The one piece of equipment you’re guaranteed to run into on set is the C Stand (or Century Stand). It’s a metal stand used for rigging and supporting lighting and grip equipment. Dominic D’Astice (key grip on RocketJump: The Show) shows you the basics for properly setting up and using a c stand safely on set.
Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’ takes place in a single day in the Old West, but it was shot over five months on a Colorado mountaintop. Variety’s Jenelle Riley spoke to department head hair stylist Camille Friend and makeup dept. head Heba Thorisdottir about how they kept everyone looking exactly the same, and exactly in period, on Tarantino’s uniquely challenging shoot.
Art has enormous prestige in our society; masturbation certainly doesn’t. And yet there are some fascinating correspondences between the creativity entailed in both processes.
And you wonder why some art films are called masturbatory.
The Onion’s movie critic Peter K. Rosenthal reviews Star Wars: The Force Awakens in this week’s Film Standard.
There’s the Donut and there’s the hole: Keep your eye on the Donut.
Ever since BB-8 first made its appearance in the first Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser, droid builders have been trying to figure out how to make their own working replica. Tested visits the shop of Mike Senna, veteran robot builder, to follow his progress creating his own BB-8.
Who is responsible for safety? Andrew Spieler (Assistant Director for RJ:The Show) and RocketJump director/co-creator Matthew Arnold sit down to have a real discussion about safety on set. They cover the precautions and safety measures taken for the large-scale stunts in the new action-packed short, Truck Flipper vs Bus Puncher, but also explain how placing the utmost importance on safety can actually better your film.
You should never compromise the safety of your crew for a shot. If you EVER feel unsafe or uncertain on set, speak up! Bring it to the attention of the Assistant Director, Producer, and Director. Ask questions, double check, and keep the lines of communication clear and open.
I often harp on the importance of keyboard shortcuts in editing, and for good reason. They will save you so much time in the long run.
If you’re one of the many editors that have made the jump over to Premiere Pro in recent years, Emmy-winning editor Dylan Osborn has created some really handy cheat sheets that give you a birdseye view of every shortcut that you could ever need. First up, the default Premiere keyboard layout. Click the image to download the larger version, which you can print out and keep on your desk.
The Pixar empire is built upon their impeccable ability to make everyone, even the most steely of us, feel all the feels.
Of course, film is a medium that inherently examines and attempts to elicit our emotions, and Pixar’s Inside Out is certainly their most intentional, quasi-meta, examination to date. Evan Puschak, also known as Nerdwriter, takes a look at how director Pete Docter explores post-Freudian theories on psychology and emotion in Inside Out in this insightful video essay. Check it out below:
Docter has admitted that Inside Out was not intended to be therapeutic, nor a completely accurate explanation of Paul Ekman’s psychological model of Emotional Theory. (In fact, the film leaves out two of the seven basic emotions from Ekman’s theory, Surprise and Contempt.) Puschak even suggests that the film could be an allegory of our culture rather than an exploration into psychology, stating that if information and data are tantamount to truth in our data-driven society, then the acquisition and loss of it affects us in ways we may not even realize.
Announced back in September, RED’s new RAVEN camera got a bump in specs from 4K to 4.5K even before release.
While it does start at $6,000, shooting packages will be up around $10K or more since that’s just the body-only price (and you need some accessories and media to get it going). We had a good idea of what to expect as RAVEN shares the same sensor tech as DRAGON, so dynamic range and color will be essentially the same as other cameras with the 6K DRAGON sensor. It will also come with RED’s new Standard OLPF, which as we’ve seen can have a major effect on color. Here’s our first clip from RAVEN, shot by RED’s people on the new Zeiss Milvus lenses: