Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close deals with one of the most fraught subjects that can be tackled by a filmmaker — the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Set in New York City between 2001 and 2003, the film sees the events through the eyes of a child who lived them. The subject matter complicated things for the editorial team, which was tasked not just with handling the material with appropriate sensitivity, but with organizing a significant amount of VFX work depicting the New York City of 10 years ago, all with an end-of-year release date looming ever closer. Film & Video spoke with associate editor David A. Smith about the special challenges of the project.... »
Jason Kramer is serious about music. Influential, too. He's the music supervisor at Elias Arts, where he helps make musical matches in commercials from the likes of Pepsi, Audi, BMW, Lexus, Infiniti and Kia. He's also a DJ at iconic L.A. public-radio station KCRW.... »
The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Scholarship, now open for submissions for 2012, honors the legacy of the late editor by giving emerging editors a chance to grow.... »
One of the things you notice about the languid, mysterious Mary Marie — part sisterly coming-of-age film, part erotic drama — is how the sequences of gorgeously colored and composed images bring to mind a carefully curated photography exhibit. They also convey a pointed intimacy that gives the film its urgency. Film & Video interviewed DP Magela Crosignani about the challenge.... »
Stardust, the production company headed up by founder and executive creative director Jake Banks, recently moved its West Coast operations into a new 8,000-square-foot studio in Santa Monica, CA.... »
Throughout his long and varied career, Tim McGovern has been a radio engineer, a pioneering sound engineer at Skywalker Sound during its digital transition, and a designer of network facilities for the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He has also learned more than a few valuable lessons in flexibility working as chief engineer, alternately, for George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. When we talked to McGovern he was just two weeks into his new job as director of professional services at Advanced Systems Group, an installer and integrator of production, post and shared storage software and hardware in the Bay Area and Southern California.... »
As President Obama watched live video of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a scene from Patriot Games where Jack Ryan witnesses a covert military strike on a training camp in Libya.... »
The visual effects Oscar nomination for Iron Man 2 is Ben Snow’s fourth. He previously received nominations for Iron Man, Star Wars Episode II – Attack of the Clones, and Pearl Harbor. A member of the Academy since 2007, Snow has worked as a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic on seven feature films and in various roles on 17.... »
Tim Burke won an Oscar for Gladiator in 2000 and was visual effects supervisor for Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, which released in 2001. And then he hopped the magical train to Hogwarts and stayed there for 10 years.... »
Including this year’s Oscar nomination for best visual effects in Alice in Wonderland, Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Ken Ralston has received eight Oscar nominations and five Oscars.... »
Dynasty FX co-founders Mark Hundahl, Leo Chen and Bruce Silverman spent two years researching Chinese visual effects and animation companies and say they "cherry-picked the best of the best" to form the Dynasty collective. Now, says Silverman, "We believe we've put together a best of all possible worlds solution. Our clients here in Hollywood are still dealing with a local visual effects company. It just has an incredibly long corridor."... »
As part of the three-man dubbing team on Salt, Scott Millan was the music man, charged with weaving the compositions of James Newton Howard seamlessly into a narrative that was driven by music, balancing the needs of the score with the demands already placed on the audience by dialogue and special-effects sound work. On the eve of the Oscars, Film & Video spoke with Millan about getting his start in TV, working with director Phillip Noyce, and why this movie should be played loud.... »
“I rarely talk to actors, because I don’t want to interfere with their performances,” says cinematographer Francis Kenny, ASC. “I know them, I like them, and sometimes we joke around. But not during the actual shooting.”... »
Based in Manhattan and Huntington, Long Island, Jalbert Productions International (JPI) has a pedigree in sports filmmaking that dates back more than 35 years, to the filming of Downhill Racer in 1969. Film & Video asked director Jay Jalbert about craft, technology, and what's next.... »
StudioDaily shot a few quick questions via email to Ellen Wixted, Adobe's principal product marketing manager for professional video solutions, to get a little more info on what Audition can do for you.... »
