TUMBLR
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Posts tagged "filmmaking"
(Source: nprfreshair)
Dissecting a Trailer: The Parts of the Film That Make the Cut
Fantastic NYTimes infographics showing how “how scenes from five of the nine best picture nominees were reassembled to promote the films.”
If you look closely, there’s a line for shots that aren’t actually in the film, which immediately made me think of the trailers for the The Master, which featured a lot of cutting room floor footage that PT Anderson left out…
These infographics also remind me a lot of of the graphics picking apart famous speeches in Nancy Duarte’s Resonate.
What we really learn from deleted scenes
…what is great about deleted scenes is that they remind us that a work of art is not a sacred, inviolable artifact that springs fully formed from the head of anyone. Art is the result of choices made by—in the case of movies—directors, actors, editors, even producers and studio executives. We might tend to think that those in the latter category are more likely to ruin a movie than improve upon it, but, as Phipps acknowledges, sometimes director’s cuts are worse than what makes it to theaters.
Paul Thomas Anderson seems happily aware of the messiness of movie-making: While he is probably as artistically ambitious as any prominent contemporary American director, he mischievously sprinkles his movie trailers—which, in contrast to the usual Hollywood practice, he produces himself—with scenes that he hasn’t used in the film’s final cut…
I liked the trailers for The Master more than the movie, and for good reason—PTA cuts all of his own trailers, and has his hands in a lot of the marketing. I’ve read interviews with him where he talks about how cutting the teaser trailers is a nice break from filming, and it’s a chance for him to use stuff that’s lying on the cutting room floor:
[Editor] Leslie Jones and I, mainly more Leslie than me, started putting these pieces together when we were doing Punch-Drunk Love. We were doing these little tiny things we called scopitones. They were just ways to use pieces of the film that we liked but didn’t have a place for in the movie. It was just something to do when you kinda didn’t want to work on the film for an afternoon — just messing around.
I still need to get The Master on Blu-ray to watch all of these. Here’s a list of all the deleted scenes in The Master.
(Source: youtube.com)
Spitballing Indy: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and the creation of Indiana Jones
[O]ver several days in 1978, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and the screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan worked through an idea Lucas had for a film called “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and they recorded the sessions. And there’s a transcript. And it’s online.
…
As the men hash out the Jones iconography, they refer, incessantly, to other films, invoking Eastwood, Bond, and Mifune. He will dress like Bogart in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” Lucas says: “the khaki pants…the leather jacket. That sort of felt hat.” Oh, and also? “A bullwhip.” He’ll carry it “rolled up,” Lucas continues. “Like a snake that’s coiled up behind him.”
“I like that,” Spielberg says. “The doctor with the bullwhip.”
Great piece that shows how genius doesn’t come out of nowhere and just how many elements have to come together and how much wheeling and dealing has to go down to make it happen. Harvey Keitel:
“There’s great talent out there, and they should be seen and heard. We don’t have to keep repeating the same movies and sequels, ad infinitum. An example like Quentin should be a call to arms. Of course, people say, ‘Oh, so-and-so would have made it anyway.’ That’s almost like saying the world is fair, and the cream will rise to the top. That’s bullshit.”
Filed under: filmmaking
Zoe’s Desk | Submitted For Your Perusal
@mattthomas writes a really interesting blog post about director David Fincher’s way of portraying “knowledge work”:
In a number of Fincher’s films we’re given glimpses of characters doing things like researching, writing, or coding. At some level, the bulk of his films are about characters trying to make sense of information. But such glimpses are by definition fleeting. Fincher does not so much film work as cleverly give the impression of its occurrence…
…It’s a neat trick on Fincher’s part. It’s difficult to render knowledge work cinematically (quick, what’s the last great movie about writing you remember seeing?), as opposed to physical work which more readily lends itself to Rocky-style montages, but Fincher has figured out a way to short circuit the process. Like all good filmmakers, he knows that if he gives us the signs, we will fill in the rest.
Matt then admits, “I just love images like this. I am a workspace voyeur — especially writer’s workspaces,” and then recommends Jill Krementz’s The Writer’s Desk. (The internet is the perfect place for this kind of thing: there’s a great blog that once featured my work called “From The Desk Of…”)
I like this idea of answering the question, “What do you show when you have nothing to show?” It makes me think of this great passage from Ellen Ullman’s Close To The Machine:
The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-it notes everywhere; the whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought.
And this line from Gay Talese: “I’m a documentarian of what it is that I do.”
Filed under: show your work
(via mlarson)
Hell yes, this fella has the right idea:
What baker bakes one loaf of bread and asks for thousands of dollars to open a bakery? What architect designs one home and expects to have thousands of fans on Facebook? None. It’s ludicrous. As a nobody filmmaker, I have come to realize that I need to earn my right to ask people for their time and money. And the way to do that is by consistently making films, plain-and-simple…
Coming to grips with my nobody-ness as a filmmaker has set me straight in many ways. Rather than attempt to make a great film and attain thousands of fans, my focus now is to continually make the very best films I can within my means.
Make what you can with what you have. Keep doing it.
How To Treat Your Patrons
Andy Baio pointed to this article about how to raise $10k to make a film, written by an indie filmmaker in 2007. (2 years before Kickstarter.)
The advice for how to treat investors is actually how I’d suggest you should treat all your patrons, or fans, or whatever you want to call them:
Don’t abandon them while you dive into production. Keep them informed of your progress and give them an opportunity to share in the few moments of glamour and excitement that are part and parcel of the process. They should be invited to the set to watch production, and if extras are needed, they should be asked if they’d like to take part. If you’re sending out updates in the form of a newsletter to the cast and crew during postproduction, the investors should be added to the snail-mail and e-mail lists. All the investors should certainly be invited to preview screenings, and they should be given a place of honor at the premiere. In short, you should involve them in the process so that they can get something out of it other than a profit (if even that).
Filed under: show your work
