February 2012
8 posts
FILM V DIGITAL: Oscar-nominated cinematographers...
Oscar nominated cinematographers discuss the merits of the two approaches
http://www.theenvelope.latimes.com/awards/oscars/la-ca-oscars-cinematography-20120219,0,7420664.story
DARREN ARONOFSKY'S RECOMMENDED READING
His top 5 books on filmmaking
http://thebrowser.com/interviews/darren-aronofsky-on-making-movies
POLICE PROCEDURAL - HOW IT REALLY WORKS
http://science.howstuffworks.com/csi.htm/printable
IRANIAN DIRECTORS SPEAK OUT →
(from BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL)
4 tags
ABEL FERRARA: TEN LESSONS ON FILMMAKING
Keeping up the Hitch-Truffaut theme —
“Hitchcock said this to Truffaut back in the day. You know, when they scream in that shower they’re screaming in Tokyo the same way they’re screaming in Paris. It isn’t the language that’s making them scream. It’s not the words, man. It’s the pure cinema that is effective. And when you’re speaking with the images, and you’re putting those images...
4 tags
How I added sex noises to Shame →
January 2012
3 posts
A FLABBY MASS OF CLICHES
Alfred Hitchcock hired Raymond Chandler to write an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith’s novel Strangers on a Train. Hitch didn’t like it and never used his draft. Apparently he was fired after loudly commenting, as Hitchcock got into a car on the lot, “Look at that fat bastard trying to get out of his car.”
Chandler’s rage and righteous indignation is quite...
TERRY GILLIAM ON DIRECTING
TEN TIPS FROM THE MASTER
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/2011/12/the-terry-gilliam-school-of-film-10-lessons-for-directors-today/
December 2011
4 posts
GODARD dit "NON"
IN 1968, Jean-Luc Godard was invited to give a series of lectures at the BFI in London. A few days before he sent the following telegram:
THE GENIUS OF CHARLES BURNS
I have felt that Charles Burns is one of our greatest living geniuses ever since I first came across his comics over 20 years ago. This is someone who *actually understands* what is going on. If you haven’t read his masterpiece Black Hole then I’d recommend doing so as soon as possible.
There’s a retrospective to mark his work at the Comics Museum in Leuven, and here is a...
November 2011
4 posts
HOW TO SELL A SCRIPT IN SIX MONTHS
This is very good. And very funny:
So here’s the scenario. You’ve just been told you’re going to die from cancer in six months. As you sit down and consider what’s most important (family, friends, etc.) you realize that the one thing you want to do before you leave this earth is sell a screenplay. That’s been your dream. If you can pull that off, you’ll die a happy man/woman. But where do you...
LARS VON TRIER ON DIRECTING ACTORS
I have a very specific technique that either you like or you hate as an actor: I try to do many different things with a scene. That means I might, if we have time, try to do the same scene in another tempo. Or, I’d say, “Just before you got to the castle you ran a cat over and you’re trying to hide this while you’re still in your wedding gear.” I get a lot of different material that I can later...
SELF-BUILT CAMERA
These guys built their own camera:
And got this kind of look. There’s an article about it here and also in this month’s American Cinematographer. Hardcore!
http://www.gizmag.com/film-maker-home-built-cameras/20368/
October 2011
3 posts
WatchTHE MILGRAM EXPERIMENT AT 50
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2011/october-11/online-exclusive-the-obedience-experiments-at-50.html
DEATH OF FILM
The last ever film cameras have been rolled off the production line, as the big manufacturers shift to digital:
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/13/r_i_p_the_movie_camera_1888_2011/singleton/
THE UNSEEN
My screenplay THE UNSEEN has won the award for Best New Screenplay at the British Horror Film Festival. This follows a nomination for a Claw Award at the Terror Film Festival in Philadelphia.
September 2011
7 posts
SUPERMAC AND THAT FAMOUS HEADACHE
Harold Macmillan always traded on his relationship with the young and glamorous JFK, but according to a recent review I read he was dumbstruck when during a break in their discussions on nuclear arms at Key West, Kennedy asked him: ‘I wonder how it is with you, Harold? If I don’t have a woman for three days, I get a terrible headache.’
So now we know the source of that...
Gary Oldman on Directors
“It takes a great director to see and incorporate the little things which happen on set”
DIRECTORS UK - WHY I'M STANDING
I’ve been a Board member for the last year because I felt we needed to call time on the erosion in the status and rights of directors. I’m not ashamed to talk about the dirty secrets of what we do: that too often we’re wondering where our next job is coming from, and why we’re being paid so little in this one. We need to move beyond the point where gently explaining...
