» Archive for the ‘seen’ Category
If you saw the original Social Media Revolution video a year ago, let me save you some time: the new version making the rounds (yes, via social media) isn’t worth watching. However, if you didn’t catch that video or you’re one of the people who responded “I am afraid of social networks!” on my ongoing survey (please take it if you haven’t already!), this might serve as good brain candy for you: More »
Just picked up a Webby Award for best editing. I would love/hate to see the editing timeline for this!
Or not. Still, the idea of a twisting handle for the follow focus is great, as it allows one to use both hands to support the camera while pulling focus.
[via Engadget]
I find the “My mom bought be a RED so now I’m a DP” T-shirt to be much funnier than the actual video itself, but I guess there’s no need to write a “RED Cinematography Guide” now that such an informative video is out there:
[via FreshDV]
From a production standpoint, $5k and a two day shoot gets you a lot more than it used to. Shot on a RED ONE.
[via Filmmaker IQ]
No one’s going to make a (good) feature with this, but there’s definitely room in the toolbox for a cheap and fast 3D renderer like Moviestorm. For generating secondary content or doing pre-visualizations, Moviestorm could be yet another filmmaking tool that’s disruptive from a price standpoint (costs $8/month):
[via Mashable]
Yesterday’s post about transmedia and the interactive filmmaker highlighted the challenges of developing a transmedia story for independent creators. It’s interesting, then, to look at an example of an expansive transmedia campaign from a studio — in this case, Warner Brothers’ Alternate Reality campaign for The Dark Knight.1 Independent productions are not going to be able to implement an ARG of this scope, but it’s nonetheless good brain candy for the concept of taking a movie “outside” the theater.
- Much of the transmedia strategy and implementation was run by the folks at 42 Entertainment, some of whom later split off to found No Mimes Media. [↩]
This video by Robert Pratten is a great introduction to what transmedia is and how it can be employed by the independent filmmaker (he also has a refreshing perspective on the “technological fetish” of our obsession with new camera technologies!). It’s a 45-minute presentation full of brain candy and should be required viewing for anyone thinking about telling stories across mediums. As Pratten stresses, “transmedia plays to indie’s strengths,” because delivering a consistency of story across platforms is possible for independent creators — not large studios made up of divided teams. In my opinion, his point about authenticity is even more important, because: I could care less about playing a social game if the original auteur had nothing to do with it, and I could care even less about buying a DVD if I suspect only 65 cents of a $15 purchase is going to find its way back to the original filmmaker. Creating our own cross-platform projects and retaining ownership not only gives us more creative control on all of the different incarnations of our story, it can also motivate fans to make purchases because they know we’re the ones benefiting from their support.
In addition to the above presentation, however, Pratten has written some very helpful articles at the Workbook Project on the process of developing transmedia projects: More »
The 2nd Annual Streamy Awards took place last week, and while I was already familiar with many of the award-winners, some I’d never heard of. Every year when new-media awards like the Streamys or the Webbys are announced, I watch the nominees and winners in hopes that I’ll discover something that truly embodies the creative freedoms offered by the web, something unique and unlike anything in Hollywood. But every year I’m disappointed. This year’s Best Drama winner, The Bannen Way, won specifically because it was the best of the bunch at emulating Hollywood. And while I feel there are a lot of brilliant comedies on the web — You Suck at Photoshop, Wainy Days, The Onion News Network — it’s much harder to find compelling drama.
The most interesting drama series I saw via the Streamys was Compulsions (Streamy winner for Best Writing for a Drama Web Series): More »
First off, my write up of this year’s Full Frame Film Festival is live at Filmmaker Magazine; give it a read. More important than my writing, however, are the films themselves, so here are some trailers for the great docs from this year’s Full Frame: More »
Previously I was writing the DSLR Guide offline and then posting a new version once a month. That doesn’t really make much sense anymore, so now I’ll just be updating it on a section-by-section basis whenever I can. I’ll do my best to keep it up-to-date, but please do let me know if I’m missing out on new developments.
