filmmaking // Current

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5 months ago

Sneak Attack at Oakland Whole Foods

I got this email from a contact: Over the bridge in Oakland, there was a sneak demonstration at the local Whole Foods, complete... more

JonRaymond
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Viral video of painted animation or as I define it: Live graffiti.

Beautiful, a bit funny and always carrying this wierd darkness. A bit long but give it a bit, it is very creative.

lookatmypix
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Out in the Street Films

Short docs made for the cost of DV tape. OK, we have a camera and mikes. Even lights. And editing software. And a computer. And... more

JonRaymond
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"Green"... her last moments

Winner of Best Documentary Short in the Durango Independent Film Festival this month, and directed by Moez Moez,... more

julesrs007
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Gigantic offers both sides now of independent films

“The good news is that the independent film process gives young filmmakers an opportunity to find a voice, to express... more

writa
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Convention for the Sake of Convention

There is a disturbing trend in Hollywood toward convention. By that I mean movies that are made with the conventions you'd expect to see in a given genre or even by studio. We expect certain types of films from Disney, and maybe certain other types from Warner, and something different again if the genre is horror, or romantic comedy and so on. This is convention and some people will even call it craft. This is especially proliferated in TV. I can't think of one sitcom that doesn't use bank lighting. That means banks of soft lights that flood the set in brightness. While in horror films we see mostly darkness with only glimmers of light here and there. Much more dramatic. But still so very conventional and expected.

Now take something like Pirates of the Caribbean. Generally it's lit with bright soft sunlight with everyone flooded in brightness. But there are occasional scenes of something more dramatic, as in the stables. But even there it's pretty much all flat and soft. It's not until we get to the underwater scenes with the pirates walking or the moonlight on the deck of the ship, that we find something really interesting.

Anyway, my point here is that Hollywood and TV generally use conventions for the sake of conventions. There's no motivation there. Why would every room and scene in a sitcom be flooded with bright soft light? It's not real. The rooms in our houses aren't' like that. Look around in your house. The light is brighter near the window, or at night only around your lamps, and it drops off into darkness as you get away from the light source. So what then motivates studios to use something like bank lighting? I can't think of hardly a single place in real life where everything is flooded evenly with soft all penetrating light. Even in an office of overhead fluorescents, the light drops off near the corners of cubicles.

Obviously these so called Hollywood artistic professionals either can't be bothered to make something look interesting and real, or they don't want to spend the time on it. So we end up with pasty plastic looking people with caked on makeup to make sure they are evenly lit like everything else on the set. This is completely what you call unmotivated lighting. There is no motivation for this other than the studio budget or the grip's inability to do something interesting.

So you say, this is no trend, It's always been this way. Well maybe. But it seems so much of a standard now that if you make a film without pasty lighting, you get criticized for being too artsy. You become the one who is accused of not having motivation for the lighting you use. In other words, if it's not a horror film or some dark drama, you had better flood the place with pasty light and cake on the makeup.

But people ultimately don't buy it. It may be subconscious. But we all find something fake in these bank-ly lit scenes. That's one reason why reality programs have taken off. They don't light anything. They just shoot whatever is out there in real life. Of course this is the opposite extreme. Although in both cases of bank lighting and reality shows we have the common element of lazy unmotivated lighting. Seldom do they take the time to light something with true motivation for how the light should fall on the subjects.

Convention for the sake of convention is a lie. It's lazy, and it's ugly. It's an indication of poor sloppy work and under par production.

Keep posted on our projects and videos: Sign up at http://outinthestreet.ning.com.There is a disturbing trend in Hollywood toward convention. By that I mean movies that are made with the conventions you'd... more

JonRaymond
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6 months ago

Got a Crazy Dad? Make a Movie of him

Jenny Abel who said, "had no idea what I was doing when I started working on this film" premiered new new documentary, a... more

JonRaymond
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6 months ago

Four Eyed monsters: The Poster Film For DIY Filmmakers

Four Eyed monsters is a film about the making of itself (it's almost Charlie Kaufman-esque). Two young artist-filmmakers meet... more

JonRaymond
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3 comments

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6 months ago

DIY Filmmaking: Audience and Discovery

Lance Weiler (http://workbookproject.com) collaborates with other DIY filmmakers to figure out how to self distribute their films.... more

JonRaymond
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6 months ago

FESTA DEL CINEMA DEL REALE - VI EDIZIONE

Resistere è l'imperativo della sesta edizione della Festa del Cinema del Reale. Due giorni di full immersion nello... more

Salentowebtv
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6 months ago

MUSIC FROM EARTH

A Presentation Featuring Live Music, Sound Design and Film. Demetrius Spaneas toured the world with this work last season. A... more

Chiron5
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6 months ago

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus UK Trailer

Here it is, at long last , the desperately awaited first trailer for Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. You... more

atomiclegion
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3 comments

added
10 months ago

Spike Lee at the Apple Store SoHo

The latest on what Spike Lee had to say about filmmaking, festivals, and life.

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"This is like ‘This is Your Life’ meets a job fair,” the Museum of the Moving Image’s David Schwartz said to Spike Lee as he moderated their discussion at the Apple Store in SoHo last night. The packed event, which reached capacity well before Lee entered the building, saw an eclectic mix of audience members eager to share their six degrees of seperation to Mr. Lee. Two audience members had gone to his Brooklyn high school, one had worked as a production assistant on “Bamboozled,” while another thanked him for employing her family on many of his sets.

Additionally - and more prominently - audience members had a wide array of gifts for Lee, from their scripts to their screeners to the posters of their films. Lee politely answered their requests for advice, and would yell over at his long-time assistant, Earl, to collect the gifts. By the end of the discussion, whenever a new audience member would request Lee to see their work, the rest of the audience would announce in unision with Lee, “Earl!”

“I’m not trying to discourage you,” Lee said to one aspiring filmmaker. “But you should know what you’re getting in to. It’s rough for me to get a film made. That’s just the world we live in… In order to get your film made you have to write a great script. So, hopefully you can do that.”

To another filmmaker who had already completed a documentary on his struggles being disabled after having been shot as a teenager, Lee both advised film festivals and advocated gun control. “That’s where your work gets seen, in film festivals,” he said. “And it sounds to me like what you’ve been doing has been the right path. I commend you for what you’ve been doing. And we have to do something about guns in this country. I mean, we live in the most violent country in the history of civilization. People shooting each other left and right over dumb shit. And it’s so easy to acquire guns and, I mean, fuck the NRA. I’m sorry. We need tougher gun laws to stop this madness of people just killing each other. It’s crazy.”

Lee eventually - and respectfully - requested the questions pertain to the reason he was there: To promote his double dose of Tribeca Film Festival offering - Kobe Bryant-centered doc “Kobe Doin’ Work,” and his documentation of the musical “Passing Strange.”

"The reason I’d never been in the Tribeca Film Festival before is because I didn’t have a film,” Spike Lee said to an audience member who asked what took him so long to screen work at the festival. “With the way this festival comes in April, usually I have stuff ready for the summer or the fall. So it’s a calendar thing. And it just worked out that after eight years I had two films and I’m glad they wanted them to be part of the festival.” ...

While Lee’s decision to film a basketball doc is no surprise considering his status as a hardcore fan has been common knowledge for years, his decision to take on a Broadway musical is a bit more surprising. “My mother was taking me to Broadway musicals when I was really little,” he said. “So that’s where the influence comes from. ‘West Side Story’ is one of my all-time favorites. And I was glad to see the new revival of it.” (more on link)The latest on what Spike Lee had to say about filmmaking, festivals, and life. -- "This is like ‘This is Your... more