The sound of Gravity is a crucial element of the film and in this Soundworks video director Alfonso Cuaron and Re-recording Mixer Skip Lievsay discuss how they (and the sound teams) created the dramatic soundscape of outer space.
Stanley Kubrick’s famous horror was originally documented in a 17 minute short film, as part of the project designed to document the famous studios of Elstree and Borehamwood.
But now they have released a much longer version lasting 55 minutes with contributions from:
Brian Cook – 1st AD
Jan Harlan – Producer
Christiane Kubrick – Wife of Stanley Kubrick
Mick Mason – Camera Technician
Ray Merrin – Post-Production Sound
Doug Milsome – 1st AC and Second Unit Camera
Kelvin Pike – Camera Operator
Ron Punter – Scenic Artist
June Randall – Continuity
Julian Senior – Warner Bros. Publicity
They discuss many aspects of the film including the 2nd Unit footage shot in America, the different stages at Elstree, the use of Steadicam, the fire on set, and what Kubrick was like to work with.
Below you can see Lee Marvin filming the opening sequence and also grooving in 1960s London, along with Donald Sutherland, John Cassavetes and Jim Brown.
N.B. Aldbury was the location of the first school I ever went to.
Although slightly more expensive than his first four films – Shadows (1959), Too Late Blues (1961), A Child is Waiting (1963) and Faces (1968) – it is a fascinating insight into how independent films were made before the Sundance revolution.
But he was using this acting money to self-finance his films as a director – often shooting scenes in his own home – and even forming as a company to handle foreign distribution.
Husbands saw him star alongside Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara as a trio of married men who go on a spree around New York and London, after the funeral of one of their close friends.
This BBC documentary probably aired on BBC1 around the UK release.
Note the following:
The incredibly posh BBC presenter
The light handheld cameras
Use of real locations
The improvised dolly on the back of a car
How Cassevetes works his actors
Use of long lenses
The ‘problem’ of a professional crew
Working with ‘no story’
The hose down at (what is presumably) Heathrow airport
Cassevetes getting frustrated with his crew
The sheer amount of smoking that goes on
Filming at Bank Station on the London Underground
Cassavetes saying: “Actors will put their money where their mouth is. Directors won’t”
A video showing how visual effects were used to create the period world of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy begs the question as to why wasn’t nominated for a BAFTA or Oscar.
Mention the phrase ‘visual effects’ and I suspect images of science fiction or fantasy movies leap to mind.
After all, films like Star Wars (1977) and Avatar (2009) are most associated with the field.
Tomas Alfredson’s masterful John Le Carre adaptation is not the kind of film you would associate with modern visual effects, as it is a realistic tale of corruption and intrigue in MI6 during the 1970s.
But this video shows how modern technology was used to skilfully augment Maria Djurkovic‘s amazing production design:
They were done by Swedish company The Chimney Pot they highlight just how sophisticated the digital augmentation of photographic reality has become.
So sophisticated in fact that it may have worked against them in the awards season as the film has missed out on both BAFTA and Academy nominations.
It isn’t easy to blend old school techniques with cutting edge digital tools, but when they are combined successfully the results can be magical.
There is the (possibly apocryphal) story that 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) lost the Best Makeup Academy Award to John Chambers for Planet of the Apes (1968) because the judges didn’t realize Kubrick’s apes were really people (perhaps that was actually a greater compliment than the Oscar).
It was a strong field this year but it begs the question, did The Chimney Pot lose out on visual effects recognition because they were too good?
Browsing an old bookstore, I came across Joel Finler’s The Hollywood Story which reprinted a breakdown of the Star Wars budget.
This in itself was reprinted from David Pirie’s Anatomy of the Movies, which in turn was presuambly sourced from a 20th Century Fox or Lucasfilm financial statement.
It is worth noting that these figures would have been from 1980 – before the dollars from home video and merchandising really began to flow.
The Cost of the Visual Effects: Star Wars was effectively the birth of the modern visual effects industry and this can be seen by the unusually high budget for the ‘special effects and models of spaceships and robots’.
The Transport and Tunisia Location Costs: The $700,000 it took to take the film to the North African desert paid off as early on in the film it gave it a sense of real world scope.
World Wide Box Office Receipts: When this statement was published the figure of $510m was pretty spectacular, overtaking Jaws (1975) which ushered in the blockbuster era with $470m. Spielberg would regain the all-time box office crown with E.T. (1982) record-breaking $792m.
The Negative Cost: When budgets are often quoted in the mainstream press, the figure usually being discussed its what’s called a ‘negative cost’ – the price it took to produce the finished negative of the movie. Here it was $11m, which actually tallies with the Wikipedia figure.
Prints and Advertsing: This is the combined cost of producing the film prints, shipping them to cinemas around the world and then marketing the fact that the film is showing (outdoor posters, television spots etc). Traditionally the global profits are split 50/50 between studio and exhibitor, although it can vary. The typical exhibitor’s share in the US is split 45 to 55% and in the Rest of the World 55 to 65%. UK exhibitors often keep an unusually high amount, averaging around 65 to 70%. In the case of Star Wars the $510m was carved up between exhibitors ($260m) and the studio ($250m).
