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PRODUCTION TIPS: Lessons from 4 Veteran Filmmakers (Fuller, Altman, Eastwood and Stone)

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One of the things that struck me from my time in the USMC was that if my platoon had somehow been tasked with making a movie, we would deliver an Academy Award-worthy production way under-budget and way ahead-of-schedule. That's just the the kind of motivation and morale that almost seems intrinsic to being in the armed forces.  I think about my time in the Marines whenever I am behind the camera and draw on those experiences on everything from how to motivate the cast and crew to staying focused on the aesthetic and logistical mission at hand even when the stresses build.   I wonder too how much four of my favorite American film directors,  Samuel Fuller (served in the US Army, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division during World War 2), Robert Altman (served in the US Army Air Forces, 307th Bomb Group during World War 2), Clint Eastwood (served in the US Army) and Oliver Stone (served in the US Army, 25th Infantry Division then with the 1st Cavalry Division duri

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