NoFilmSchool » seen

Desktop Effects Have Come a Long Way: Russian Transformers Shot on a Canon T2i

Ryan Koo — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:07:08 +0000

This DIY Russian “adaptation” of Michael Bay’s Transformers was shot in two hours and edited in a month. Despite it copying the worst Hollywood has to offer (the second Transformers was one of the least-entertaining action films I’ve ever seen, and I’m not the only one to think that — it has a 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), props to these guys. Presumably they will get paid effects work out of this demo, and in that regard it’s a good calling-card type of project. Remember when you used to need a room-sized computer to do this kind of stuff? Shot on a Canon T2i (known as the 550D overseas) and Nikon D5000, animated in 3ds Max. (more…)

Arcade Fire's 'The Wilderness Downtown' is a New Breed of HTML5 Music Video

Ryan Koo — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:04:29 +0000

I’m a few days late with this, and at the speed of the Internet that might make this old news. But as someone who’s currently evaluating the relative merits of HTML5 vs Flash (for the interactive implementation of my project 3rd Rail), I was intrigued by director Chris Milk’s interactive video for Arcade Fire’s latest album The Suburbs. Built entirely in HTML5 (which means you’ll need a compatible browser to experience it), the multiple window-spawning video makes very clever use of Google Maps and its streetview feature to personalize the video for your own hometown. (more…)

The DIY Creative Class Goes Mainstream: The Neistat Brothers on HBO

Ryan Koo — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:51:28 +0000

I caught the new show from the Neistat Brothers on HBO On Demand the other night and found myself sucked in by the decidedly low-fi, autobiographical chapters. The show is appropriately named The Neistat Brothers, because that’s what it’s about: them. Them and their creative process, which ascribes to a total NYC/DIY aesthetic. Because of its use of indie music and first-person narrative, but also due to the DIY nature of the production, the show reminds me a lot of the terrific Four Eyed Monsters podcast, which was about the making of the DIY feature Four Eyed Monsters — the difference is, Neistat Brothers has no associated feature film attached. It’s just about the Neistats, who are fellow graduates of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces (class of 2006, in their case). Normally I’d find a show about a show — which is essentially what it is — to be solipsistic and navel-gazing, but the brothers work it out. (more…)

Trailer: David Fincher's 'The Social Network'

Ryan Koo — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 18:52:53 +0000

I don’t remember where I heard it, but someone mentioned that Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for The Social Network was the best they’d read in years. Now that I think about it, this was probably an unsubstantiated internet rumor, not from someone I actually know in person! Regardless, this stuck with me, as it’s pretty hard to imagine exactly what a movie about the founding of Facebook would look like. Those rumors about Justin Timberlake playing Mark Zuckerberg (Timberlake is in the film, but Zuckerberg is being played by Jesse Eisenberg) didn’t help. And now the teaser from Sony Pictures reveals very little about the film — other than the fact that they’re taking it very seriously: (more…)

Trailer: Sofia Coppola's 'Somewhere'

Ryan Koo — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:06:14 +0000

What happens when an oversexed Hollywood actor has a daughter? This seems to be the question posed by the trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, a possible spiritual successor to Lost in Translation. Given LiT is by far my favorite Coppola film — sorry, my favorite Sofia Coppola film — I’m very much looking forward to Somewhere. Here’s the trailer (available in HD if you select 720p): (more…)

Dan Deacon - Paddling Ghost

Ryan Koo — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 12:41:04 +0000

The video for Dan Deacon’s Paddling Ghost came out nine months ago, but I just re-watched it via RADAR; the charming puppet-laden video, directed by Natalie van den Dungen, is definitely worth a (re)watch. (more…)

Pixel - a pixel art documentary

Ryan Koo — Wed, 26 May 2010 13:20:39 +0000

Pixel art, along with its musical counterpart the chiptune, describes a game, video, or song produced on old computer equipment (or produced to seem like it was produced on old computer equipment). I suppose pixel art is no different from any revivalist pursuit, but there’s something uniquely funny about designing for a 192×160 screen (which is less resolution than the image at left) in an era of 1080p (and higher) resolution content. In an era of over-produced pop stars and slick but empty movies, perhaps that’s exactly the point! Simon Cottee’s 10-minute documentary on pixel art makes for an interesting follow-up to the retro-yet-high-tech short PIXELS posted here a couple weeks ago. (more…)

Watch the full House finale here (shot on a 5d Mark II)

Ryan Koo — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:35:02 +0000

The season finale of House was famously shot on a DSLR, specifically the 5d Mark II. FOX doesn’t post full episodes online until 8 days after they air on TV, which is why the season finale hasn’t been available anywhere — until now. Here’s the DSLR-shot episode in full:

Web series watch: Dragon Age

Ryan Koo — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:09:50 +0000

One of the things I was most proud of when it came to my web series The West Side was, quite frankly, that it should’ve sucked a lot more than it did. If you took the challenging concept and combined that with our utter lack of resources, it really should’ve been a laughable home movie. The fact that we were even able to suspend disbelief at all was a minor miracle. I had a similar “it should suck more than it does” feeling while watching the latest Machinima.com web series to premiere, Dragon Age. This is a credit to the directing and editing, because if you think Hollywood’s video game adaptations are bad, imagine trying to make a movie using the video game engine itself. Not easy, and the unitentionally risible moments are surprisingly few in Dragon Age: (more…)

