Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share a short clip that was pieced together by one of my friends, Michael McLennan. Michael also happens to be a long-time cinephile who has worked as producer, director of photography, editor, sound designer, music editor, and has also taught across a variety of film disciplines at the Sydney Film School. Recently picked up by the Indiewire team, today’s clip is a simple video essay that demonstrates Hitchcock’s amazing capacity for structural story-telling. In this instance, we find the story engaging with the audience through a carefully constructed repetition of symmetry.
I personally find that such examples really ought to reinforce the idea that while amateurs point and shoot and think something along the lines of, “I hope this will look good!” – professionals plan and plan and plan, thinking more along the lines of, “How do I want this to look?” If we want to up our game and get our work seen – then we can all continue to learn tricks from the masters of cinema like this. I hope you enjoy.
Okay everyone today I want to continue with my Avengers theme – albeit with a fun little video. While the first series of videos were average YouTube fare – it was their late-2013 Game of Thrones clip that definitely propelled the team at Bad Lip Reading onto the viral video scene. Since then they have continued to bring out fun clips of various sorts.
On Sunday, the team did it again with a fresh lip reading take on the Avengers! And in much the same way that I appreciate Weird Al Yankovic for his creative capacity to parody countless musical acts, I appreciate the hard work that goes into making this kind of video. So I hope you will enjoy the fun, stupidity, and bad lip reading antics with me!
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to link out to a great little article that gives a concise breakdown of the camera choices that were made for the latest Marvel Universe blockbuster – Avengers: Age of Ultron – with insights by the DP himself, Ben Davis. You can read the full piece here.
The fun fact for me was seeing that the diverse little beastie – the BlackMagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera – gets a shout out as a one of the tools used to make the film. Yeah that’s right – portions of the epic Avengers was shot on a BMDPCC! Very cool. So check out the article, and let me know what you think.
Continuing my series of resource links, today I wanted share a piece that discusses the recently released movie, Pitch Perfect 2. For those who don’t know (or don’t care, I guess), this comedy sequel is about about a cappella singers (which, for what it’s worth, made more than US$70 million at the box office on its opening weekend . That is more than the first Pitch Perfect took in over its entire theatrical release in 2012 – as well as being the biggest debut ever for a movie musical).
As the title suggests, today’s link is to an audio interview done with Kay Cannon: writer of Pitch Perfect 2. Well before Pitch Perfect came on the scene though, Cannon sunk her teeth into writing for comedy television – such as NBC’s hit 30 Rock (she won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedic Series for her work on 30 Rock on three separate occasions) as well as Fox’s New Girl.
From NPR’s Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, this is a fascinating insight into the world of comedic writing for film and television in particular… and it is a great reminder that all of you writers out there are an indispensable part of the production process.
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share an excellent tute that goes through some mid-level colour correction using Photoshop.
Now why on earth would I want to share a Photoshop tutorial on a blog that has to do with videography and the like? The simple reason is that I like the presenter. That and the fact that understanding how to utilise complimentary colours is one of those fundamental techniques we all ought to be aware of, regardless of whether the images we work with are still or moving.
Those who have learned their colour-jiu-jitsu are generally the ones that have been able to progress from a mobile phone kind of photographer/videographer that needs Instagram filters to help prop up their shots. Take it from me – tutes like this one are a great way of building up your skill set in this area. I hope you enjoy it.
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share an excellent infographic. For those of us who are part of the Adobe Universe, you will know that short-cuts have a funny way of increasing productivity, right? If only there was a way to easily find and/or remember what some of the really important ones were! Oh wait – there is!
Thanks to the team at Set Up A Blog Today, we now have access to a comprehensive cheat sheet that outlines a range of the important short-cuts to a host of our favourite Adobe products: Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, FireWorks, Flash, Premiere Pro, and After Effects!
Need some of that action? Get it right here. And as a bonus tid-bit – scroll down the the bottom of the post to get access to the PDF versions of the individual cheat sheets.
