They’re ferocious, vicious, dangerous and they’re headed straight for you … online. Discovery Network’s Web promos for hit shows River Monsters and Shark Week offer up a heart-pounding view of some frighteningly real underwater creatures brought to life with of Maxon’s Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects.... »
The Surrogate was shot on the Red One MX and edited on a software-only Avid Media Composer system by Lisa Bromwell, an Avid veteran who took on the film as a rare unpaid gig because she believed in the material. When we spoke to her this week, she had just returned from the film's world premiere in the cavernous Eccles Theater in Park City and was already back at work cutting two episodes of Criminal Minds, but she said The Surrogate represented a satisfying departure from her normal mix of editorial jobs.... »
Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is an unconventional look at American violence. The first 20 minutes of the film are a radically nightmarish montage. While the rest of We Need to Talk About Kevin is somewhat more conventional, it never loses its dreamlike feel, enhanced by a combination of 35mm and Canon 5D Mark II DSLR video.... »
Hollywood design agency The Ether created a new visual of the tower for Tower Heist's trailer, using 3D graphics and bold typography to emphasize the building's importance in the film.... »
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.... »
Since the development of its breakout 2010 hit, Despicable Me, Illumination Entertainment and its Paris-based partner, Illumination Mac Guff, have been using Shotgun's web-based, open-API approach to build out and manage an animation pipeline of more than 300 artists for the soon-to-be released Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.... »
Hugo is a loving homage to the early craft of filmmaking, but it is the product of very contemporary techniques. It's among the first feature films to be shot with the Arri Alexa camera. It was the first stereo-3D production for Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson. And it embraced a trend in workflow that is seeing significant amounts of post-production work actually being performed near the set.... »
The early collaborations between cinematographer Tim Orr and director David Gordon Green were poetic, independent dramas with minimal budgets. More recently, they've made a successful string of studio comedies. "We try to have fun with it while breaking conventions," Orr says.... »
Because he was shooting in tight spaces on a real-world location, Bijan wanted to use gear that could be crammed into a small area. First, he tested the Canon 5D. He also considered the Red One. But workflow was a consideration, and Bijan wanted to go direct to edit. Those considerations led him to the Sony PMW-F3.... »
For dailies screenings and color-correction on TNT's Dallas, a relaunch of the classic TV franchise that's slated to debut next summer, MTI Film in Los Angeles is turning to IP networks to move footage between Texas and Hollywood in real time. Producers in Dallas, Texas, will screen and approve dailies using MTI's Remote Control Dailies, and MTI staff colorists will correct the footage in L.A.... »
Canadian band Timber Timbre, who some first heard during an episode of AMC's Breaking Bad last season, is hard to categorize. Carlos de Carvalho directs this new video for the song "Do I Have Power" off the band's latest record, Creep on Creepin' On.... »
Thanks to a rediscovered recording of Graham Chapman reading his 1980 memoir and some new voiceover work from his Python pals, 16 separate facilities are reanimating the life and work of the late, great comedian for a new 3D film. We talked to Superfad about their work developing some pivotal scenes from Chapman's childhood.... »
The creator and executive producer of the new Comcast On-Demand series VidBlogger Nation talks about how he and his team at Simplynew Studios manage the creative, editorial and deliverables on a show that gets its rough cuts from featured video bloggers.... »
When executive producer Brannon Braga was hired for Fox’s new series Terra Nova, he was the second person brought onboard. The third, before any other writing or producing staff or cast, was visual-effects supervisor Kevin Blank. “That shows you how important we knew he would be to the success of this series,” says Braga. “Because if we couldn’t pull off this world, there would be no show.”... »