Percentage Points: Fox, Lucasfilm and various actors accepted percentage points of the final profits. Fox took %60 ($88.5m) and the producers took %40 ($59m). Of that producer share several actors got unexpected bonuses. Chief among them was Alec Guinness (%2.75 or $3.3m), Mark Hamill (%0.25 or $368,750), Carrie Fisher (%0.25 or $368,750) and Harrison Ford (%0.33 or $1m), set workers (%0.5 or $73,750) and office workers (%0.02 or $$7,375)
As of 2008, the overall box office revenue generated by the six Star Wars films is around $4.41 billion.
Only the Harry Potter and James Bond franchises have grossed more.
Aside from making George Lucas a lot of money, their other creative legacy is the creation of ILM, the company founded to create the visual effects for the movies.
For example, the opening shot of Star Wars took eight months and Lucas wanted people who could use the power of computers to help make the process easier.
Lucas hired Ed Catmull, who was in charge of the computer division at Lucasfilm and Alvy Ray Smith, who became head of the graphics project there.
When Lucas sold this computer graphics division to Steve Jobs in 1986, the former Apple boss (who would eventually return in 1997) renamed the company Pixar.
It would eventually go on to make animation history with a series of pioneering short films, Toy Story (1995) and a series of Oscar-winning and box office triumphs.
Almost every film we see now is in widescreen, but how did this look come about?
With the proliferation of widescreen television over the last decade, it is sometimes easy to forget that until relatively recently films were cropped for home viewing.
This meant that for a lot of movies, a large percentage of the rectangular image (in the aspect ratios of 2:35 and 1:85) was removed so it could fit the squarer aspect of television (the 1:33 or 4:3 ratio).
The roots of this are historical, as the advent of television in the 1950s forced Hollywood to come up with newer ways of enticing audiences back to cinemas.
Thus modern widescreen processes were invented to put an image on screen that couldn’t be replicated in the homes of the time.
This shifted the fundamental look of films from the traditional academy ratio of 1:33 to the more rectangular widescreen look we now take for granted.
But when it came to screening those movies on television (ironically the very medium that triggered widescreen developments) there was the obvious problem of converting that wide image on to a square TV screen.
Here Sydney Pollack and Martin Scorsese (and others) explain for TCM the whole business of ‘pan and scanning’ and why it was bad for certain movies (by the way, Curtis Hanson’s example of The Last Supper painting is pure genius):
Back in 1992, there was a TV programme where several directors discussed why they shot certain films in widescreen, including Michael Mann (Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans), Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm), John Boorman (Point Blank) and John Carpenter (Halloween).
They discuss how the advent of a wider screen affected their visual approach to making films, but also how it influenced such things as editing, dialogue and even running time.
What’s interesting is that Mann’s comment about widescreen televisions in Japan is now the reality.
Certain films such as Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003) and Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank (2009) and The Artist (2011) actually used the squarer visual format (a.k.a. 1:33 or academy ratio) for effect.
Going back to the 1970s and 80s, directors like Stanley Kubrick (e.g. The Shining and Barry Lyndon) and William Friedkin (e.g. Sorcerer) were careful to frame some of their films so they couldn’t be awkwardly pan and scanned, although this created subsequent problems for DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Having grown up in the era of VHS and ‘squarer films’ on television, I instinctively prefer the look of widescreen, possibly because it reminds me of the cinema experience, where you could see the full image and got much better sound.
There’s also the crucial matter of actually seeing the film the way the director intended it to look.
It still often depends on the individual film, with Citizen Kane (1941) perhaps being the most ingenious use of the camera in the 1:33 ratio (as mentioned in the above clips both Welles, Howard Hawks and Fritz Lang were sceptical of Cinemascope).
But with widescreen now ubiquitous in our homes and cinemas is there going to be another shift in the frame through which we see movies?
They have put seminars online with some key people from the industry, which cover: audience research, marketing (business-to-business, traditional, viral) and public relations.
In an era where the digital revolution is affecting both the production and distribution of films, these videos contain some incredibly useful information and advice.
They have disabled embedding, but you can click through the following links to view them.
It is 20 years since Terminator 2: Judgment Day opened in US cinemas, so to celebrate here are 20 facts about the film you may not know.
1. It is technically an independent film
The first Terminator was made outside the studio system, as it was funded by Hemdale Pictures and distributed by Orion. Although the original film was a box office hit in 1984, the sequel was held up by various legal issues which were only resolved when Carolco stepped in to purchase the rights. Run by Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, the company had become very successful in the 1980s on the back of the Rambo franchise – First Blood (1982) and Rambo: First Blood Part II (1984) – the latter of which Cameron co-wrote. So, although a big budget spectacular, it was independently financed outside the studio system.
2. James Cameron had previously sold his rights to the franchise for $1
Although he created the iconic character and story, Cameron sold his stake in any future sequels for the nominal sum of $1 before the first film was even made. His reasoning was that this was the only way he would be allowed to direct his first feature film. As it established his career, he later said that was the price of a ‘Hollywood education’. In 2009 he told the Toronto Sun :
“I wish I hadn’t sold the rights for one dollar. If I had a little time machine and I could only send back something the length of a tweet, it’d be – ‘Don’t sell.’
