FILM PIPELINE - Part 2b

On-Set Production

"In part 2A of the film pipeline overview, I discussed the final aspects of production before going on-set. Once you’re on set, however, the character of production changes.  It becomes much more intense, as there’s always a ticking clock."

Topics:
- Crew Call; Location, Grip and Lighting Work
- Script and Storyboard Revisions
- Cast Call and Cast-Director Check-in
- Wardrobe, Hair and Make-Up
- Actual Shooting
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By Stephan Vladimir Bugaj

SAICFF Registration Now Open!

The festival will be held October 28-30 in downtown San Antonio, and we are excited to see the film submissions for 2010!

Submission Entry Deadlines

Early Bird Deadline: May 1, 2010 *
Regular Deadline: Feature Films: July 31, 2010 All Others: June 30, 2010

* Please note: In order for films to qualify for the Early Bird special pricing, all submissions must be post-marked no later than May 1.

Film Festival Categories

This year filmmakers have the opportunity to submit films to compete for a Jubilee Award in five categories:
- Feature Film
- Documentary
- Short Film
- Commercial Advertisement
- Promotional Media.

In addition, one of these films will take home the Best of Festival Jubilee Award, and a check for $101,000.

Awards will also be given for:
- Best Three-Page Treatment
- Best Original Score
- Best Young Filmmaker
- Best Festival Trailer
- ....and the coveted Audience Choice award.

More info can be found at, www.saicff.org

FILM PIPELINE - Part 2a

Production Phase 1

"If you find yourself continually making major changes throughout late prepro / early production, maybe your film isn’t really ready for production. And if your film isn’t actually ready for production, why is it in production in the first place? If more executives (and producers, directors, etc.) asked themselves this question seriously there would be more quality films coming in on-time and on-budget."

Topics:
- Casting, Wardrobe, Make-Up Tests, Rehearsals, Camera Tests with Talent
- Crew Casting
- Lock Locations, Build Sets, Get Props
- Finally, you need to just stop getting ready at some point.
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By Stephan Vladimir Bugaj

FREE DOWNLOAD! - Walt Disney: A Christian Critique

"In the twentieth century, no man did more to shape the values of family culture for good or evil than Walt Disney. As a motivator, innovator, and filmmaker, his efforts impacted millions across the globe through his movies, theme parks, and television shows. Disney’s work helped to define the literary and cultural sensibilities of a generation of American children and introduced enduring and iconic expressions of childhood that remain with us to this day.

Yet, despite his far reaching influence, Christians have not thoroughly evaluated the worldview and accomplishments of Walt Disney from a biblical perspective. In these three powerful messages presented by Doug Phillips, Geoff Botkin, and Isaac Botkin, the listener is treated to a never-before-heard professional insight, filling that void by providing a theological critique of Disney’s legacy, offering independent filmmakers and families important lessons to be learned from Walt’s victories and failures.

Right up until Walt Disney’s death, the nineteenth-century culture of small town America was very dear to his heart, and this ideal served as his touchstone during the cultural turmoil and decline of the twentieth century. In the small community of Marceline, Missouri, Walt was shaped by sensibilities of grateful immigrants, industrious farmers, and conscientious schoolmasters. Veteran filmmaker Geoff Botkin explores Disney’s nineteenth century values—what he terms as “Walt’s ethical default position”—and makes this observation that only by understanding Disney’s core commitments will modern filmmakers be able to rightly understand his cultural achievements and legacy.

Isaac Botkin brilliantly explains that the Christian film pioneers of the twenty first century must learn from the Disney legacy’s of entrepreneurial success in a highly competivive industry. Find out what Disney wanted his staff to be and how he led them through habits of command that set technical and story standards that have yet to be surpassed."

Titles include:

• Symposium on Disney, Film and American Culture: A Theological Critique, by Doug Phillips
• The Life and Times of Walt Disney: Understanding Walt's 1899 Ethical Default Position, by Geoff Botkin
• The Rise and Fall of the Disney Studio: The Objective Pursuit of Quality in the Development of Art and Story, by Isaac Botkin

- DOWNLOAD HERE -

"A Christmas Snow" Wraps Filming

Each day they have been producing a Director’s Diary Video with Tracy Trost the Director of “A Christmas Snow”. Very educational and fun videos!

Lots of interviews with Cast and Crew!

...and great Behind the Scenes info too!

You can watch all the videos on the movie's Facebook page here!
www.achristmassnow.com
www.facebook.com/AChristmasSnow

What Makes A Hollywood Blockbuster?

"Scientists writing in Psychological Science may have the answer. Using the sophisticated tools of modern perception research to deconstruct 70 years of film, shot by shot, the Cornell researchers say that successful movies follow a particular mathematical pattern.

The team of psychologists measured the duration of every shot in every scene of 150 of the most popular films released from 1935 to 2005. The films represented five major genres—action, adventure, animation, comedy and drama. Using a complex mathematical formula, they translated these sequences of shot lengths into "waves" for each film.

Researchers looked for a pattern called the 1/f fluctuation. The 1/f fluctuation is a concept from chaos theory, and it means a pattern of attention that occurs naturally in the human mind. Indeed, it's a rhythm that appears throughout nature, in music, in engineering, economics, and elsewhere. In short, it's a constant in the universe, though it's often undetectable in the apparent chaos.

Results of the study revealed that modern films—those made after 1980—were much more likely than earlier films to approach this universal constant. That is, the sequences of shots selected by director, cinematographer and film editor have gradually merged over the years with the natural pattern of human attention. This may explain the more natural feel of newer films—and the "old" feel of earlier ones. Modern movies may be more engrossing—we get "lost" in them more readily—because the universe's natural rhythm is driving the mind.

