background preloader

Misc

Facebook Twitter

Entertainment You Care About. Recommended Reading - Indie Tips. The Art of Parallel Editing: From D.W. Griffith to Nolan's Inception. Editing is one of the main toolbox available for filmmakers to tell their story, and we often say that it is when the third draft of the film is written.

The Art of Parallel Editing: From D.W. Griffith to Nolan's Inception

Some of tools have become classics, others have different cycles of life, and we often fall into one of the six editing techniques developed by Vsevolod Pudovkin. In his video essay The Inception of Movie Editing: DW Griffith, Kevin B. Lee shows how the ‘father of narrative cinema‘, DW Griffith mastered the Parallel editing technique to tell more complex and ambitious stories, something he believes Christopher Nolan borrowed for his multi-layered dream induced Inception. So what’s Parallel Editing? Here is what Lee says: “In Parallel editing, separate scenes in different locations or periods are cut together to make it appear as if they are unfolding at the same time.” For Lee, D.W.

The Art of Editing: How [All] Films Rely on Pudovkin's Editing Technic. “Parallelism is often used to jump from one time period or a location to another.”

The Art of Editing: How [All] Films Rely on Pudovkin's Editing Technic

Editing is one of the most powerful filmmaking tools. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if you want to make movies and tell stories in general, learning how to edit, even if not at a professional level, will be such a strong ally, if only to understand better how this key phase in making a film can save or kill it. Russian actor, filmmaker and film theoretician Vsevolod Pudovkin understood the power of editing as early as the beginning of the XXth century and affirmed that good editing prevailed over good acting. Evan Richards shared an excellent video essay (see below) where he highlights and explains with visual examples the 5 editing technic Pudovkin considered key to tell visually powerful stories and convey maximum meanings through editing. “Contrast forces the viewer to compare two opposing scenes in their mind” Watch Jaws' Shot by Shot Breakdown for a Detailed Look at Cinematic Techniques on a Classic.

Antonios Papantoniou delivered a video essay that will make filmmakers’ day: a shot by shot cinematic breakdown of Jaws, Steven Spielberg‘s classic, looking at the type of shots, the camera angles, the camera movements, the duration of shots.

Watch Jaws' Shot by Shot Breakdown for a Detailed Look at Cinematic Techniques on a Classic

Here is what Papntoniou says: ‘Spielberg’s staging and blocking may seem complex, but they are all based on a simple principle. The camera examines the scene as a whole and the actors are allowed to change position through space. Incredibly dynamic and highly kinetic mini one shots are created.’ Now, if you have seen Tony Zhou‘s excellent video essay about Spielberg’s Oner, this shouldn’t come as a shocker to you. What makes Papntoniou’s video worth your thirty minutes is that he not only breaks down Spielberg’s visual preferences and the techniques he used to built memorable scenes within the first two minutes: But he also proceeds in breaking down 9 scenes, analyzing their technical content in real time.

OTHER

A one-of-a-kind marketplace from Steven Soderbergh. - Extension 765. (Note: This posting is for educational purposes only.)

A one-of-a-kind marketplace from Steven Soderbergh. - Extension 765

I’m assuming the phrase “staging” came out of the theatre world, but it’s equally at home (and useful) in the movie world, since the term (roughly defined) refers to how all the various elements of a given scene or piece are aligned, arranged, and coordinated. In movies the role of editing adds something unique: the opportunity to extend and/or expand a visual (or narrative) idea to the limits of one’s imagination—a crazy idea that works today is tomorrow’s normal.

I value the ability to stage something well because when it’s done well its pleasures are huge, and most people don’t do it well, which indicates it must not be easy to master (it’s frightening how many opportunities there are to do something wrong in a sequence or a group of scenes. Minefields EVERYWHERE. On-Location.jpg (JPEG Image, 553 × 2473 pixels) - Scaled (40%) Filmmaker IQ. Self Portrait With Yongnuo YN-560 Off Camera Flash. He Lives - Celebrate Easter Because Jesus Christ Lives. Learn Depth of Field with this Powerful (& Free) Online DOF Simulator. Depth of field is an incredibly powerful tool, but the mathematics and mechanics of calculating and pre-visualizing it can be overwhelming.

Learn Depth of Field with this Powerful (& Free) Online DOF Simulator

A Polish software engineer (and amateur photographer) named Michael Bemowski recently put together one of the most helpful depth of field tools out there, and the best part is that it's completely free. The tool, which you can find here, allows you to manipulate every camera and lens setting that affects depth of field, from sensor size to focal length, from aperture to the distance between the subject and the camera. Plus it gives you a handy visual approximation of what each specific set of parameters would look like in a real world setting. At the bottom of the app is another helpful tool, which gives you visual approximations of the distance between the camera, subject, and background, as well as the exact depth of field measurements for the settings defined above.

The Interactive Photography Flow Chart Every Beginning Filmmaker Should Have. We've all been there: a newbie with a camera, a subject, but no clue of what to do.

The Interactive Photography Flow Chart Every Beginning Filmmaker Should Have

This chart should help you get started. Mark Wallace's "Where to Start Chart" is not your average educational infographic. It's interactive. Each bubble in the chart contains a link to one of Mark's helpful video tutorials that goes into the subject matter more in-depth. So, for example, if you wanted to learn more about depth of field, all you would have to do is click the "DOF" bubble on the chart, and voilà, the corresponding video will open in your browser. Www.conspirazzi.com/e-books/film/actor-prepares.pdf.