Although he was paid a reported $6m to write and direct T2, he has never seen any money from any of the subsequent films, TV shows or merchandising.
3. The film has a strange connection with the Rodney King incident
The biker bar scene where the T800 arrives was filmed just across the road from where LAPD officers assaulted Rodney King in March 1991. The famous amateur video, shot by George Holliday, is reputed to have two bits of footage on it. One is the T2 crew filming shots of Schwarzenegger and Furlong on a motorbike in the San Fernando Valley and the other – shot later – is of several police officers beating the crap out of King.
The resulting trial of the officers and their controversial acquittal triggered the LA riots of April 1992.
The irony is that the villain of T2 is a cop. When writing the script several months before filming, Cameron wrestled with what form the T-1000 would settle on and in Rebecca Keegan’s biography ‘The Futurist’ explained why he chose a police officer:
“The Terminator films are not really about the human race getting killed off by future machines. They’re about us losing touch with our own humanity and becoming machines, which allows us to kill and brutalise each other. Cops think of all non-cops as less than they are, stupid, weak and evil. They dehumanise the people they are sworn to protect and desensitise themselves in order to do that job.”
4. The groundbreaking visuals involved the first version of Photoshop Dennis Muren of ILM was in charge of the 35 CGI artists who achieved the ground breaking visual effects of T2. Using techniques that had been pioneered in The Abyss (1987) and Willow (1988), the breakthrough came with a new piece of software that was the first version of Photoshop.
John Knoll of ILM and his brother Thomas Knoll (a PhD student at the University of Michigan) had developed the program, and like the chip in the movie which takes Cyberdyne in new directions, it allowed them to create the remarkable liquid effects in the pseudopod sequence in The Abyss (the first film ever to use Photoshop) and the morphing transitions in Ron Howard’s Willow (where humans turn in to animals).
For Terminator 2 Cameron decided to go much further and have a major character which was heavily reliant on the emerging digital tools. ILM created a version of what would become the scene where a silvery T-1000 walks out of the fiery wreckage of a burning truck.
Cameron was impressed and the visual effects budget ended up being $6m (a huge sum at the time), but it raised the bar for the entire industry. Muren and ILM would build on their work by creating the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park (1993) – if you look closely at the scene where Cyberdyne Systems is introduced you can spot an inflatable dinosaur hanging from the ceiling.
5. Billy Idol was the original choice for the T-1000
Hemdale had wanted O.J. Simpson to play the Terminator in the original film and T2 had its own strange moment of casting when Billy Idol was considered for the role of the T-1000. Cameron even featured the rocker in early concept drawings for the character but after he got injured in a motorcycle accident Idol was replaced by Robert Patrick.
6. English censors had major problems with two scenes
The BBFC objected to the scene in the psychiatric hospital where Sarah Connor picks a lock with a paper-clip, as they felt it was too realistic and might encourage people to copy it. They also had issues with the shoot out at Cyberdyne Systems where the T-800 shoots several SWAT team members in the leg as it resembled the old IRA practice where paramilitaries shot victims through their kneecaps.
7. Two sets of twins were used in the film
Two scenes utilised a pair of identical twins to create the illusion of the T-1000 in disguise as another character. Don and Dan Stanton (who had previously been in Good Morning Vietnam) played the hospital security guard who gets caught out at the coffee machine. Linda Hamilton’s twin sister was used as a double in the climactic fight and another (deleted) scene involving a mirror.
8. It was the most expensive film ever made
At a budget of $102m it was, at the time, the most expensive film ever made. But, like the Rambo movies, it was funded by pre-sales to foreign distributors. With Schwarzenegger and Cameron now much more bankable figures at the box office, Carolco not only raised the budget easily but had even made a profit before the film was released. Cameron’s future films Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009) would also become the most expensive made up to that point, as well as the most successful.
9. Cameron also produced Point Break whilst preparing T2
During the preparation for T2, Cameron also served as producer on Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break. Cameron had married Bigelow in 1989 and had also directed her in a music video (‘Reach’ by Martini Ranch), where she played the leader of a cowgirl gang.
Point Break was originally known as Johnny Utah and Bigelow was determined to cast Keanu Reeves in the lead role, which puzzled Cameron as the actor was best known for the Bill and Ted movies. The film would open the week after T2 in July 1991 and was a box office success which established Reeves as an action star.
10. Arnold Schwarzenegger was initially disappointed with his ‘good’ character
Cameron completed the script in a marathon 36 hour writing session in May 1990, just before flying to the Cannes film festival where Carolco officially announced it. When Cameron first told him of the idea that the T-800 would kill anyone, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a little concerned that the Terminator would not actually terminate anyone.
11. Part of Robert Patrick’s anatomy had to be digitally removed from one scene
For the scene where the naked T-1000 arrives and steals the cops clothes, the effects team had to digitally remove a sensitive part of Robert Patrick’s anatomy. But on video versions of the film it partially showed up, prompting Cameron to later joke that he wanted his money back for the “digital willy removal”.
12. Linda Hamilton became deaf in one ear during filming
In the elevator sequence where Sarah Connor escapes from the hospital with John and the T-800, Hamilton went for a bathroom break and forgot to put her ear plugs back in. When Schwarzenegger fired his shotgun at the T-1000 above right by her, it resulted in serious hearing loss in one ear.
