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SCRIPT TO SCREEN: Interstellar

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Interstellar |  Christopher Nolan | 2014 | USA | Format: 35mm, 70mm & D-Cinema  | 169 min Here's a  supplement to the building a black hole video  about how the animators for the movie actually helped physicists understand black holes better. “Neither wormholes nor black holes have been depicted in any Hollywood movie in the way that they actually would appear,” Kip Thorne said in a promotional video from Warner Bros. U.K. “This is the first time the depiction began with Einstein’s general relativity equations,” Thorne said. Thorne is an American theoretical physicist who has written academic books on general relativity, collaborated with Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, and is one of the world’s leading experts on all things gravitational. He is also the executive producer and scientific consultant for the film. It took Thorne’s intellect, 30 special effects experts, thousands of computers, and a year of hard work to produce the black hole audiences see in

PRODUCTION TIPS: The 4 Most Important Contracts for the 1st Time Filmmaker

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This is NOT what I mean when I say, "Put it in writing." The independent filmmaker is inundated with so much to do that even when she tries to do something right, she will make mistakes.  Mistakes are unavoidable and we learn from our mistakes so, in some sense, we learn to live with them.  For some filmmakers, mistakes actually force the director to make a creative decision that enhances the film.  But there are some mistakes that must be avoided at all costs or they will sink your production.  One of the mistakes a filmmaker must be sure NOT to make is failing to have a contract. In its simplest form, a proper film contract records in writing the agreement between the filmmaker and everyone else involved in the production.  It should define things like each parties' rights and responsibilities, compensation, length of service, and other matters important to protecting the parties and the production.  Those contracts then become a part of your chain of title which

PRODUCTION TIPS: Ending a Horrible Film/TV Industry Practice: "Paying on an Unpaid Basis"

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REPOSTED FROM MY OTHER BLOG: LENSATIC I have always admired the low-budget filmmaker who can make something beautiful or daring or entertaining with the tiniest budget.  Unfortunately, the low-budget filmmaker is not the rarity but the norm.  There is no shortage of filmmakers trying to create even if it means at negative cost to themselves because there is so much potential financial and personal reward in the end.  Maybe that's why the industry has been able to get away with paying nothing for highly creative and technical services and expensive equipment.  That's done more harm than good in the grand scheme of things.  That is why Charles Davis has done the industry a service by reporting on the internship abuse in the entertainment industry.  In a post for The Baffler, he  tracks and outs  the production companies that continue to perpetuate one of the worst practices of the film and TV industry: failing to pay workers a real wage by offering instead "pay on an

SCRIPT TO SCREEN: Raging Bull

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Raging Bull  |  Martin Scorcese  | 1980 | USA | Format: 35mm  | 129 min Polish poster for Raging Bull I just saw Raging Bull the other day. For the first time.   That would be near heresy for a filmmaker to say but I just wasn't interested for a long time.  And it wasn't because I dislike DeNiro or Scorcese or boxing.  It was simply I didn't like how Sugar Ray Robinson (my favorite boxer of all time) was depicted.  In the stills I saw of the movie, Sugar Ray looks scrawny, unkempt and plain wack; not an image befitting the man, the legend who was so good they had to create the phrase "greatest pound-for-pound" to describe how good he was across the board and in comparison to everyone from flyweights to heavyweights. I mean see for yourself... The "real" Sugar Ray The "Raging Bull" Sugar Ray I know, I know... it's such a minor quibble but I'm such a major Sugar Ray fan.  Anyway, I was always curious to see it and I fin

PRODUCTION JOURNAL: brouillard passage #14

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There are many films that caught people's attention in TIFF this year and became the subjects of top 10 lists  but I decided to focus on an interesting experimental short I read about by way of  Daniel Kasman 's mubi notebook TIFF 2014 entries . It was the avant garde short, brouillard passage #14, directed by Alexandre Larose and the sublime little film caught my eye as well (I only got to see the trailer which I have embedded below).  Kasman: Like many avant-garde films, I don't have any idea how Alexandre Larose made  brouillard passage #14 ,  the film which opened the first program, curated around body and camera performances. I think he filmed multiple times a walk along a foliage-lined pathway until reaching a lake and superimposed those images of the corridor upon themselves—but I'm not sure. How often are you not sure of what you're watching during the festival's dramatic features? It's this kind of destabilization and lack of, to put it blu