Waiting 2B Scene

Tag: Resources

  • Interview: Kevin Spacey Does Impersonations (ITAS)

    It seems like celebrities are doing impersonations all the time. Co-actors try to mimic each other, vocalists mimic other singers. Such is its popularity right now, that just last month the top-ten-list juggernaut WatchMojo even gave us a top ten list dedicated to this very phenomenon. [Spoiler alert if you haven’t seen it yet].

    At the top of that particular list sits the indomitable Kevin Spacey. Now I don’t know if you realise it or not… but Spacey has actually been impersonating other celebrities for a good while now! As such, today I would love to share with you a kind of ‘from the vault’ moment from the television programme, Inside the Actors Studio.

    I quite enjoy the show – and I think that the key to its 21-year success (as at 2015) is that it offers viewers a genuine interview: all of the guests (actors, directors, writers, and such) have the opportunity to actually discuss their craft and their particular approach to it. Thus was the case in an episode with Kevin Spacey that aired in July 2000.

    In the middle of this particular interview, however, host James Lipton throws in an unexpected twist. With zero lead-time, he calls on Spacey to do some of his impersonations – and what came next was truly amazing. I hope you enjoy.

  • 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!

  • 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

  • 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.