Waiting 2B Scene

Category: Media

  • Article: David Boyd ASC & The Walking Dead (CreativeCOW)

    Don’t worry, there are no spoilers here. Well, not unless you haven’t watched any of The Walking Dead over the last five years perhaps. Other than that, you ought to be golden with this post.

    I have done a wide variety of media work over the years: this often means needing to up-skill. When I first tried my hand at After Effects, the free training that the team at Creative Cow offered was there to guide me through a very steep learning curve. Fast forward to right now, and I usually just check out the highlights off the latest e-newsletter. Well today I couldn’t help but notice that there were linking to a fantastic interview that they did with David Boyd back in 2012.

    Be warned, it is a little TLDR (yeah, not a video interview… it’s that old school type of article!)… but Boyd has since gone on to DP on shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as directing episodes of Sleepy Hollow, Once Upon a Time, 12 Monkeys, and four more episodes of The Walking Dead. So the dude knows his business. From CreativeCow: “David’s insights into shooting in general, and the core aesthetic of The Walking Dead in particular, are every bit as enjoyable as the day we first published it.” Yep!

  • List: 129 Of The Most Beautiful Shots In Movie History (Buzzfeed)

    Buzzfeed is usually the haunt of Internet jokery and inane quizzes: and yet today I was pleasantly surprised to see a list of stills that is quite magnificent… a list they have deemed, “129 Of The Most Beautiful Shots In Movie History.”

    It is a pretty reasonable list – but you will need to be ready to scroll waaaaaay past the fold on this one! As an additional pre-warning, as is always the case – there will be plenty of stills that make you go, “What the?”

    Want to see what they have on offer: click on this image below (picture is number 51 on the list, and harkens back to a recent blog post of mine).

  • How To: Get the Hollywood Greenscreen Look (KINETIC)

    Alrighty, I have had my fun for a while – so today I want to come back to one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place… to share tools, tips, tricks, and generally correlate a whole bunch of resources for those who are still “waiting to be seen” (waiting2bscene… get it?) .

    One of the biggest tools around for amateur and professional alike is having the capacity to pull a key: and to do so well. In this excellent tutorial, director and cinematographer Matthew Rosen shares five of his tricks and secrets on shooting and compositing chroma keys. This one is definitely worth the look!

  • TBT: “In a World…” (Comedian Trailer)

    So today is Thursday, and doing a #TBT is the thing to do (thanks Instagram!) – ergo, I want to throwback to one of my all-time favourite ‘movie’ trailers.

    In Hollywood there needs to be buzz created prior to the release of a production. Simply put, that is the job of the movie trailer: generate interest so people will go see it. Given the machinations of Hollywood trailers then, I would wager that you would recognise the dulcet tones of Hal Douglas. Why? Because Douglas, along with Don LaFontaine and a handful of others, were the million-dollar voices behind almost all of the big buzz trailers of the past few decades.

    So, when the producers of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedian wanted to create buzz, they did something quite brilliant. They approached Douglas, asking him to use his skills to satirise the entire trailer framework. And what I love the most about it all is the fact that the Dean of the East Coast Trailer narrators actually agreed to do it. Subsequently we have what is arguably one of the funniest self-deprecating pieces around. A piece that still makes me smile. I hope you enjoy.

  • Product Preview: Light L16 Camera

    Many moons before I began playing in the world of videos, I was a fairly avid amateur photographer. As a kid my grandfather introduced me to the world of photography, and I was hooked. While it has felt like a natural transition from photography to videography, those humble origins still lead me to check out fantastic new developments (pun intended!) that are happening in the world of still-life technology.

    Today I happened on a new video that is promoting a completely new kind of stills camera (that also has 4K video capacity it must be said): the Light L16. All I will say about the whole thing is, well…. giggity.

    https://vimeo.com/141273968

  • Making Of: Elastic Heart (Sia)

    In my last post on Emma Stone dancing in the new Arcade Fire clip I touched on the controversy that surrounded Sia’s song Elastic Heart. Today, I’d love to briefly unpack that again by sharing the making of video.

    I was quite excited by the pending release of the Elastic Heart music video back in January 2015. When I first saw the clip I was quite moved – so much so I immediately shared the clip with my wife, knowing that she would enjoy it too. Much like the incredible Chandelier you could tell that the video was a visual parable, portraying Sia’s internal warring with – and exorcising of – some dark times.