Filmmakers probably haven't deliberately crafted their movies to match this pattern in nature. Instead, it's more likely that the relatively young art form has gone through a kind of natural selection, as the edited rhythms of shot sequences were either successful or unsuccessful in producing more coherent and gripping films. The most engaging and successful films were subsequently imitated by other filmmakers, so that over time and through cultural transmission the industry as a whole evolved toward an imitation of this natural cognitive pattern.

Overall, action movies are the genre that most closely approximates the 1/f pattern, followed by adventure, animation, comedy and drama. But individual films from every genre have almost perfect 1/f rhythms. The Perfect Storm, released in 2000, is one of them, as is Rebel Without a Cause, though it was made in 1955. So too is The 39 Steps, Hitchcock's masterpiece from way back in 1935."
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Source Article

Tips from a Professional Camera Operator

Useful advice to smooth and finesse your moves and tune your viewfinder eye!


"No one taught me how to be an operator. At a young age I found myself drawn to strong compositions in certain TV shows and movies, and I sought to emulate those compositions with my Regular 8mm camera. Over time I learned, through trial and error and the occasional tip from those more experienced than I, how to move the camera predictably and repeatedly.

There’s a lot more to being an operator than skill in moving the camera. It’s a very political job as well. I’ll address some of both aspects in this article." ~Art Adams

TOPICS COVERED:
- Learn the Geared Head
- When In Doubt, Keep Moving
- Half of Operating is Knowing When Not to Move the Camera
- Body Language is Our Friend
- Feedback
- Weight Distribution
- Compositions Don't Have to be Balanced
- Adjust the Camera, Not the Actor
- Walk the Set
- Look Around the Viewfinder
- Focus is Your Problem Too
- Learn When the Rules Don't Apply
- Over-the-Shoulder Shots
- Use Crosshairs and Frame Markers for Reference
- Find the Payoff of the Shot
- Don't Put Yourself At Risk
- A Little Bit of Trivia
- Check Your Space Before A Move
- Learn to Balance Your Head
- Ending a Tough Move

This is a great read for really anyone involved with filmmaking, but camera operators will benefit from it the most! Read the Full Article Here.

How the BBC made one of those amazing plant growing shots.

For those that aren’t on Twitter I wanted to post this amazing video that shows how the BBC series Life was able to achieve an amazing plant growing shots for the episode “Plants.” It involves multiple time-lapse tracking shots in the wild as well as the same shots recreated on blue-screen in the studio. All shot with a DSLR and brought together in the all-powerful After Effects.

Source Article

A Brilliant Commercial - "Embrace Life"

I see a lot of PSA's out there, trying to get drivers to wear their seatbelts, stop texting while driving, or the classic, 'don't drink and drive' commercial. They typically feature emotional trauma, blood, bruises, horrific accidents, and guilt ridden drivers who caused deaths with their carelessness.

But I recently saw a commercial with a much more appealing and memorable approach to the topic. Check out the commercial below.

The breakdown of the commercial:

00:00 Key Turning.

00:04 Foot on the gas.

00:06 Family watches, entertained - trucking right.

00:10 Driving happily - push in.

00:14 Family laughter, mid shot - push in.

00:17 A happy father, - truck right.

00:20 Daughter laughing, - push in.

00:22 Fearful driver, mid-shot - push in.

00:28 Panicked daughter, close up - push in

00:31 Yanking the wheel, close up - push in

00:35 Family leaps into action - push in

00:36 Daughter at his side

00:43 Her Fingers interlock

00:46 Wife grabs him

00:48 Her Fingers interlock

00:50 Impact Close-up

00:50 Impact Wide

00:58 Glitter Falls

01:02 A Family Embrace

You might say, "That's 19 shots in an 88 second commercial. That's averaging a cut every 4.5 seconds... How is that economical?" Well, in this instance, we're going to examine the setups and angles, or shots and not the number of times a shot is edited in, or cuts. There is a lot we were able to learn in this very short period of time, and a lot of action taking place. Yet the reason we were able to remember it all so very clearly, is that we didn't cut to a new angle every time.

The setups are actually very simple throughout the short. Shots 1 and 2 are throwaway angles. That's why the content in the shot is very limited. A key turns, a foot presses the gas pedal. But even though they pass by in six seconds, we know he's starting a car. There is very little to see in the shot, other than the hand with the invisible key, and the foot on the invisible gas pedal. This way, all our attention is devoted to the actions, not the environment.

This is true with every shot in the film; the environments are simple and unassuming, familiar to the viewer, so that the characters become the focal point....

- You can read the entire article and commercial breakdown here.

Color Correcting Canon 7D Footage

A frequent concern about shooting to a heavily-compressed digital format—something the DV Rebel often finds herself doing—is the degree to which the footage will be “color correctable.” Will the shots fall apart when subjected to software color grading? Or will you be able to work with the footage as fluidly as you tweak your raw stills in Lightroom?

It’s a valid concern. The movies that the current crop of HDSLRs shoot are highly compressed. This compression is perceptual, meaning that it takes advantage of visually similar colors and shapes, and represents those regions with less accuracy than the detailed and varied parts of the image. This makes perfect sense, but often in color grading one seeks to enhance color contrasts—to make a face pop off a similarly-colored background for example—and so you may well create high contrasts between colors that were once nearly identical, and as such were given short shrift by the camera’s compression.

You might have noticed a similar phenomenon in audio. An low-bit-rate MP3 that sounds decent enough can suddently sound awful after even a tiny amount of EQ. Another case of perceptual compression limiting your options.

While you will never find as much data and detail in your HDSLR video as you do in that same camera’s raw stills, the H.264 movies created by the Canon 7D, 5D and 1D Mark IV will withstand some massaging in post. Here are some tips (similar to those found in greater detail in The DV Rebel’s Guide) to help you get the best results....

Read the full article here.