The Loving Trap – An Adam Curtis YouTube Video Pastiche – In a landmark new documentary produced for YouTube, Adam Curtis has not examined his career and laid bare his style in the light of some confused academic papers he stumbled across on the internet. Instead, I have plundered various video archives and ripped him off, up, down, left, right and back again.
Alfonso Cuarón, International Man – Returning home allowed Cuarón to concentrate on one of Mexico’s peculiar contributions to cinematic technique, the plano secuencia—a long, traveling master shot, designed with complex camera moves, that effectively prevents the use of close-ups, inserts, and other forms of coverage. Cuarón calls them “one-shot deals,” and they figure heavily in Y Tu Mamá. “A close-up separates a character from its environment,” says Cuarón, “but in this film, character and environment are equally important; one is a product of the other. That’s why I opted to do one-shot deals all the time.”
Noah Baumbach on Jules & Jim – “It’s like the filmmaker is excited to show her to you in the way Jules and Jim are excited to see her. You’d get a different feeling off it if he showed it to you in one take. He doesn’t do this all the time. He does let scenes play out, too. But he is able to make all these disparate elements feel part of the same movie,” he adds of the frenetic camera pans and cuts, freeze-frames and square irises Truffaut uses. “[The filmmaking] is so committed in every possible way that he can cut to stock footage of Paris in a different aspect ratio, and because we’ve already seen the slides that Albert showed them, it still feels like the same language.”
Elliott Gould on throwing his lunch at Robert Altman and Saturday Night Live’s Five-Timers Club – By the way, that scene… later on, Sylvester Stallone said to me that he was there that day. He was an extra. And he said to me, “I don’t admit that I was an extra in many pictures, but I admit that I was an extra in M*A*S*H.” I thought that was sort of touching. But I told Bob Altman, and he said, “No! I do not accept that! I do not accept that Sylvester Stallone was an extra in my movie!” [Laughs.] God, Robert Altman… You’ll bring me to tears. I mean, he was like my father. I just loved him, and there was so much other work, more work that we talked about and would’ve loved to have done together.
Sitcom director Mark Cendrowski – Four-camera directing requires the director to cut the show while taping. Because the live studio audience is often watching the action on monitors, an initial sloppy video feed can dilute their response.
How machines can help us discover overlooked films – Instead, if you’re seeking patterns among Secret Successes, Fiascoes, and Failures, you’re better off looking at how critics and audiences described a movie.
Hän: Peter von Bagh – Peter von Bagh opiskeli Helsingin yliopistossa ensin matematiikkaa ja sitten estetiikkaa, kirjallisuutta, filosofiaa ja sosiologiaa. ”Pomminvarma yhdistelmä, joka ei johda ammattitaitoon. Sillä ei voi hakea mihinkään. Enkä ole hakenutkaan.”
