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Cinematography
Behind the Lens: The Kings of Summer with Ross Riege
Ross Riege just finished shooting his first feature film, The Kings of Summer. Currently working on a feature-length documentary with director Greg Kohs, Ross took some time out of his busy schedule to talk with Creative COW about his career path as a young cinematographer and his experiences shooting Kings of Summer.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Ross Riege |
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Film History & Appreciation
VFX Titans Remember Ray Harryhausen
"When we grieve Ray Harryhausen's passing, we are at least in part grieving perhaps the last living link to the earliest days of movie visual effects," says Creative COW's Debra Kaufman. She spoke to many of today's VFX giants who were inspired by Ray, including Phil Tippett, Richard Edlund, Jeffrey A. Okun and ILM Animation Director Hal Hickel, who says, "Ray Harryhausen's impact on an entire generation (several actually) of filmmakers cannot be overstated, each of them trying again and again to reproduce the wonder they first felt as a child watching Jason fight those skeletons."
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
Iron Man 3, Marvel & The Future of the Superhero
Victoria Alonso, Marvel Studios Executive Vice President of Visual Effects and Post Production, began her career in the early days of the digital visual effects industry. We had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Victoria about the Iron Man movies, post production's evolution, remote dailies and coloring on set, 4K & HFR, and keeping the modern superhero movie fresh.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
PREVISUALIZATION Part FOUR: When to Use Previs
In this fourth chapter of Gare Cline's tutorial series on Previsualization, we focus on when is the best time to hire a previsualization artist. We begin by looking at the various stages of filmmaking and then concluding with making the decision as when is the best time to hire a previs artist.
Editorial, Feature
Gare Cline |
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Film History & Appreciation
Jurassic Park 3D: A New Dimension For A Modern Classic
If you liked Jurassic Park the first time around, you're going to love it in 3D. If there was ever a movie that cried out for a third dimension, it was this one: T-Rex towering over the teetering SUV? Raptors skittering in the kitchen? Jurassic Park's already edge-of-your-seat scenes get even scarier in stereoscopic 3D. Conversions from 2D to 3D have gotten a bad rap due to a small handful of movies that were not done skillfully. Stereo D- which also did the conversion work for Titanic -- handled Jurassic Park. President William Sherak and Vice President, Chief Creative Officer Aaron Parry talked to Creative COW about their work on Spielberg's dinosaur blockbuster, and why 2D-to-3D conversions are booming.
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
Behind the Lens: Game of Thrones with Anette Haellmigk
Cinematographer Anette Haellmigk shot two episodes of Season 3's Game of Thrones, the HBO blockbuster that returns on March 31. A native of Germany, Haellmigk was the 2012 winner of Kodak's Vision Award from Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards. A pioneering woman cinematographer, Annette's resume includes Das Boot, Robocop, Starship Troopers, Total Recall, The West Wing and many more.
Haellmigk speaks to Creative COW about her path as a pioneering female cinematographer and her work on Game of Thrones.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Anette Haellmigk |
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Film History & Appreciation
Sony Imageworks Takes Us On The Yellow Brick Road to OZ
Sony Imageworks provided over 1,100 digital visual effects shots to Oz the Great and Powerful, a movie which explains how a small time magician became the great Wizard of Oz. Featured are two all-digital characters, the 18-inch China Girl and Finley, the wise-cracking monkey with wings, as well as a host of other digital creatures from river fairies to flying baboons. In addition, Imageworks provided environments from the Kansas Circus to Emerald City and effects work that include the magic of evil and good witches and Oz himself.
Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
VFX Crossroads Pt. 2: Can The VFX Business Be Saved?
In VFX Crossroads, Part 1, we took a close look at how the seeds of the VFX industry’s dysfunctional business model were planted in its earliest days. Although outsourcing and tax incentives/subsidies are the culprits most often cited in today’s news, we saw that the financial picture for VFX houses is far more complex than that. Here in Part 2, we look at some of the solutions proposed by leading voices in the VFX industry, including a VFX facility trade associations, a union or guild, and ending subsidies. The question is, is it all too little too late?
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
VFX Crossroads: Causes & Effects Of An Industry Crisis
The VFX industry is in a crisis. As Life of Pi won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, the venerable facility that created those effects - Rhythm & Hues - declared bankruptcy, and they're hardly the first to close their doors due to financial problems. Debra Kaufman pulls from her 25 years of experience covering the industry to take a close look at how the creators of some of cinema's indelible images are falling prey to dysfunctional business models. Their deep historical roots have also led to visual effects becoming one of the least-profitable areas of film and TV production. How did we get here?
Editorial, Feature
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
What Star Wars Means To Me
Part of the criteria your future spouse must meet is a deep knowledge of the Star Wars Universe and you can quote most of the lines from at least one of the original Episodes, but how did the magic, the action, the VFX (before you even knew what VFX were and it was all oh so real!), and The Force, change you? Mike Cohen answers with what Star Wars means to him.
Editorial, Feature
Mike Cohen |
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Cinematography
The Making of 1000 to 1: Lenses & Lighting For The RED Epic
Working with Angenieux on new lens solutions for the RED Epic, wrestling freakish gym fluorescent lighting, wrangling national park filming permits: these were just a few of the challenges facing cinematographer and co-producer (and Digital Cinema Society founder) James Mathers in the making of "1000 to 1," an inspirational indie drama to be released later this year. James tells a remarkable tale of the lengths one production went to make their film look much bigger than its budget, with practical advice for filmmakers on every scale.
