Whether writer/director Anthony Minghella's working in epic mode or on a more personal level, you feel that his entire crew brings its best work to the table – his films are characterized by a uniformly high level of craft across the board. That's why F&V thought his newest release, Breaking and Entering, a small-scale drama set in contemporary London, offered a good chance to find out how two key departments, cinematography and production design, worked together to set the look of the film. Cinematographer Benoit Delhomme told us about the view from behind the camera, including how he used authentic street lighting to preserve the natural look of London exteriors at night, and production designer Alex McDowell explained the defining roles that color and light play in his own work.
Our next story isn't, strictly speaking, a production or post-production story – but anyone who gets a charge out of the experience of going to the movies should be electrified by what multimedia artist Doug Aitken's doing on the outside walls of MOMA this month. His latest video installation features performances by Tilda Swinton and Donald Sutherland and blurs the lines between art and cinema. Watching the multi-screen narrative unfold from the Museum's sculpture garden is like walking through a giant drive-in multiplex with reflective semi-transparent screens. We got system integrator Scharff Weisberg to tell us about the gear that makes the whole thing run.
In other news, we're deep in the heart of Oscar season, and the Academy threw a curveball this year when it failed to give presumptive frontrunner Dreamgirls the nod in Best Motion Picture, Direction, and Screenplay categories. (Bizarrely, Dreamgirls still led the whole field with the most nominations overall.) There's a lack of dominating favorites in the Oscar nominations, which is good news overall for the craft categories, where a broad range of exemplary work in interesting titles is being singled out for recognition – as a matter of fact, not a single one of the Cinematography nominees is also a Best Picture nominee. Check out our analysis, and, by all means, join the discussion.
When you're done, be sure to click over to StudioDaily.com, where F&V contributor Ed Heede has the whole story behind the DI for Justin Lin's Sundance film Finishing the Game, and film editor David Michael Maurer is blogging for us about taking his film Four Sheets to the Wind to Sundance.