2015: Camera and Monitor Gear in Review

Looking back on 2015, while there were few real stand-out innovations, the advances in the world of cameras and gear continued to march relentlessly forward. Cameras This was the year that Panasonic finally shipped their 4K Varicam 35, but for the indie filmmaker it was probably the announcement of the $4,000 Panasonic AG-DVX200 4K camera — which features a Four-Thirds sensor — that was more interesting. Ideal for run-and-gun documentary work, you might think of it as the GH4 with better audio and a good fixed zoom lens. For the narrative filmmaker, or those that want/need a bigger sensor, the […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1OlfKrq

Film Props – How To Age Paper

What’s a short film without a mysterious parchment, or an ancient map? It’s almost compulsory to have one in one of your first short films. In this video, you can learn the quick, cheap & easy method to creating aged paper that looks great on camera.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1PvI1fU

A Pre-Production Checklist For Filmmakers by Devin Reeve

Devin Reeve shares the list of things needed to prep before a production.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1VonDh7

Mini Masterclass by Sydney Pollack on Directing “The Yakuza”

Sydney Pollack discusses some of the experience working on his Japanese collaboration in “The Yakuza”Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1QVEmcN

How to Set Up a C-Stand

The one piece of equipment you’re guaranteed to run into on set is the C Stand (or Century Stand). It’s a metal stand used for rigging and supporting lighting and grip equipment. Dominic D’Astice (key grip on RocketJump: The Show) shows you the basics for properly setting up and using a c stand safely on Read MoreRead More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1NOqDRd

The Hateful Eight Makeup and Hair, with Camille Friend and Heba Thorisdottir

Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ takes place in a single day in the Old West, but it was shot over five months on a Colorado mountaintop. Variety’s Jenelle Riley spoke to department head hair stylist Camille Friend and makeup dept. head Heba Thorisdottir about how they kept everyone looking exactly the same, and exactly in Read MoreRead More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1OqNSOa

Art and Masturbation

Art has enormous prestige in our society; masturbation certainly doesn’t. And yet there are some fascinating correspondences between the creativity entailed in both processes. And you wonder why some art films are called masturbatory.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1QUwAzZ

“Looking for False Performance Beats”: Editor Fred Raskin on The Hateful Eight

As the first film to be shot in the Ultra Panavision 70 format since Khartoum in 1966, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight has deservedly garnered a lot of attention for its cinematography; shot in an extra-wide aspect ratio on a 65mm negative, it’s undeniably a spectacular showcase for director of photography Robert Richardson’s visual gifts. Subtler, but perhaps even more impressive, is the contribution of editor Fred Raskin, who assembles the 2.76:1 images like a maestro of space, timing, and movement. At over three hours in its Christmas Day “roadshow” edition, The Hateful Eight doesn’t have an extraneous frame – […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1Jcw0dR

Christmas Surprise Tracks from LCD Soundsystem and Radiohead

Here’s hoping this becomes a new tradition — surprise releases from great bands that are actually pretty good! The first, what will become a seasonal classics for melancholics everywhere, is from a band that technically doesn’t even exist anymore: LCD Soundsystem. And the second is an unused theme for the James Bond film Spectre by Radiohead. First, here’s what LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy wrote to accompany “Christmas Will Break Your Heart”: so, there’s been this depressing christmas song i’d been singing to myself for the past 8 years, and every year i wouldn’t remember that i wanted to make it […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1m9zmV3

Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson Talk 70mm on Christmas Eve

One of the nice things about a Weinstein Company Christmas Day release of a film by Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight) is that the accompanying marketing material is necessarily cinephilic. Take this yuletide chat between Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, shot in Tarantino’s home theater and moderated by Deadline’s Pete Hammond. Over forty minutes long, it deals with topics like the lifespan of the celluloid format (Tarantino says it has experienced “a reprieve”) as well why both he and Anderson like using the format for shooting films largely set in interiors. Check it out above.

