Thursday, January 29, 2015

Today's 4 Things

Do you need to know about stage blood? Weller discusses the history of stage blood. You know what I like about folks like Steven J. Weller? He actually teaches you about stuff. There are people in the world who feel that the knowledge they have is somehow proprietary and they are afraid of other people learning from them because somehow that decreases their own power. That's a load of hooey, the more you teach the more you know. But some people believe it.
Anyway, Weller's blog is great.
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Pond 5 has a public domain project which looks interesting.
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The DAMN Film Series is next February 4. I won't be there because I'll be at the dentist that day instead. But you should totally go.
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Would you like a from-the-horse's mouth prediction about the state of low-budget filmmaking? 4K is definitely coming (unlike 3D). So we're going to all have to be delivering 4K. Soon.
Via.

Monday, January 26, 2015

The Earth Dies Screaming











The Earth Dies Screaming is surprisingly well-crafted. It's a bit creaky in the way one might expect a Hammer-esque picture made in the mid-60's to be, but at one hour and three minutes they've definitely cut out the long and excruciating boring part in the middle.
It opens with an amazing lack of expository dialog. The whole thing is really quite tight and "modern" in both the writing and the overall tone. I mean, it's still a bit on the creaky side, but very cool. This movie is in desperate need of a remake (although, to be fair, it has essentially been remade a gazillion times).



Fun fact: Elisabeth Lutyens composed the music for it.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Bill Martell


Bill Martell is a brilliant teacher.
Tell me his book on Hitchcock isn't going to be amazing. Seriously, this is one of the most informative and information-packed movie-making hours on the Internet.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Your Three Things for Today

The Digital Bolex. Highest ISO is 400. But shoots RAW and global-shutter.

The order of opening credits.

(The more we make movies the more we're told that our movies have to look like "regular" movies.)
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DVDepot rents drones with operators and the DJI Ronin with operators.
Via.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Grading, Order

An interesting look at color grading (H/T Stu Maschwitz).


Color Reel - The House On Pine Street from GradeKC on Vimeo.

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I am too dumb to make movies. For instance, what's the order of the logos that goes in the front of a movie?
Turns out it's the (1) distributor, (2) producer, and then (3) movie. If my distributor hadn't told me that I seriously wouldn't know.
Also, what is the order of the front-title credits? If it weren't for Wikipedia I'd have no idea.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Today's Two Tings

Trelby is a screenwriting program.

Michigan has sand dunes.
Update: Oklahoma also has sand dunes! (H/T Matt below.)