13. Practical make-up was blended with the CGI
The visual effects by ILM were skilfully blended with practical special effects and make-up from Stan Winston’s studio which involved the deteriorating face and body of the T-800 and the changes in the T-1000 as it got shot and physically distorted.
14. The sounds of the film were a lot cheaper than the visuals
The sound of the T1000 morphing was achieved in a number of cost-effective ways. When it moves through the bars at the psychiatric hospital, we are hearing the sound of a can of dog food being emptied. Another foley effect was achieved by dipping a condom-covered microphone into a mixture of flour and water and then shooting compressed air into it.
15. The freeway chase involved some highly dangerous stunt work
Cameron shot the helicopter chase on the freeway himself as his Steadicam operator felt it was too risky. If you look closely you’ll see an actual chopper fly under the freeway overpass and in a later shot just clear a bridge. Cameron implicitly trusted his helicopter pilot, but also admitted that a stunt involving the T800 jumping on to a moving truck was “really dangerous” and that he wouldn’t have done it in later films.
16. The ending was changed late on
The original ending saw an older Sarah Connor look at her son John playing with his daughter in a peaceful future scenario but was cut after a test screening at Skywalker Ranch. Carolco felt it would ruin any future sequels and Cameron relented with a rewrite just one month before the film’s release, using road footage from the scene just before the attack on Cyberdyne Systems. The first ending can be seen in later special editions of the film.
17. It was the highest grossing film of 1991 and won 4 Oscars
When it eventually did open on July 4th weekend in 1991, it opened in 2,274 cinemas and half of all tickets sold in America were for T2. It earned $54 million during that weekend and would eventually gross $204 million in the United States and $519 million worldwide.
At the 64th Academy Awards it won Oscars for Best Sound, Best Make Up, Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Editing. It was nominated for Best Cinematography and Film Editing.
18. Despite the huge success of T2 Carolco later went bankrupt
Although Carolco made had major hits such as T2 and Basic Instinct (1992), the company played a risky game in the early 1990s. As their budgets grew, they needed to have hit after hit to sustain their growing costs. Whilst major studios had the protection of a larger corporate owner, Carolco eventually came to grief with the disastrous releases of Cutthroat Island and Showgirls in 1995. Both were costly flops and the company filed for bankruptcy, with most of their assets being purchased for $50 million. Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna later created C2 Pictures which produced Terminator 3 in 2003.
19. It got a timely DVD release in August 1997
T2 has been released by several different companies on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray. In 1993, the Special Edition cut of the film was released to Laserdisc and VHS, containing 17 minutes of never-before-seen footage including a dream sequence featuring Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn, a scene where John Connor prevents Sarah from destroying the Terminator and the original epilogue of an elderly Sarah in the future.
The subsequent “Ultimate Edition” and “Extreme Edition” releases also contain this version of the film. When it was first released on DVD as a single disc in August 1997 – the same month as the original ‘judgement day’ in the film.
20. Skynet went live around the same time as Google
In the film we learn that Skynet goes live on August 29th 1997, whilst in real life the domain name for Google was registered on September 15th 1997. Coincidence? 😉
A wonderfully prescient shot in Following even features a Batman logo – who could have predicted that Nolan would asked to reboot the franchise a few years later?
Earlier this month the third film in the Batman series The Dark Knight Rises (2012) began filming at the Farmiloe building in Clerkenwell.
The location was used as the Gotham City Police Station in the last two films and for sequences in Inception.
The building is adjacent to a public street, so some people were able to take photos and videos of cars, trucks, cranes and lights, although it seemed the filming took place behind closed doors.
But Craig Grobler of The Establishing Shot took an interesting set of photos at the location (no real spoilers) and caught glimpses of Nolan, Wally Pfister and a bunch of extras dressed as the Gotham SWAT team.
Check out the full gallery here:
There is also some video here:
In addition, filming has also taken place in Croydon and other locations around the UK before heading to the United States.
The Dark Knight Rises is scheduled to open in July 2012
I Am I is one of many independent film projects that have used the website Kickstarter to raise funds.
Launched in April 2009, the New York based site allows people to fund creative projects from a wide range of areas, including independent films, music and technology.
It is fascinating to see the painstaking production and release of the film condensed to just 8 minutes.
The film broke ground with its use of Technicolor and won an Academy Honorary Award “as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field”.
Various pieces of film music often end up in trailers for other movies but some appear more frequently than others.
When you watch a trailer for an upcoming film, the music featured is not necessarily what you hear in the final cut.
Often this is because the film and score haven’t been finished, but there are some musical cues that keep re-appearing.
The movie music website Soundtrack.net have compiled a long list of frequently used cues from trailers and here are the top five:
1. Redrum from Immediate Music (Used 28 times): Immediate Music are a LA-based music company that specialise in music for trailers and for some reason their track ‘Redrum’ has really caught on. The pounding rhythm conveys a sense of emergency, the dynamic pause at 0.22 is useful for cutting to a dramatic shot and the choral singing creates an atmosphere of heightened tension.
It has been used 28 times in trailers for Dante’s Peak (1997), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), The Last Castle (2001), The Mummy Returns (2001) and The Ring (2002).
