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Showing posts from August, 2013

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Kurosawa and the making of Stray Dog

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Stray Dog | Akira Kurosawa | 1949 | Japan | Format: 35mm | 122 min   Stray Dog ( 野良犬 Nora inu ) is a 1949 Japanese police procedural film noir directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura . The film is considered a precursor to the contemporary police procedural and buddy cop film genres.   Inspired by Jules Dassin’s The Naked City and the works of Georges Simenon, Kurosawa wrote the script with Ryuzo Kikushima, a writer who had never written a script before. ~~Wikipedia Excerpts from Akira Kurosawa's Something Like An Autobiography give you a glimpse into what it was like for Kurosawa and his crew to shoot Stray Dog during the summer of 1949.   IF THE FILM IS TRUE... "I don't really like talking about my films. Everything I want to say is in the film iself; for me to say anything more is, as the proverb goes, like "drawing legs on a picture of a snake."   But from time to time an idea I thought I had convey

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Midweek Morning Mixer - 8.28.13

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Captain's Log. Star date: 8.28.13 Ready to jump right in and answer some good questions but first a moment of silence because 26 year ago today in 1987, "one of the great directors of all time, John Huston , died from emphysema in Middletown, Rhode Island. Like another Hollywood titan, Alfred Hitchcock (whose last movie was called Family Plot ), Huston’s final production was a harbinger of his mortality: an adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead . The film was a nod to Huston’s Irish roots, and he very much conformed to the stereotype of a hard-living Irishman: Huston was a man’s man – the Hemingway of the cinema, if you like – a heavy drinker and shameless womanizer (he was married five times) who supposedly only took on The African Queen so he could go shoot an elephant (if White Hunter, Black Heart is to be believed, anyway). Bedridden for several years as a child, when Huston recovered his health he took on life with an insatiable hunger: he followed his fat

SCRIPT TO SCREEN: VFX Breakdowns for World War Z

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World War Z | Marc Forster | 2013 | USA, Malta | Format: 35mm | 116 min     Within the overall filmmaking strategy that takes a project from development to distribution, producers need mini-strategies (like Matryoshka dolls ) to complete certain complex parts of the film.  One of those mini-strategies involves how best to create effective and convincing special visual effects (VFX).  Digital Arts Staff and Wired had behind-the-scenes access to the making of World War Z which gives us an idea of how the producers and director planned and prioritized their effects (granted their budget was ridiculous but still, resourceful and inventive filmmakers can still take notes and learn how to make amazing VFX even if they don't have the money... like this guy ). For the honors, MPC was tapped to provide the VFX using their in-house crowd simulation software, ALICE.    Led by MPC's VFX supervisor Jessica Norman, the house completed more than 450 shots for World War Z.

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Monday Morning Mixer - 8.26.13

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Captain's Log. Star date: 08.26.13 August 26, 1948 - Hitchcock's Rope released By 1948, Hitchcock was considered one of Hollywood’s most distinctive, if not finest, filmmakers. And Rope , being his first film from his own production company Transatlantic Pictures, was going to show audiences just what he could do free from studios and producers, like David O. Selznick. Hitchcock settled on dark (even for him) material. The film’s story is a loose retelling of the infamous 1924 Loeb and Leopold murder case in which two very bright, gay students murder a child to prove they can. Patrick Hamilton wrote the play which was adapted by actor Hume Cronyn and playwright  Arthur Laurents. The film ditched all the details of the original crime except the homosexuality and the homicide. In the film, the central couple (played by John Dall and Farley Granger) are two brilliant men who live together and, for all to surmise, are lovers. While the

PRODUCTION JOURNAL - Midweek Morning Mixer - 8.21.13

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Captain's Log. Stardate: 8.21.13 August 21 was a good day for rebels and innovators.  Today in 1932, Melvin Van Peebles, director of the politically and artistically radical film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), was born.  Also, today in 1939, Orson Welles signed a 63-page contract with RKO Pictures that allowed him to write, direct, produce and act in two movies for the studio with an unprecedented offer: complete creative control .  This led to the production of RKO 281 better known as the innovative and artistically daring film, Citizen Kane (1941). Now that your artistic appetite has been whetted, consider this: What are some sci-fi storytelling script tips ?  What lessons can networks (and aspiring producers pitching episodic concepts) learn from Breaking Bad ? What lessons can aspiring producers learn from David Simon's pitch for The Wire ? How do you light dark skin ?  Do you want an introduction to After Effects? Then here it is. What are th

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Monday Morning Mixer - 8.19.13

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He just had your lunch... dinner is next. Captain's Log. Star date: 8.19.13 Forty years ago today, on.. 19 August 1973 - The Dragon Released The opening night of the kung-fu action film Enter The Dragon was a bittersweet celebration. It was the first martial arts film to be made by a Hollywood studio. Unfortunately Bruce Lee, the brains and brawn behind the project, had died less than a month before the film’s release. Lee, who’d carved out a career as both kung fu master and movie star, turned to Hong Kong after Hollywood shut the door on him in the late 60s. Although he’d had moderate fame playing Kato in the TV series The Green Hornet , Lee felt he was brushed aside for the lead in the Warner Brothers show Kung Fu . In China, Lee’s career exploded with a series of wildly popular kung-fu films that culminated in Enter The Dragon , a co-production between Warner Brothers and the Hong Kong-based production company Golden Harvest. For Lee, this film would

