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  • 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

  • Mashup: Elba as Bond in SPECTRE (Vulture Remix)

    James Bond is a cinematic icon. And the fact is that for over 50-years now Bond has always been a suave, sophisticated, whiter-than-white, chauvinist Brit that gets to sleep with beautiful women and play with a lot of cool toys.

    Of course, this has not escaped the attention of, well, the world. Thus for the last few years, pop-culture thoughts of Bond as a black man – or perhaps even a woman! – have been increasingly entertained. I mean – they could do worse right? For example, what if they decided to release a film where Bond was to encounter an evil splinter group he had already polished off in Diamonds Are Forever back in 1971?

    Well played writers and producers. 

    Anyway – back to the true topic at hand. What would a Bond of colour look like? I’m glad you asked… and this Vulture Remix gladly answers!

  • Video Montage: A Retrospect Of British Cinema (Rhys)

    If you have ever marvelled at an epic masterpiece on the silver-screen, there is quite a reasonable chance that it was made by the grand lady of American cinema, Hollywood. For those who reside in the USA, however – it might surprise you to hear that, “As we enter the twenty-first century, the study of the previous century’s distinctive art-form – the cinema – seems to have come of age… there is an almost palpable sense of intellectual excitement in the air – and at its heart lies the systematic and creative process of rethinking British cinema.“¹ (emphasis mine).

    Yes, you read that correctly. British cinema. It has played an important role in global cinema over the years. So I was super excited to find that the aspiring writer-director Calum Rhys – who hails from England himself – had taken it open himself to montage some of the great elements of British cinematic history. Indeed, he writes that, “I set out months ago to create a short montage featuring the best of British cinema, however over time that montage transformed into a six minute film.” And what a job he has done (the list of films included is here)! You will love this, I am sure.

  • How To: The Inverse Square What? (Hazelton)

    To quote the second greatest font of Internet knowledge, Wikipedia, the physics term known as the inverse square law,  “is any physical law stating that a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of that physical quantity. The fundamental cause for this can be understood as geometric dilution corresponding to point-source radiation into three-dimensional space.” (as demonstrated in the diagram… apparently).

    In photography, film, and even theatrical lighting – the inverse-square law has been used to determine the lighting “fall off” on a subject as it moves closer to or further from the light source. If you want to get into the physics and the mathematics of how to light well for photography and video, then please feel free to do so. As for me – however… well…

    If you are one of the less mathematically-minded types, and you just want a demystified breakdown of how to get light working for you – then Eve Hazelton and the Realm Pictures crew have you covered. I have posted about one of their lighting tutorials before… and I continue to like their style. I hope you will find today’s how-to just as useful.

  • Video Montage: Keeping The Distance (Between the Frames)

    Last time I shared a video essay and an article that opened up on the whole idea of framing beyond the rule of thirds. Well today I want to continue in that vein with this great little piece by the Between the Frames channel over at Vimeo. As written in the description, “This video explores how director Bennett Miller consistently uses wide shots throughout Foxcatcher to highlight the physical and emotional distance between characters, their situations and how we, the audience relate to them.”

    Honestly, the montage of all of these elements might leave you feeling a little cold: but it is well worth watching and seeing how much an effect celever framing can have.

  • Article/Video Essay: Beyond the Rule of Thirds/The Quadrant

    Whether you started out in photography, or you were dumped into the deep end of video and film – you will know of the rule of thirds (RoT). It’s one of those unstoppable forces that influence every aspect of both!

    Like many “rules” in avenues of artistic endeavour, the RoT is an excellent starting point – particularly if you haven’t yet developed an instinct for good visual composition. Once you know the why and how behind effectively utilising the RoT, however, you ought to expand your visual vocabulary – developing visuals that aren’t necessarily tied down to the RoT (I can’t help but think of Barbossa here: “the code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.”).

    So if you are willing to wade out into the deeper waters of visual framing and composition, then this article by Doddle offers a great variety of framing illustrations that go beyond the rule of thirds: the golden spiral, quadrants, diagonals, the centre, as well as playing around with the edges and intentionally unbalancing the frame.

    If you happen to want a more in-depth video essay to help you shake your RoT shackles, then look no further than this great example by the Every Frame of Painting YouTube channel – it breaks down the quadrant system of framing that was used in the 2011 film Drive. Enjoy!