2. Fire in a Brooklyn Theatre from Come See The Paradise (1990) by Randy Edelman (Used 27 times): Not many people remember Alan Parker’s drama about the treatment of Japanese people in America following the attack on Pearl Harbor, but one track from Randy Edelman’s score has been used in plenty of trailers as an action cue.
Again, urgency is the key here with the insistent rhythm and pounding keyboards creating the impression that what you are watching is dramatic and important. Ironically, this is musically out of step with the rest of film but studio marketing departments seem to love it, especially for weighty dramas with high stakes, which means it has appeared in trailers for The Chamber (1996), Clear and Present Danger (1994), A Few Good Men (1992), Rob Roy (1995) and Thirteen Days (2000).
3. Tightwire from Immediate Music (Used 26 times): The trailer music specialists are at it again with this fast, orchestral cue which screams urgency and a sense that something big is about to happen (i.e. a bomb about to go off), creating the illusion that you’re seeing something important and dramatic.
This is probably the reason why it has been used in trailers for The Avengers (1998), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), Leprechaun 2 (1994), The Man in the Iron Mask (1998) and What Lies Beneath (2000).
4. Naked Prey by Immediate Music (Used 25 times): Another track from Immediate Music, this cue automatically signifies urgent action with its quick beats and pounding rhythm.
Film trailers it has been used in include: Along Came a Spider (2001), The Beach (2000), The Constant Gardener (2005), The Mummy (1999) and Waterworld (1995).
5. Bishop’s Countdown from Aliens (1986) by James Horner (Used 24 times): James Horner’s score to James Cameron’s sequel to Alien (1979) was composed under extreme time constraints and pressure. But it features perhaps the most memorable trailer cue ever, taken from the climax to the film as Ripley fights the Alien queen.
The sounds of pounding metal, interweaving strings and perfectly judged brass all build to a monumental crescendo. It works so brilliantly that it appears in plenty of trailers including Alien 3 (1992), Broken Arrow (1996), Dante’s Peak (1997), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and Minority Report (2002).
UPDATE 07/04/2011: After Roger Ebert tweeted about this post (thanks Roger!) there was a lot of traffic and some excellent suggestions in the comments below.
Some are more modern examples of music that has been re-purposed for use in trailers.
Michael Williams suggests Steve Jablonsky‘s theme My Name is Lincoln from Michael Bay’s The Island (2005), which most people probably remember for its use in the trailer for Avatar (2009):
What’s interesting about this one is that it is used for the first minute of the trailer and was probably chosen for the spacey, sci-fi vibe.
Another suggestion from Fax Paladin was the track “St Crispin’s Day” from Patrick Doyle’s score to Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (1989). Click forward to 2.37 to hear the specific cue, which is used when Henry give the Band of Brothers speech.
I’m not exactly sure what it has been used for, but it sounds familiar and the rousing strings around 4.22 certainly have that uplifting quality you often see in a good trailer.
Although the film wasn’t a box office hit for The Coen Brothers, the moving strings and charming melodies make it perfect for creating a mood in a trailer.
Aronofsky told me in 2008 that Mansell was initially unhappy about this use of his music, but it caught on and quickly became a staple of various trailers and ads including The Da Vinci Code (2006), Sunshine (2007), and even Sky Sports News (it was also the theme for Soccer Saturday from 2007-2009)
Kevin Bingham suggests a track from John Murphy’s score to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007), which combines an absolutely epic mix of strings, electronic beats and piano.
Chris Knight suggests the track “Archer Solomon Hike” from James Newton Howard’s score to Blood Diamond (2006):
I can’t quite put my finger on what trailers have used it but the moody strings certainly fit that quiet/reflective moments in a trailer.
Dave suggests Basil Pouledoris’ main theme for Conan the Barbarian (1982). Listen to the opening part:
The rhythm and melody sound very familiar and create a vibe of impending doom in a foreign land. It also sounds like Jerry Goldsmith’s main theme for Total Recall (1990), another film which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He had already worked with director Steven Spielberg on films such as The Sugarland Express (1974) and Jaws (1975), but Close Encounters involved more elaborate sets and visual effects.
When Garrett Brown invented the Steadicam in the 1970s it had an immediate impact on how films were shot.
Before his invention if filmmakers wanted tracking shots (i.e. ones where the camera moves), they were limited to using a dolly track or hand-held work.
After shooting a demo reel with a prototype rig, he caught the attention of Hollywood and it led to work on such films as Bound for Glory (1976), Rocky (1976) and The Shining (1980) as well as an Academy Award of Merit.
Last year at the EG conference Brown gave a talk where he described how he came up with the idea for his revolutionary camera rig and its subsequent application in movies, sports broadcasting and industry.
Among the things worth noting are:
His father Rodney G Brown invented the ‘hot melt’ glue used in paperback books
He was once a folk singer
Kubrick’s desire for multiple takes on The Shining helped him become a better operator
He teaches Steadicam operators to have a calm demeanor
Working on Return of the Jedi (1983) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) helped inspire the SkyCam
The original demo for the Steadicam prototype was filmed on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which directly inspired the famous scene in Rocky
For his last film A Passage to India (1984) he combined his directing and editing roles, as this clip from an episode of The Southbank Show in 1985 demonstrates:
His colleague and fellow director Ronald Neame once said:
David Lean was a great director, but he was an even better editor. He was one of the greatest editors of all time.