THE CALCULUS OF LOVE at UK FESTIVALS
THE CALCULUS OF LOVE has been selected for a slew of UK festivals, beginning with the Slough Film Festival where we shot the film (http://www.wix.com/myriamraja/sff/main-site) Saturday September 17th; Crystal Palace Film Festival Wednesday Sept 21 (http://cpiff.co.uk/finalists); Cornwall Film Festival Newquay Nov 4-6 (http://cornwallfilmfestival.com/); Aesthetica Short Film Festival York Nov 3-6...
SPIES, WET TWEED AND 1970s BRITAIN
Speaking on Radio 4’s Film Programme to Francine Stock, Tomas Alfredson the director of ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, said he’d discussed the feel and tone of 1970s Britain with his cinematorgrapher Hoyte Van Hotema.
They decided it was encapsulated “in the smell of wet tweed”. Now there’s a reference to get your head round.
August 2011
5 posts
The 30 Harshest Filmmaker-on-Filmmaker Insults In...
This is good. I particularly liked this one from Nick Broomfield on Quentin Tarantino:
“It’s like watching a schoolboy’s fantasy of violence and sex, which normally Quentin Tarantino would be wanking alone to in his bedroom while this mother is making his baked beans downstairs. Only this time he’s got Harvey Weinstein behind him and it’s on at a million screens.”
...
Why here, why now? →
Tariq Ali on the riots (from the London Review of Books blog)
SCRIPT V STORY
I’ve recently been working on a new story with the notion of keeping it low budget and trying to imagine making it in available locations in a punk rock kind of way.
It’s amazing though how quickly the act of writing takes you away from reality (a good thing) and drives you towards a more conventional - and expensive - form of film-making (potentially a bad thing for those of us...
UK FILM PRODUCTION HITS NEW LOW
Report in the Guardian on UK film production at its lowest since 2003, with those that are being made being made for less.
The Ghost (above) was apparently one of the more successful independent films.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/aug/02/uk-film-production-doldrums?CMP=twt_fd
July 2011
2 posts
THE "SADDEST MOVIE EVER"
A scientific study claims to have found “the saddest movie ever”…
http://theweek.com/article/index/217652/the-champ-saddest-movie-ever
June 2011
7 posts
Einstein on the hard graft
Of relevance to writers and creatives of all kinds as much as it is to scientists:
“The years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are known only to those who have themselves experienced them.”
Amnesty Campaign to free Jafar Panahi
Please lend your support to Amnesty International’s campaign to free imprisoned Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi, who has also been banned by the regime from directing and producing films for 20 years.
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=15108
Philip Pullman: The first time I set eyes on... →
Philip Pullman’s take on the disturbing changes happening to England’s Higher Education system
May 2011
1 post
David Mamet's rules
QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, ACUTE GOAL.
SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES OF EVERY SCENE THESE THREE QUESTIONS.
1) WHO WANTS WHAT? 2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT? 3) WHY NOW?
THE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS ARE LITMUS PAPER. APPLY THEM, AND THEIR ANSWER WILL TELL YOU IF THE...
April 2011
7 posts
DOES SIZE MATTER
Good survey of the latest crop of large sensor HDcameras (from Filmmaker Magazine)
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/news/2011/04/does-size-matter/
ART AND SCIENCE
A talk on National Public Radio in which Cormac McCarthy and Werner Herzog discuss the relationship between art and science with physicist Lawrence Krauss.
http://www.filmdetail.com/2011/04/18/werner-herzog-and-cormac-mccarthy-on-npr/
STEPHEN SODERBERGH'S LIST
Click here for Stephen Soderbergh’s list of the films he watched and the books and short stories he read over the last year. What’s strikes me is that he’s a pretty prolific. And watching ‘The Social Network’ four times in two days? Takes some admiration or is it professional jealousy?
http://media40.wnyc.net/media/resources/2011/Apr/06/Soderberghs_list.pdf
THE DRAUGHTMAN'S CONTRACT
I don’t know if getting funded was any easier when Peter Greenaway applied to the BFI for money for The Draughtman’s Contract - but there is something suitably amateur about his application for finance from 1981. Nowadays it would all be long business plans and weighty CVs. Progress, of a kind…?