Today I wanted to hit pause on my resource posts so that I could indulge in some genuine blogging. Yep, I’m spouting forth my own thoughts and ideas on this one!
So, I saw a Facebook friend share the following video earlier this week. Given that it garnered 3-million views in its first week (and was at 44 million when I watched it) – it is the definition of viral. 2-years later, and we have to give it credit. It continues to pique the interest and ire of the interwebs. At least that is what I assumed when I watched it:
In actuality, these days it seems to be less about interest, and more about ire. If the comments section was anything to go by, the biggest issue about this clip today is whether it is genuine or not. Honestly – from a benign “This is fake…” to a more scathing, “ITS JUST SOME GEE BAG SLUT TRAMP TRYING TO GET INTERNET FAMOUS BY TAKING ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE’S EMPATHY…”, the negative, stupid, and outright trolling commentary on this video is mind-boggling! How could people so quickly miss the “moral of the story”?
You know what? Yes – the video was staged. I know this because I did five minutes of research to discover that the Belgrade office of global advertising juggernauts Saatchi & Saatchi were behind the whole thing: “Saatchi & Saatchi Belgrade and Fund B92 [decided] to take action, shake the public out of the lethargy and put [domestic violence] into the focus of Serbian society.”
At it’s heart, this video was a PSA addressing domestic abuse. It was as simple as that. The moral of the story was – and is – to raise awareness about this issue: and in its early stages, I would argue that it was a success. “Media outlets from all over the world have been reporting on this cry for help by an anonymous victim of domestic violence, which is in itself a testament of how widespread this problem is.”
Whether it was a real person who felt that was their only way of dealing with the situation, or whether it was an actor playing a role – that question ought to have been a distant runner up to the impetus behind the video: let’s shine some light on the cowardly men who are beating up on women. If your first response was that the whole thing was fake or – worse still – that the woman involved was just a “gee bag slut tramp trying to get internet famous…” – then I would humbly suggest that you’re missing the point, and the Internet would be a better place without such stupidity clogging up the bandwidth.
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share a video that is something of a lesson in styling. Now, you could ask almost any cinematographer in the world what they think of stock footage, and you most often find yourself on the end of a tirade against some element of the entire stock industry. Truth be told, it is easy to see why they feel that way. Invariably, stock shots look quite same-same, lacking in ingenuity and visual oomph. With that being said – I must protest the blanket hostility towards stock footage. With the development of fresh sites such as Dissolve and DeathToStock – the creative types are claiming back the unique elements that have been lacking in the great pool of stock footage and imagery – and it has been a breath of fresh air!
So, it was very cool to stumble on this video created by the ShutterStock team that is a stylised homage to some of the great directors… and it has been done using only stock footage. Now is it brilliant? Nah. Let’s be honest. But it is really good! And it is exciting to think that as an indie film-maker, or documentary producer, or whatever… we might very well be able to squeeze in a reasonable stock shot that isn’t going to raise the collective ire of cinematographers any more. And that is worth celebrating just a little.
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share a video I stumbled on a little while ago. Coming from Vimeo’s Riley Hooper, it offers a pretty concise explanation of the technique known as a jump cut. Even if you have never heard the term before, I can guarantee that you all know what a jump cut looks like… though picking up pace in more and more places, it is a ubiquitous transition amongst the most popular of YouTube’s vloggers. As someone cleverly observed, “Anything other than a jump cut would create a slower experience that would leave you less stimulated and thus more likely to click away.”1
Continuing my series of resource links, today I want to share a great article that was published a while back by those in the RED Universe. Really, there’s no surprises here as the title says it all: it is an introduction to video production for those of you who are photographers. Granted, many of you may know this stuff. Nevertheless, if you are just starting to play around with the video functionality on your DSLR – or you have never really dug into the kind of background information that can make your videos a little better – then this article is a must. I hope you find it useful.
Waiting 2B Scene 