Sound is obviously crucial to the story of the film and in this 30 minute interview the production sound mixer explains how the soundscape of the film was achieved.
Although it is a lot rougher than the slick promotional EPKs used today, it features a lot of fascinating behind-the-scenes footage.
George Roy Hill is wonderfully open and frank about various aspects of the production, including:
Newman’s acting process
Casting Katherine Ross
Problems with a bull
Conrad Hall’s cinematography
The multi-camera setup for the train explosion
Old-school visual effects used in the river jump sequence
How they shot the final sequence
His final line of commentary is priceless:
“I have now spent exactly a year and three months on this film and at this point I don’t know how it is going to be received. I think it’s a good film, I think the guys are great in it, and I think the relationships work. It was a helluva lot of hard work doing it …and if the audiences don’t dig it I think I’ll go out of my fu*king mind”
The documentary is interesting as it was made before the film became a huge box-office success and the highest grossing film of 1969.
“The eureka moment was when I saw a behind-the-scenes making-of about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It was kind of a shabby EPK that had been cobbled together, but it was narrated by the director, George Roy Hill. And it was the first time I’d ever conceived that films didn’t happen in real time. I was about seven years old, and I thought, “What a cool job.” You get to go on location, have trained horses and blow up trains and hang out with Katharine Ross. That seemed like a pretty good gig”
Soundworks have a new video showing how the Oscar nominated sound design of Unstoppable was done.
The action thriller, directed by Tony Scott, has been nominated for Best Sound Editing and here Mark P. Stoeckinger and his team describe how they achieved the soundscape of the film.
One of the basic rules in filmmaking is the 180 degree rule, which prevents audience confusion.
The rule is a basic guideline which states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other.
This video explains it using a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) as an example:
One of the most impressive elements of The Social Network was the visual effects that allowed one actor to play twins.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were the twin brothers who claimed that Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) stole their idea for Facebook.
However, director David Fincher had a problem when he couldn’t find a pair of twins that matched the real world Harvard rowers.
So, a solution was hatched where a combination of visual effects and another fill-in actor (Josh Pence) was used to create the illusion.
A visual effects team from Lola (a company that specialises in human face and body manipulation) essentially painted a digital version of Hammer’s face on to Pence’s.
This making of film about Deliverance (1972) is an interesting snapshot of how films used to be promoted.
Lasting ten minutes, it blends a voiceover, B-roll footage and audio interviews with director John Boorman and author James Dickey, who has a cameo in the film as the sheriff.
One startling nugget of information revealed is that the film wasn’t insured.
Fox Searchlight have released a video showing how many of the visual effects in Black Swan were achieved.
Darren Aronofsky’s dark ballerina drama might not seem like a conventional visual effects movie, but when you see this video you’ll realise why they were central to the film.
* WARNING: There are major spoilers in this video, so don’t watch if you haven’t seen the film *
When the director of Old Boy (2004) and Thirst (2009) announced the project last week, it sounded like some kind of gimmick, but a new trailer and behind the scenes featurette seem to suggest something more substantial.
The Korean title is ‘Paranmanjang’ and it is a 30-minute fantasy with the following synopsis:
“A fantastical tale that begins with a middle-aged man fishing one afternoon and then, hours later at night, catches the body of a woman.The panicked man tries to undo the intertwined fishing line, but he gets more and more entangled.
He faints, then wakes up to find himself in the white clothes that the woman was wearing. The movie’s point of view then shifts to the woman and it becomes a tale of life and death from a traditional Korean point of view.”
This is the trailer:
Funded by the South Korean mobile carrier KT, it cost $130,000, features mostly black-and-white video and was shot on up to eight iPhone 4 devices.
This behind the scenes film shows the full range of filmmaking equipment that was used to augment the cameras on each phone.
Despite the cost of the project, Park is a champion of smartphones as a relatively inexpensive tool to make films, telling the LA Times:
“Find a location. You don’t even need sophisticated lighting. Just go out and make movies. These days, if you can afford to feed yourself, you can afford to make a film.”
Quentin Tarantino is an admirer of Park and as well as chairing the Cannes jury which awarded Old Boy the Grand Jury Prize in 2004, he also regards Joint Security Area (2000) to be one of best films made since 1992.
After rave reactions on the festival circuit The King’s Speech finally opens in the UK today and the story of how it came to the screen is a fascinating one.
The film traces the relationship between Prince Albert (Colin Firth) and an unconventional speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), who helped him overcome a crippling stammer as he eventually assumed the throne – as George VI – and helped rally his people during World War II.
Directed by Tom Hooper, it is a superbly crafted period piece but also a genuine crowd pleaser with surprising levels of humour and emotion.
Already a frontrunner for the Oscars, Colin Firth follows up his performance in A Single Man with another reminder of how good he can be in the right role, whilst Rush is equally good as the man who helps him.
This is the kind of film that might appear on the surface to be another British costume drama beloved of middle class, Telegraph reading audiences but it is actually much more than that.