Zôl - La vengeance de Boorbie

Ryan Koo — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:54:31 +0000

First off: this is weird (which can be taken either as a warning or an endorsement). I was originally going to go with a post title of “Britney Spears’ latest,” and then show this oddball French video, but… only I would think that was funny. So here’s La vengeance de Boorbie by French recording artist Zôl. Music video directed by Charlie Mars. (more…)

Behind-the-scenes on The Last 3 Minutes

Ryan Koo — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:00:16 +0000

Regardless of whether you think Po Chang’s The Last 3 Minutes is a rip-off of Chris Milk’s Last Day Dream, the DP of the former film, Shane Hurlbut, has posted a series of very interesting behind-the-scenes videos from the making of the short. Despite the use of low-cost DSLRs, the video had a sizable budget, apparent in the amount of equipment and size of the crew employed on the shoot. Shane’s done a very helpful voiceover, illustrating several clever shooting and lighting techniques: (more…)

Is The Last 3 Minutes just a rip-off of Last Day Dream?

Ryan Koo — Tue, 18 May 2010 21:53:14 +0000

The Last 3 Minutes, a DSLR short from director Po Chang, reminds me a bit too strongly of a video released a year ago by director Chris Milk, entitled Last Day Dream. Even the titles are similar! Both videos are shot in their entirety from a first-person perspective, enabled by the small size and maneuverability of the DSLR du jour, the 5d Mark II. Here they are in chronological order (Last Day Dream was released a year before The Last 3 Minutes). NSFW language in the former: (more…)

The trailer for Iron Sky: "Get ready to kick some Nazi arse! Send us your money."

Ryan Koo — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:07:30 +0000

That’s the call-to-action from the trailer for Iron Sky, the new project from Finnish director Timo Vuorensola. The film is similar in tone to his last project Star Wreck — occupying the space somewhere between parody and… well, I’m not sure what. The plot of Iron Sky? “In 1945 the Nazis went to the Moon – and in 2018 they are coming back!” (more…)

PIXELS by Patrick Jean: soon to be an Adam Sandler feature?

Ryan Koo — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:33:44 +0000

For whatever reason I’ve been featuring a lot of animated shorts here lately, and considering they’re averaging about 0.37 comments per post, why stop now? Patrick Jean’s eye-catching animated short PIXELS came out a month ago, but now there’s news that it is being adapted into a feature by Adam Sandler’s production company Happy Madison. Something tells me I’ll end up liking the original more… (more…)

The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9

Ryan Koo — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:59:11 +0000

Animator Jake Armstrong spent a year and a half animating this six-minute short in Flash. You’d never know, because there’s nothing “labored” about it. A thesis film at SVA, Armstrong said of the film that he thought it would be much better with music; I think one of the best parts is the relative silence (they’re in space, after all!). (more…)

"I want to fly a rocket ship to the moon, but I don't want to talk to NASA"

Ryan Koo — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:32:15 +0000

Scott Kirsner just posted a ton of videos from the recent film/tech conference The Conversation, and since I didn’t go (that would have been three panels in three weeks), I plan on watching them all and posting what I find to be the most interesting clips here. To start, here are the opening remarks from producer/professor Ira Deutchman. The audio quality isn’t stellar, but Ira makes some good points about how The Long Tail is great for aggregators but sucks for content creators, and about how making an independent film is arrogant (thus the titular quote): (more…)

The Return of John Frum

Ryan Koo — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:22:52 +0000

The animation in this short by Christian Schlaeffer is amazing. The story… well, I’m not sure you can call it a “story.” If you take illegal substances as a method of escape and/or enhancement, you might want to do so before watching this surreal and gorgeous short! Viewed sober, it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Which is exactly what made me want to watch it a second time… (more…)

Produced on a Nintendo DSi: Losing Light

Ryan Koo — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:09:56 +0000

Billy Polard sang a song and then made his own music video using a Nintendo DSi. I found a DSi in the glove compartment of a ZipCar once and gave it to the parking attendent (who probably stole it) — to me, it was disposable. I would have never thought it possible to create something like this on the little handheld gaming device (apparently he used the program FlipNote): (more…)

Web 3.0: now we're just talking semantics

Ryan Koo — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:07:51 +0000

In Kate Ray’s 14-minute film Web 3.0 (embedded below), Clay Shirky asks, “does the world make sense, or do we make sense of the world?” In other words, does the infographic of web links at left resemble the universe because a natural relationship exists between all things, or does the infographic resemble the universe because whoever graphed the visualization made it look like the universe? Watching the short, I kept thinking: these charts are cool and all, but what does Web 3.0 actually mean for you and me? One guess: much better automatic filters; that is, Netflix’s movie recommendation engine times a thousand (for a lot more than just movies). Here’s the video: (more…)

Cold War Kids' "I've Seen Enough" is multi-color, multi-angle

Ryan Koo — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:03:46 +0000

The interactive video for Cold War Kids’ “I’ve Seen Enough” video isn’t multi-angle — it’s more “multi-take” — but the idea is the same. While I designed a multi-angle music video player in a similar vein for MTV (it’s in my portfolio — scroll down to the second image), what interests me most isn’t multi-angle storytelling but rather multi-story storytelling, where more than one narrative thread is unfolding simultaneously — and the viewer has a choice as to which one they follow. My in-and-out-of-development project 3rd Rail is exactly this.

Here’s the Cold War Kids video: (more…)