Editorial, People / Interview
James Mathers |
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Cinematography
Claudio Miranda, ASC Makes New Rules for Shooting Life of Pi
When director Ang Lee brought on cinematographer Claudio Miranda, ASC to shoot Life of Pi, the two were faced with a multi-pronged challenge. For Lee, the movie was to be his first shot digitally as well as his first 3D stereoscopic film, and he relied on Miranda, who had experience in both. But Miranda had other challenges, including shooting the movie's extensive water scenes as well as a key character -- the tiger -- who wasn't there. In this article, Miranda explains how he made it all work, to create what is arguably the year's most gorgeous movie.
Feature, People / Interview
Claudio Miranda, ASC |
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Cinematography
NO Relies On 1980s Cameras To Tell A Historic Tale
Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film after having played Cannes, the Toronto International Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival, NO is a gripping film about the peaceful overthrow of Chilean strong man General Augusto Pinochet. To make it more intriguing, the filmmakers opted to shoot with Ikegami cameras from 1983, to match existing footage from the era. It's not a decision they took lightly, and their calculations paid off.
Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
The Art of Foley: John Roesch Honored by MPSE
John Roesch is one of the most accomplished Foley artists in the motion picture industry, with contributions to more than 400 films in a three decade-spanning career. He is the recipient of two MPSE Golden Reel Awards (The Dark Knight, The Matrix) alongside more than a dozen nominations. He has worked on 16 films that have won Academy Awards for Best Sound or Best Sound Editing. John Roesch spoke to Creative COW about the art of Foley and his extensive experience in creating sound effects.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
John Roesch |
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Art of the Edit
Zombies Brought to Life For Warm Bodies
VFX company LOOK Effects ramped up a studio in Vancouver and created a new pipeline for character animation, to produce 85 shots of the Boneys - the most decayed, menacing zombies - in Warm Bodies, the new zom-rom-com based on the book of the same name. In addition to character animation, the company created a CG fly-through of a wasted city, blending with live action plates at each end of the sequence.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
Bill Taylor, ASC Commended with the John A. Bonner Medal
VFX pioneer Bill Taylor, ASC has been voted to receive the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which was presented at the 2013 Scientific and Technical Awards. Inspired by Ray Harryhausen and some of the greatest icons of effects history, Bill has achieved feats of his own. We had the opportunity to speak with him about his luminary career.
Feature, People / Interview
Bill Taylor, ASC |
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Stereoscopic 3D
Tim Squyres Edits Life of Pi
Tim Squyres, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Life of Pi, got hooked on film when he took an introductory film course at Cornell University in upstate New York. Squyres talks to Creative COW about the challenges of editing Ang Lee's first digitally shot feature film, which was also a stereoscopic 3D release.
Feature, People / Interview
Tim Squyres |
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RED Camera
House of Cards
Netflix is distributing all 13 episodes of its first season House of Cards at once, on streaming platforms. That's not all that makes this new political drama series unique. With David Fincher as an executive producer and director of the first two episodes, you'd expect a digitally-savvy pipeline and you'd be correct. In this story, Fincher's post production supervisor Peter Mavromates and assistant editor Tyler Nelson talk about how FotoKem's newly evolved nextLAB system played a role in streamlining the post pipeline.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Film History & Appreciation
Review: The Hobbit Without An Unexpected Pun in the Title
Not being a teenage Tolkien freak anymore, Kylee Wall was reasonably enthusiastic, but not lose-your-mind crazy like she was when she saw The Two Towers back in the day. She wasn't even dressed up in an elven cloak and holding a bow like the girl that sat next to her. But when the film entered Bag End for the first time with Ian Holm narrating - In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit - Yikes, emotions. Read Kylee's reactions to seeing The Hobbit in all its glory - 3D, HFR, and all.
Review
Kylee Wall |
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Cinematography
The Aesthetics of High Frame Rate Cinema
Any change in the way we watch movies creates a heated debate, from the introduction of sound and color to digital acquisition and stereoscopic 3D. Now, the subject of debate is High Frame Rate cinema and, naturally, the debate is emotional. From watching hundreds, maybe thousands, of movies, we all have an idea of what a movie ought to look like, and for some people, HFR doesn't fit into the picture. Other moviegoers are excited about HFR's potential -- but to fulfill it, filmmakers and technologists have a lot of work ahead of them.
Editorial
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
The Hobbit & The Dawn of High Frame Rate Cinema
The technology wizards of the film/TV industry have been talking about High Frame Rate cinema for a long time; indeed, Douglas Trumbull's Showscan at 60 fps presaged the current interest over 30 years ago. But it took director Peter Jackson to take the plunge for mainstream cinema, declaring he would shoot The Hobbit in 48 fps to get momentum going. In about a year's time, manufacturers made the gear, theater exhibitors updated their movie theaters, and the studios prepared for one of the most audacious technology debuts that cinema has seen. Creative COW goes behind the scenes to see what it took for you to see The Hobbit in 48 fps.
Editorial, Feature, People / Interview
Debra Kaufman |
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Cinematography
Jacob Rosenberg Directs Waiting for Lightning
Waiting for Lightning is the tragic and triumphant story of legendary skateboarder Danny Way, following him from his chaotic childhood to his early talent with a skateboard through to his many professional successes. With a combination of archival footage, interviews and skateboard action, Waiting for Lightning also takes us on Danny's journey to China to jump the Great Wall on a skateboard.
Feature, People / Interview
Jacob Rosenberg |
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