By exploring the pain and anguish behind the King’s stutter, it is not only a surprisingly emotional film but also a sneakily subversive one.
Not only does it allows us to see how Logue’s irreverent treatment stripped the ultimate aristocrat of his social hang ups, but how two people from different backgrounds eventually became friends.
But the story behind the film is equally fascinating, involving a veteran screenwriter with a stutter and the late Queen Mother.
At 73 David Seidler is considerably older than many of his screenwriting peers, with previous films including Tucker: The Man and his Dream (1988), directed by his high school classmate Francis Ford Coppola, and The King and I (1999).
What makes the film uniquely personal for the writer is the fact that as a child he grew up with a stutter and found inspiration in how King George VI overcame similar difficulties.
Although born in England, Seidler was raised in America in Long Island and underwent speech therapy over a number of years before managing to cope with the condition at the age of 16.
“You carry it within you for a long time. I’m still a stutterer, but I’ve learned all the tricks so that you don’t hear it”
It was over thirty years ago that he first started work on a script for what would eventually become The King’s Speech and in his research the enigmatic figure of Lionel Logue kept cropping up.
Even years after the King had died, Logue was still a figure of whom little was known as the issue was still a painful one for the royal family and, in particular, the Queen Mother.
After some detective work Seidler eventually tracked down Dr Valentine Logue, a son of Lionel who was now a retired Harley Street brain surgeon.
In 1981 they met in London and Logue Jnr showed the screenwriter the notebooks his father had kept while treating the monarch.
However, Logue wouldn’t do the film unless the writer secured written permission from the Queen Mother. After writing to Clarence House, he received the following request:
‘Please, Mr Seidler, not during my lifetime, the memory of those events is still too painful.’
It wasn’t until 2002 that the Queen Mother passed away at the age of 101 and in 2005 Seidler struggled with a bout of throat cancer.
As part of his recovery he resumed work on his script for The King’s Speech and after an early draft decided to turn it into a stage play in order to focus on the characters.
It was eventually picked up by Bedlam Productions, who optioned it and then joined forces with See-Saw Films who felt that a film project could work.
Geoffrey Rush became attached early on and a staged reading of the play in Islington, North London was seen by the parents of a British director named Tom Hooper, who was then filming the HBO mini-series John Adams.
After being sent the script, and persuaded by his Australian mother that it was really good, he eventually got around to reading it and was keen to direct it as a film, which like John Adams, explores them interior lives of famous historical figures.
When Colin Firth came on board, the production – after nearly 30 years – was finally going to happen.
Weeks before filming began, Hooper and the production team got their hands on Logue’s original diaries which informed the sequences between Rush and Firth.
After filming in the UK last year it got its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in early September where it got a rave reaction from the audience and was immediately talked of as an Oscar contender.
A week later at the Toronto Film Festival it got similar reactions, winning the Audience Award, and for Seidler it was an emotional moment:
“I was overwhelmed because for the first time ever, the penny dropped and I felt I had a voice and had been heard. For a stutterer, it’s a profound moment”.
The King’s Speech opens in the UK today and is currently out in the US
Soundworks have released a video detailing how the sounds of Black Swan were achieved.
Craig Henighan has worked with director Darren Aronofsky since Requiem For A Dream (2000) and his work on this film (as sound designer, supervising sound editor and sound re-recording mixer) is a key element of why it works so well.
Fox Searchlight have released a new video for Black Swan detailing the production design by Thérèse DePrez.
She and director Darren Aronofsky discuss their ideas behind the look of the Swan Lake set, the colour palette and the extensive use of mirrors in the film.
Some Oscar pundits have felt that Black Swan is too dark a film to get widespread Oscar recognition, but although more conservative viewers may be put off by the wilder aspects, it deserves to be a strong contender across multiple categories.
Not only is Natalie Portman now gaining serious traction for Best Actress, but the sheer quality of the technical aspects (cinematography, costume and production design) may well give it a boost as audiences in the US finally get to see it.
Plus, in recent years haven’t Academy voters increasingly gone for darker and more contemporary films such as The Hurt Locker, No Country for Old Men and The Departed?
Soundworks have released a video showing the importance of Foley in recreating sounds for a film.
Veteran Foley artist Gary Hecker has worked on over 200 films in a 30-year career.
The video demonstrates how created sounds for Robin Hood and 2012 from within his studio:
Among Hecker’s recent credits are The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Angels & Demons, Watchmen and the Spiderman trilogy.
Foley art gets its name from Jack Foley who helped pioneer the art of creating additional sound to motion pictures with the advent of talkies in the late 1920s.
With a prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing in the works, a 1982 making-of documentary is a reminder of the raw terror of the original.
Although critically reviled and a box office flop when it first came out, the film still endures as one of the best sci-fi horrorsof the 1980s.
Carpenter’s direction, Rob Bottin‘s special effects make up, the ensemble performances, Dean Cundey‘s visuals and Ennio Morricone‘s chilling score are just some of the elements that combine brilliantly.
This making of video from the time depicts the gruelling shoot in British Columbia:
The negative reactions when it first opened were unfortunate, but also part of the reason why the film has endured over the years: unlike a lot of horror films, it is genuinely horrifying.
