it without a second thought.

 

Word is there's duplicates of all the envelopes, I guess as a contingency, and he accidentally ended up with the Best Actress instead of Best Picture.

 

The cast all dealt with it pretty great though.

 

As noted online, if he'd ended up with Best Make-up then it probably would have been instantly spotted.

 

"And the Academy award for Best Picture goes too...Suicide Squad".

 

(oh yeah, Suicide Squad is an Oscar winning movie, but given the other nominees in the Make Up category I guess it deserves it).

 

Anywho full list

http://oscar.go.com/winners/

[MetalCaveman]

[TheFlyingGerbil]

At least it proves Marissa Tomei truly deserved her Oscar.

[Mr. GOH!]

It wasn't Dunaway's fault; someone backstage handed Beatty the backup Best Actress envelope and Dunaway thought Beatty was goofing around, so she just read the movie title without seeing Emma Stone's name at the top.

 

Somebody at Pricewaterhouse Coopers has hell to pay.

[TheFlyingGerbil]

 

Recreations of real life scenes on film.

[deanb]

Hey it's Dean with another video about the use of digital VFX in films. Quite interesting to compare stuff like the use of CG blood in Fincher films with like the use of gallons and gallons of faux blood in Alien Covenant from Ridley Scott. Obviously down to how these two started out (as noted in the vid Fincher is ILM alumni). Film vs digital, practical vs CG, the ever ongoing war within the film industry (one is going to largely win out primarily based on cost, especially in film v digital. You need quite a few films in your belt before you're going to be let loose with miles of film).

Also harks bad to the video from last year about people only disliking bad CGI, and ignoring the vast majority of CG in films as it's actually pretty seamless (one of my faves is the CG sheep in Brokeback Mountain, a film you wouldn't think of as having a VFX budget).

In other news I've realised I've quite a big David Fincher backlog.

 

[MetalCaveman]

 

[deanb]

The first of Neill Blomkamps experimental short films is out. The film itself isn't the experimental part, it's rather in line with his usual stuff, it's the bit where the short film is free and the assets are sold on Steam for folks to use and tinker with:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/652150/Oats_Studios__Volume_1_Assets/

Oh n it has Sigourney Weaver in it, I'd guess she must have liked what he was doing with the since canned Alien film he was working on with her.

Be interesting to see if the business model works out.

[deanb]

Daniel Day-Lewis has quit acting. Which based on his usual acting method I guess he'll struggle to be "normal" for some time yet
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/daniel-day-lewis-quits-acting-oscar-winner-1202472766/

[MetalCaveman]

 

[MetalCaveman]

The enitre series is pretty cool, shame the movie itself isn't doing well.

[deanb]

(they've other IMAX related videos too)

I can see why IMAX isn't hugely used. It's extremely fiddly, especially compared to the modern digital workflow where you ship out a hard drive.

 

 

[deanb]

 

 

[Hot Heart]

This series on actors' accent work is pretty amusing and interesting.

 

Especially when it goes over constructed languages

 

Then a full video on actors portraying real people (or mimicking a real person's performance like McGregor doing a younger version of Guinness' Obi-Wan).

 

 

Edited September 3, 2017 by Hot Heart

[deanb]

So I'm pretty aware on this but I see enough folks be like "why don't the names match" so figured I'd post. Also the "and starring" bit is amusing.

 

[deanb]

"The Directors Cut" for the Directors Guild of America is a podcast that's popped on my radar recently and I'm really enjoying it so far. It's the golden length of 30 minutes, enough for a good conversation but not overly dragging things out or hard to fit into your day.

Peers-interviewing-peers I think is a model that works really well too, similar-ish model to Infinite Monkey Cage. You get some good insights too, since it's not journalists n what not looking for a "gotcha" or what not and so they can be a bit more open around the process and know what questions are worth asking. They're pretty good at pairing up directors too. Richard Donner n Patty Jenkins has been my fave so far (though I'll be honest as it stands I'm only listening to ones I've actually seen the related film so some might be just plain shit but I'd say what I've listened to it's all golden).

 

 

Also Movies With Mikey talks Hot Fuzz

 

Which probably on the "oh shit" for Mikey is even Edgar Wright was posting about his video.

[deanb]

 

It's weird the thumbnail is Infinity War given they only briefly touch upon it, but otherwise a good short history of the trailer with a good example used to show the evolution and such.

[deanb]

 

Directors Guild roundtable. It's nearly 3 hours long, though I've been listening to it in podcast form where it's cut to 3 pieces. The main thing you miss out on is they reference clips shown which you don't get to see in a podcast (though I've a feeling they're not shown here either...I haven't watched the full thing to see).

 

It's an interesting line-up, especially with Nolan and GDT who are well into their directing careers and Peele and Gerwig who are on their directorial debut (Greta Gerwig does not seem to cope well with large audiences).

 

Also I didn't know Jack Dee directed Three Billboards.

[Hot Heart]

On a less serious note.

 

[deanb]

 

Short clip of Doug Jones. Certainly an extremely prolific actor. Great he's getting a lot of recognition of late.

 

[Mr. GOH!]

An interesting look at how Paul Thomas Andersen visually constructs a scene.

 

http://bit.ly/2FbxnNC

Edited March 7, 2018 by Mr. GOH!