In our age of twenty-first century cinema, we’re awash with wondrous visual stories and their corresponding soundtracks (though this is no given! Check out our post on how music coming out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is actually all kind same-same in the sound department).
It is because of a ubiquitous big-ness of many soundtracks that I would suggest we actually take more notice when a director decides to do things differently. For example, putting in the necessary effort to deftly craft out a film’s sound design with an absence of musical underscoring.
Cue this amazing little video essay by Every Frame A Painting on the work of Martin Scorsese. Yes, the man is known for his incredible use of music – however, this essay explores his use of silencethroughout his 50-years of cinematic experience. So click away, and check out what happens when Scorsese goes all quiet.
In a world of HD and 4K – have you ever wondered why your NLE still has 29.97 as a frame rate? I have. Not enough to do my own research into it of course… but it’s always been a question. Like a small splinter in the back of my mind.
Well, the short answer is that it was an accommodation made when the American’s introduced colour television. If you are interested in the long mathematical version (and the presentation is interesting enough to watch all the way through), then this video essay is just what the doctor ordered.
Okay this one just has to be shared and re-shared amongst movie goers, videography aficionados, and anyone who has a passing interest in good soundtrack scores in any form of moving picture.
For better or for worse, music shapes what we see on screen… cinema, TV, or otherwise. It is an integral element with which a viewer can be seduced into rapturous emotion of various sorts. I do not remember watching the film The Exorcist as a child (thank goodness my Dad had some sense in that regard). Nevertheless, to this day I cannot hear the opening 8 notes of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells without having The Exorcist spring immediately to mind.
Likewise, you will find it is true of many of our favourite films and TV series (Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, The X-Files, and Saiyūki – otherwise known as Monkey in English – are some great examples).
Now here’s a question to be asked: can you confidently hum a tune from any of the ubiquitous Marvel Cinematic Universe releases that have been released over the better part of the past 15 years? Nah, I didn’t think so. Well, it has not gone unnoticed by the team at Every Frame a Painting either – and their video essay on the topic is must see viewing. I hope you enjoy it.
Welcome to the very first Flick Friday post for 2016 – a series that will motivate you, supercharging your creativity as we delve into cinematography and videography together. Today, we’re sharing a great video montage by Jacob T. Swinney on Quentin Tarantino’s Visual References.
There is lots to be said about this great montage, but we will leave it to Swinney himself to entice you: “It is a well known fact that Quentin Tarantino is a self-proclaimed cinephile. But the writer/director’s love for cinema is most obviously expressed through his own films. In addition to showing his characters spending a great deal of time discussing cinema, Tarantino’s films are jam-packed with homages and visual references to the movies that have intrigued him throughout his life.
Many filmmakers pay homage, but Tarantino takes things a step further by replicating exact moments from a variety of genres and smashing them together to create his own distinct vision.”
With over 30 of these visual references to be had, in a word – it is simply brilliant.
Australian Director George Miller decided that he did not wish to do a remake or retell the Mad Max story – rather, he wanted to update the universe and the wasteland. He even asked his wife Margaret Sixel to edit the film, even though she had never edited action before. his logic was that, “… if a guy did it, it would look like every other action movie.”
Even though 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road is technically an independent movie in the series, it was always a matter of time before someone put in the effort to see whether there were visual echoes between the original Australian New Wave trilogy (1979, 1981, and 1985) and the 2015 release. The good news for fans of the original series is that despite 30-years between drinks, as well as all his intentions to give the world something fresh in Fury Road, a Miller film is a Miller film – and there are echoes in abundance. I hope you enjoy the comparisons as much as I did.
Joseph Campbell wrote a classic cross-cultural study of the hero’s journey back in 1949, and since then it has inspired millions. Like Star Wars, the film it helped inspire, the book was an exploration of the big-picture moments from the stage that is our world. And this theme has enabled it to remain as relevant through the years as when it was first released (it hit the New York Times best-seller list in 1988 after it had become the subject of a PBS television special, The Power of Myth).
For me, stumbling upon a re-run of the PBS series was the first that I had heard of it. It’s kind of eye-opening stuff, and it has keys to wonderful narrative-developing principles that transcend culture… and yet, whenever I ask people about it, what is apparent is that it is still very much unheard of.
Well for my circle of friends and followers, today that changes. You won’t need to read the whole book just yet (though you should). You won’t even need to watch the PBS special (though it is worth while!). Start here: this fantastic little cliff-notes animation work by Iskander Krayenbosch will break the ice for you. And trust me – it is just the kind of teaser that can get you interested in finding out more.
** 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:
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!
So today I stumbled on this great little video essay by Kevin B. Lee for Fandor Keyframe. It takes us on journey into one of the key sequences in the film Insomnia. Interestingly, it does so by giving a side-by-side comparison so that we can really drill down into exploring the differences that may be found between the original 1997 Norwegian version (featuring the always impressive Stellan Skarsgård as investigator Jonas Engström), and it’s 2002 Hollywood counterpart (featuring the stupendous Al Pacino as detective Will Dormer).
I think that the work is very well done, and I personally found that it highlights and emphasises what I wrote about in my previous post: when it comes to a thriller, “…we need good pacing. This is critical.” Honestly, I couldn’t have found a better illustration of how much influence pacing has… here we have the exact same story, and the exact same sequence being followed… and yet the emphasis by the directors in each makes for telling differences. Erik Skjoldbjærg is more deliberate, building tension through slower edits. Christopher Nolan on the other hand builds tension by increasing the pace, communicating a more frantic mood. Seriously, you will love this: what a difference timing can make!
So today I was doing my usual perusal of Vimeo (come on now – you know that a key component of the twenty-first century creative process is random internet surfing, right?) when I stumbled on this fresh little piece.
If you are involved in creative video or film of any sort, then you know a little something about lighting. What I love about this piece is that it demonstrates a variety of ways that cinematographers have grabbed that simple (albeit in a profound kind of way) element of videocraft – ie, lighting – and twisted it into a character in it’s own right. I hope you enjoy it too.
Waiting 2B Scene 