Anyone for revolution?
Whatever happened to the DSLR Spring? ☛ 1960: a film called Breathless was released that revolutionised cinema. It was shot on 16mm film, a technology previously only used for newsreels. The French New Wave that followed inspired the counter-culture movies of the next decade, and left a mark still visible in the films we make … Read more
High Frames Drifter
Is the truth any truer at 48 frames per second? ☛ Like virtually everyone else in the film blogosphere, I’ve been to see The Hobbit recently in its High Frame Rate (HFR) presentation and, like everyone else, I feel drawn to offer my assessment of the new technology, especially since it raises some important questions … Read more
The Art of Screen Dialogue
Working in layers ☛ A month or two back I wrote a piece about the nature of screen dialogue, focusing on naturalism and style; back then I suggested that there was more to say about the business of making your character talk. There is. Part of the challenge of writing really good dialogue lies in … Read more
Who shot film?
A day in the death of 35mm ☛ Last month Fujifilm, one of the last two manufacturers of 35mm negative for motion pictures, announced that it would cease production of its film stocks. The move was widely heralded as one of the final nails in the coffin for movies being shot on film. Purists greeted … Read more
Is Post-Production Going Out of Sync?
A conversation with editor, Mick Audsley ☛ Mick Audsley has edited everything from My Beautiful Laundrette and Dangerous Liaisons to 12 Monkeys and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but he’s concerned about the direction in which post-production is going. With the help of Hyperactive and Pivotal Post, he’s started an event called Sprocket … Read more
The Midas Touch
How and why directors make their presence felt ☛ Watch a film by many celebrated filmmakers and, even if you missed the opening titles, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to name the director. You don’t have to do the sort of word-by-word analysis needed to work out whether or not a play is … Read more
Buy-Out
A Brief Guide to Losing your Audience ☛ My last piece about Buy-In – the thing that makes us want to love a movie – provoked some questions on online discussion boards. Some folk asked about my thoughts on exactly the opposite subject: they wanted to know what causes the audience to fall out of … Read more
Buy-in
Why we want to like a film ☛ Not long back I was working on a film which had received the sort of notes you dread: notes from someone who just doesn’t like the movie. Sadly these notes were from someone we were not at liberty to ignore. Many of his thoughts fell into the … Read more
The Lot of the Stay-at-home Editor
As I write, I’ve just had my first day’s work outside my flat in about four months (thank you to the good people of I-Motus). It’s not that I’ve been idle during these months: I’ve just had an unusually long run of jobs where I’ve been cutting from home on my trusty iMac. I’d joined … Read more
Hearing Voices
Is there a place for voice-over narration? ☛ Once upon a time there was a debate about whether voice-over narration was a valid technique for the screenwriter to use. Mighty armies lead by the great gurus Robert McKee and Syd Field took opposing sides: Field praised voice-over and condemned the flashback as heresy, while McKee … Read more