PRODUCTION TIPS: 5 U.S. State Production Incentives for a $25K (or less) Budget

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(from 2012, subject to change) Making a film is a constant battle against the odds; odds that you will finish the script, that you will get the money to shoot it; that you will actually shoot it; that you will have the money to cut it; that you will finish cutting it; that you will have the money to put it in festivals; that you will actually get it in festivals; that you will have the money to market it and get a producer's rep to sell it or four-wall it yourself; and, that you will make any money on it or just break-even. Maybe it's not all about the money but it's a damned good chunk of it. That's why getting to recoupment stage is rarefied air for filmmakers and must feel like raising the flag at Iwo Jima . Big budget films are expected to eventually make money but even a low-budget film can be made to recoup or break-even with creative financing.  Creative financing involves harnessing all the ways to raise funds for a film no matter what the budget using s

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Midweek Morning Mixer - 8.14.13

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Captain's Log. Star Date: 8.14.13 "On August 14, 1945, film director Wim Wenders was born in Düsseldorf. Well, almost. Wenders’ parents wanted to call him Wim, however – despite this being over three months after VE Day – the authorities did not consider this (Dutch) name acceptable for a German baby, so instead he was christened Ernst Wilhelm Wenders. (“Ernst” was the name of his godfather, and “Wilhelm” was the closest Teutonic name to “Wim.”) While his parents were forced to conform, it’s something that Wim himself resisted: in the mid 60s, he dropped out of university to become a painter. He moved to Paris to achieve his dream, and while his quest to get into art school floundered in the City of Lights, he found a home at the Cinemathèque Francaise, where he allegedly watched five movies a day and fell head over heels with film. Returning to Germany, he was accepted into Munich’s newly founded Hochschule für Fernsehen and Film (HFF), and graduated in 19

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: Monday Morning Mixer - 8.12.13

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Captain's Log. Star date: 8.12.13 I just had breakfast.  I'm full.   So I'm keeping it light this morning. So... there are more new rules of screenwriting? How does the architecture in a movie influence the movie? How do you find a great composer for your film? Just for fun, what would you make after you learn how to create WebGL animations ? Why and how do you make a film that's a rebuke to commercial filmmaking ? This looks fun... designing the title sequence to Spring Breakers ?

SCRIPT TO SCREEN: The Last Legion (storyboard to film comparison)

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The Last Legion | Doug Lefler | 2007 | USA | Format: 35mm | 102 min  

PRODUCTION TIPS: 10 Ways Directors MUST Think like a Line Producer

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  The no-to-low budget director is a man of many hats and throughout the production, the director will, at different times and simultaneously, wear the writer's cap, the executive producer's top hat, the director's beret, the line producer's helmet, the editor's hood... hell maybe even the caterer's toque. This is simply a reflection of how a no-to-low budget forces one to do more with less and so the director becomes a hybrid doing many of the most important jobs on the set by himself.  In an otherwise standard or big budget production, the director would pass the head gear to someone else who can devote all their attention to that specific job at hand.  One of the most important jobs that a director MUST perform with a no-to-low budget production is the job of the line producer.  In fact, even when he can delegate to someone else, the director would still benefit from wearing the line producer's helmet. It's easy to imagine the line producer wear

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: MIdweek Morning Mixer - 8.7.13

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Captain's log. Star date - 8.7.13. There's a saying in Spanish that says, " Hace el trabajo mal, lo haces dos veces ," which means "Do the job poorly, you'll do it twice."  Avoid having to correct a badly done job by doing as much to learn how to do it right the first time. And so, without further ado: Why are ridiculously long hours on a movie set the norm and what can we do to correct that? What can we learn about filmmaking from Alejandro Jodorowsky ? What are 7 no-budget post-production tools you can start using today? Why do you need to put together a winning team if you want investors to fund your film? What can you learn from a "Writer's Room" panel of Breaking Bad creators ? What can you learn from legendary producer, Randall Emmett? At least, 13 golden rules . What are 3 ways filmmakers can adapt to a changing media landscape?  Plus 5 (+1 tip I added in the comments section) to break into the film industry. And

CASE STUDY: On Celebrities and Crowdfunding

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The recent crowdfunding campaigns for Veronica Mars , Zach Braff and James Franco brought one thing dramatically to light: it's good to be a celebrity when you're crowdfunding.   Celebrities tend to easily reach and even surpass their crowdfunding goals when they go online and ask for cash (James Franco is a rare exception - he only raised $328,329 out of the $500,000, still a sizeable number that a non-celebrity filmmaker would have a hard time getting).  Even though they are subject to criticism for not offering profit participation in their films, celebrities do offer a panoply of prizes and rewards for the contributions they receive.  I found that interesting since their prize lists are exhaustive.  Filmmakers should learn from these celebrity campaigns even if they can't always do all of the things celebrities can do with theirs while also being attentive to potential changes or improvements occurring with crowdfunding legislation. Hollywood is watching and lea