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1m9zjZB

Staggered: The Hateful Eight

In Quentin Tarantino’s superbly balanced ensemble piece, The Hateful Eight, the passengers and drivers we meet at the start of the picture, dropped off at Minnie’s Haberdashy, a spacious Wyoming way station, by two different stagecoaches on different but overlapping missions, all have masked identities. Six years after the end of the Civil War, these are some of battle’s renegade residue, Confederate vets with few prospects who depend on bounty hunting to survive in a particularly testy postwar America. In the second coach there’s Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins, displaying the best of his high-energy talent), who claims to be the […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1ONnuyv

“Front Street Gym is the Heartbeat of the Film”: Production Designer Hannah Beachler on Creed

When the original Rocky hit screens in December of 1976, the underdog tale’s titular pugilist was a slightly doughy, none-too-bright palooka who guzzled beer after fights and collected for a loan shark. Rocky even loses the climactic bout, but earns a personal victory by going the distance. In a decade cinematically defined by Travis Bickle, Deep Throat, and “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” that qualified as a rousing crowd pleaser. By the time Rocky IV arrived less than a decade later, Stallone’s southpaw was now a ripped, perfectly coiffed millionaire who practically ends the Cold War by breaking a hulking Soviet […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1OLVBqz

The Onion Reviews ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

The Onion’s movie critic Peter K. Rosenthal reviews Star Wars: The Force Awakens in this week’s Film Standard.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1ImU3H4

David Lynch: Keep Your Eye On The Donut

There’s the Donut and there’s the hole: Keep your eye on the Donut.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1NHdAyv

Making a Working BB-8 Droid Replica!

Ever since BB-8 first made its appearance in the first Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser, droid builders have been trying to figure out how to make their own working replica. Tested visits the shop of Mike Senna, veteran robot builder, to follow his progress creating his own BB-8.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1YreNoc

Section 181, Film Production Tax Incentive, Reinstated (and Retroactive!) in 2016 Spending Bill

Great news for independent film producers: the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress this week and signed by President Obama contains a reinstatement of Section 181, the tax provision that incentivizes film and television production by allowing for immediate deduction of production costs up to $15 million. What’s more, the provision, which expires December 31, 2016, was made retroactive to include costs spent during 2015. (In recent years, Section 181 was retroactively renewed for the prior year at the beginning of the next fiscal year; in 2015, it was allowed to expire completely, and many observers didn’t expect to see […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1Phlbsm

Showtime Unveils a New Twin Peaks Teaser

We’ll just start by apologizing up front — at Filmmaker, you know, we don’t report on every trailer, one-sheet or still photo released in support of projects of interest. These things are marketing items, you know? Advertisements. But I suspect we will be making an exception for Twin Peaks, especially now that David Lynch is back behind the camera of this Showtime 25-years-later series. A new teaser has just dropped. It’s not much, but it’s something.

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1PbTa3m

Film Set Safety 101

Who is responsible for safety? Andrew Spieler (Assistant Director for RJ:The Show) and RocketJump director/co-creator Matthew Arnold sit down to have a real discussion about safety on set. They cover the precautions and safety measures taken for the large-scale stunts in the new action-packed short, Truck Flipper vs Bus Puncher, but also explain how placing Read MoreRead More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1mcFrPX

The Designated Mourner: Son of Saul

“You failed the living for the dead,” Abraham (Levente Molnar) chides fellow Hungarian Jew Saul Auslander (Geza Rohrig) in the bowels of Auschwitz-Birkenau in October, 1944. It’s a damning comment, almost a charge of treachery: That is the occasion for the single act of resistance by camp inmates against the occupying Germans. Given recent Russian advances, the Nazis pushed to quickly liquidate not only those who had defied the odds, who had survived unimaginable brutality, epidemics, and freezing temperatures, but also the camp’s naïve newcomers right upon arrival. The latter actually believed they were disrobing for a group shower before […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/1mcFsU5

John Waters’ Favorite “Love” Movies

John Waters discuses his favourite LOVE films, including a long-forgotten Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton classic.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1JgOipb

The Basics of Clamps for Photo and Video

The Slanted Lens talks clamps- covering seven types including the A-clamp, a super clamp, a Cardellini, a platypus (or duck bill) clamp, an adjustable gaffer grip, a c-clamp, and a chain vice grip.Read More

from FilmmakerIQ.com http://ift.tt/1mryWsZ

Mike Nichols Documentary and Dazed and Confused Event Added to Sundance 2016 Lineup

With just a little more than a month to go until The Sundance Film Festival, the festival has announced additions to the lineup, including the premiere of Douglas McGrath’s documentary Becoming Mike Nichols and three “From the Collection” archival screenings. Becoming Mike Nichols is slated to air on HBO on Feb. 22. Also on the program is a new Special Event featuring Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused along with live commentary from the filmmaker and his pal Jason Reitman. The archival screenings include John Sayles’ City of Hope, Kelly Reichardt’s River of Grass and Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking. The festival runs January 21-31, 2016. Below are the […]

from Filmmaker Magazine http://ift.tt/22bmYEx