While we’re on the topic of DSLRs — and when are we not, these days — check out the most recent winning entry in Vimeo and Canon’s ongoing Story Beyond the Still contest, shot by my Middlebury classmate M. Keegan Uhl on a Canon 7D
Submissions for the next chapter are open until May 3; prizes include a 7D or 5D Mark II — your choice (choose the Mark II!).
With all this talk about realism and immersion in video games, I think Modern Warfare 3 just might take the cake.
A hilarious music video from a great band. Sometimes the dance-off just doesn’t get it done.
Directed by Peter Serafinowicz.
Noah Baumbach’s latest feature Greenberg, starring Ben Stiller, opens nationwide in theaters today. I edited some behind-the-scenes promos for the film, such as this clip:
I did the titles and transitions in After Effects; they’re hand-drawn masks with the “Wiggle – gelatin” behavior applied.
Plastic Bag, a first-person narrative from the perspective of a discarded grocery bag, is part of the FUTURESTATES series of shorts, which collectively ask “What will become of America in five, 25, or even 50 years from today?”
Directed by Ramin Bahrani, voiced by Werner Herzog. Be sure to check out the other ten FUTURESTATES shorts; I felt a particular affinity for this one, in part because the opening shot of The West Side is of one such piece of migrating polyethylene.
I find motion-captured performances (see: Robert Zemeckis’ CGI films) to be comparatively lifeless when measured against hand-animated fare (see: all of Pixar’s movies). The Netherlands-based crew behind Pivot employ a low-poly look not just to give their short style, but to make their characters expressive.
[via Short of the Week]
I have played one video game in four years; I’m not a gamer per se. But the ongoing revolution in social and casual games has been hard to miss, from watching my little cousins playing Club Penguin to the irrepressible Facebook invites I’m always getting for Mafia Wars. To date social games have been used as part of a feature film’s marketing campaign (most recent example: The Crazies), but they will become increasingly integrated into the core story. I’m already working on a social game as an integral component of my next project.
For the future of (social) gaming in one entertaining 30-minute presentation, here’s Jessie Schell’s invaluable primer from DICE 2010.
Watch it all the way to the end, as his final point is worth the half hour on its own. And if you think it’s just a thrown-in feel-good ending, the success of Nike Plus (sidebar) and more recent entrant Fitbit is living proof of socialization’s effectiveness when it comes to modifying real-world behavior.
I’ve been wanting to use tilt-shift interludes as part of a feature film for a while now. These guys put the effect to beautiful use.
Here are some deets on how they did it (hint: they didn’t actually use tilt-shift lenses).
According to the New York Times review, the new Playstation 3 game Heavy Rain offers “a glimpse of the future of interactive entertainment, a future when characterization, writing and emotional connection are more important than combat mechanics.”
Another tidbit from the Times review: the script for Heavy Rain was over 2,000 pages long.
As a storyteller I’m less interested in the skill and coordination aspect of videogames, and more interested in the choices one has to make as a player/participant in interactive movies. The rest of the reviews of the game/movie are also overwhelmingly positive, and I look forward to playing/watching (I guess I should I just say “experiencing”) it.
When moviegoers started going to theaters less frequently in favor of watching a videotape or DVD on a home screen, the movie-watching experience became less social. But once you connect that home screen to the internet, suddenly that device can help you become more social. I’m interested in the ways connected devices help us meet and interact with strangers; specifically I think the mobile dating arena is primed to take off, as it combines the convenience of meeting someone in a bar (meaning, it’s local) with the filtration abilities of the internet (clicking a mouse or touching a screen is a much easier, and often more civil, way to get rid of would-be suitors). In light of all this, I found this video about the barebones site Chat Roulette interesting:
If I were to bootstrap a non-film-related startup, I think it would be in the “mobile meeting” space, but I don’t have the infrastructure to support that kind of thing. Regardless, while this technology might be depressingly primitive today — and depressingly populated by what Casey terms “perverts” — where it’s headed tomorrow is the (multi)million-dollar question.
[via NewTeeVee]
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