The central premise of scientists coming across an alien in the Artic was adapted from both the 1951 film The Thing from Another World, and the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. which inspired it.
But Carpenter goes much further, turning the Cold War fears of the original into something darker and more primal.
Not only is the Arctic setting claustrophobic and lonely, it plays on the paranoia of a group confronted by something they cannot comprehend.
This is also true of the audience as try to get a grip on what the Thing actually is.
Most aliens and monsters are vaguely humanoid but the Thing is such an uniquely revolting villain precisely because it is genuinely ‘other’.
As a shape-shifting parasite it is also doubly unnerving as it can be anyone at any time.
After watching it – yes, this is a spoiler warning – check out this IMDb FAQ and you will see some tantalising ambiguities in the story (my favourite being ‘Was Blair assimilated?’) which add to the mysteries on screen.
Back in 2008 Carpenter did a video introduction before a 70mm screening of the film in Bradford and described his approach to the film and why it upset people at the time.
It is rare that films flop because they are too successful at what they do, but The Thing is one of them.
As he took the stage at the NFT many fans had their cameras out to capture the moment:
The Promise: The Making of ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ is a 90-minute film directed by Thom Zimny, and features never before seen footage shot between 1976-1978, capturing rehearsals and recording sessions.
This is footage from the film of Springsteen and his band recording the track The Promise:
It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September and is part of the upcoming box set, ‘The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story’, which features 21 previously unreleased songs from the ‘Darkness’ recording sessions.
Ren Kylce (Sound Re-recording Mixer and Supervisor Sound Editor) along with Michael Semanick (Sound Re-Recording Mixer) discuss various aspects of the audio soundscape they created for David Fincher’s film, including:
The importance of dialogue
How they captured ambient sounds from Harvard and Silicon Valley
The volume of Ruby Skye club sequence
How sound helps signify shifts in time
Working with Trent Reznor an Atticus Ross to incorporate the electronic score into the film.
Today is Halloween, which means you can expect trick-or-treaters knocking at your door but also the obligatory screening of John Carpenter’s Halloween.
The 1978 horror classic set the template for modern horror and also became one of the most profitable films of all time.
In honour of its enduring legacy, here are 31 facts about the film:
The film had its origins at the screening of Assault on Precinct 13 at the 1977 London Film Festival, where John Carpenter met financier Moustapha Akkad, who eventually funded the film with his partner, Irwin Yablans.
Assault on Precinct 13 was acquired for distribution in the UK by a man named Michael Myers, the same name of the villain in Halloween.
Originally titled ‘The Babysitter Murders’, it was Yablans who suggested the title and setting of Halloween night.
Akkad was initially concerned about the relative inexperience of Carpenter but he was convinced after the director told him the story verbally (‘almost frame for frame’) and his refusal to take a large fee upfront which showed his confidence in the project.
Carpenter received $10,000 for directing, writing and composing the music and retained rights to 10 percent of the film’s profits.
The film was shot over 21 days in 1978 on a budget of $320,000.
Ironically, it was filmed in April which meant that one of the most famous films set in Autumn was actually shot in Spring.
The out of season weather meant the crew had difficulty finding pumpkins and artificial autumn leaves had to be used for certain scenes.
Many of the the street names in the film were taken from Carpenter’s hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Donald Pleasance agreed to play Dr. Loomis after Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing turned it down (he met with John Carpenter because his daughter was a fan of Assault on Precinct 13).
It was Jamie Lee Curtis debut feature film and she was paid $8,000 for her role.
Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho was an inspiration: Dr. Loomis’ name was a reference to Sam Loomis (John Gavin), the boyfriend of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who in turn is the real-life mother of Jamie Lee Curtis.
The extended P.O.V. shot in the opening scene of the film is heavily influenced by the famous opening of Touch of Evil (1958).
The hands of the young Michael Myers in the opening scene are those of co-writer and producer Debra Hill.
The older version of Michael Myers is actually called ‘The Shape’ in the credits and was played by Nick Castle, an old college friend of Carpenter’s from the University of Southern California. (Actor Tony Moran stood in for Castle in selected scenes).
Because the film was shot out-of-sequence Carpenter would explain to Jamie Lee Curtis what her character’s level of fear should be in certain scenes.
John Carpenter composed the film’s distinctive score himself in just 3 days.
For a slasher film, there is an unusual lack of blood in the film. The only time we see any is when Judith Myers is killed at the beginning and Laurie’s arm is cut near the end.
Dean Cundey’s use of blue back light in the climactic scenes was inspired by watching Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974).
The film premièred on October 25th, 1978 in Kansas City, then a platform release in Chicago and New York before word of mouth meant a gradual release around the States.
The film initially grossed $47 million at the US box office and $8 million internationally, which is the equivalent to around $176 million today.
Americans couldn’t actually buy the chilling score when the film came out and it was originally only released in Japan.
When the film made its television debut on NBC in the early 1980s, the network wanted some extra scenes to fill the allotted time slot and Carpenter went back and shot additional sequences during the production of Halloween II (they can be seen on some DVD versions of the film).
In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” .
Financier Moustapha Akkad continued to work act as executive producer on the Halloween franchise, until his death in the 2005 Amman bombings.