    What really surprised me was the almost immediate and vitriolic response that the video received: bolstered by mainstream media crying wolf in the guise of sensationalist paedophilia claims, the Twitter-verse sheep all ran headlong in the same direction. One short example sums up the herd mentality: “Sia’s “Elastic Heart” video is disgusting…”

    I won’t drill down into just how ridiculous that all was. if you would like to read an excellent article that does that, you can check it out here. No – my small part to play today is simply to remind you of the behind the scenes video… a short video that unpacks the concepts behind the work.

    If you have never seen this before, and you happen to have any lingering doubts about whether Elastic Heart was truly a “Shia LaBeouf video paedophile controversy… after singer Sia features 12-year-old girl cavorting with semi-naked star.” – then you might just find this to be “… a completely cathartic thing being here.”

  • Music Video: “Anna” (Arcade Fire, Featuring Emma Stone)

    So, back in the day a British big beat musician who went by the name of Fatboy Slim had a hit called Weapon Of Choice. What stood out for many was the surprising music video. Never seen it, feast your eyes!

    Yes, that is a dancing and prancing Christopher Walken. While not the first celebrity to cameo in a clip for a song, since the Weapon of Choice there appears to have been a steady increase in celebrities coming on board for such performances.

    Just this morning I saw a new sneak-peak release from the Québécois band Arcade Fire. Much like Weapon of Choice – or Sia’s more recent controversial Elastic Heart – it is a clip that includes a dancing celebrity: in this instance, the talented Emma Stone. Check it out – and enjoy.

  • Interview: John C. McGinley (Speakeasy)

    Like many, the hit hospital sitcom Scrubs quickly became go to viewing for me. In fact – I still really enjoy it. How much? Well let’s say that it is enough to have just completed a marathon viewing of seasons 4 to 8, and leave it there!

    Anyway…

    I think that Scrubs‘ continued appeal for many lies in the way in which it connects to the audience. Bill Lawrence seamlessly combined a unique blend of outrageous, in-your-face, slapstick humour with the kind of dramatic sincerity often left to high profile dramas. For quite a few of these moments, you will be hard pressed not to find the indomitable, acerbic, Dr. Percival Ulysses Cox somewhere near the scene. And the incredible actor who brought Dr. Cox to life was John C. McGinley.

    So today, in honour of the show and in honour of the man that brought J.D’s worst fears and highest hopes to life, I want to share this great early-2015 Speakeasy interview with McGinley.

  • Video Essay: What’s in the Box? (CineFix)

    ** Spoiler alerts a head… though if you haven’t already seen this after twenty years, shame on you. **

    It was one of the most numbing thrillers of the mid-90’s… And if you didn’t immediately think of Se7en after reading that sentence, then you really missed out on something special!

    After a fairly tried-and-true series of murder-somethings throughout the 80’s, Hollywood screenwriters really started toying with audiences by switching it up in the 90’s. Misery served as the decade opener – but it was really The Silence of the Lambs that announced things had gone to a whole new thrilling level – becoming one of the few thrillers to receive a wide array of Oscar’s, including Best Picture1.

    By the time 1995’s Se7en rolled around, few thought that the thriller would turn out to be any good. Especially coming from by a first-time screenwriter and a director who had cut his teeth on music videos – and then had bombed in his “contribution” to the Aliens franchise. But the film wasn’t just good. It became a modern genre classic. And that, in no small part, came down to this very scene… a scene that Brad Pitt (among others) had to fight New Line Cinemas to keep in the film. In EW, Pitt was quoted as saying,

    “With Se7en, I said, “I will do it on one condition – the head stays in the box. Put in the contract that the head stays in the box.” Actually, there was a second thing, too: “He’s got to shoot the killer in the end. He doesn’t do the ‘right’ thing, he does the thing of passion.” Those two things are in the contract. Cut to: Se7en has been put together, and they’ve tested it. They go, “You know, he would be much more heroic if he didn’t shoot John Doe – and it’s too unsettling with the head in the box. We think maybe if it was the dog’s head in the box…” “

    And so today, in honour of it’s twentieth birthday – it is with great pleasure that I am sharing this excellent Video Essay by the CineFlix team – Se7en’s “Box Scene” – Art of the Scene:

  • Tribute – Robin Williams – SMILE (Grabowiec)

    This is a short post, as the video tribute to Robin Williams says it all. Very well done.

    https://vimeo.com/139250268