movies

There are 206 posts filed in movies (this is page 25 of 26).

Interpreting Synecdoche, New York: A Video Essay

I was grateful to be able to chat with LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson about Synecdoche, New York. Synecdoche has always been one of those films that has mystified me. Every single scene seem feels loaded with metaphor, always on the verge of didacticism. But I have seen few people come up with a satisfying interpretation of much of the movie (with a few exceptions).

This was my first attempt at a long long-form video essay, and while I’m pleased with the results, I don’t know that it’s something that resonated with a particularly large group of people. Nonetheless, what was important to me was hopefully being able to shed light on what is one of the most moving yet enigmatic films I’ve ever seen.

The Best Tributes to Philip Seymour Hoffman

I was shocked and devastated when I learned that Philip Seymour Hoffman had passed away. What an amazing talent, taken away from us far too soon. Truly my favorite actor, ever since I saw his heartbreaking performance in Boogie Nights.

Here are a few remembrances of him that I found to be particularly heartfelt and impactful:

– Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Final Secret in Esquire

– PHS, RIP in Slate

– An Actor Who Made Unhappiness a Joy to Watch in NYTimes

– The Dissolve remembers Philip Seymour Hoffman

– Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Genius in The New Yorker

– Philip Seymour Hoffman, 1967-2014 at Rogerebert.com

– Cameron Crowe and Fans Pay Tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman at /Film

– The Wrestler at Medium

And finally, a piece by Erik Lundegaard from 2006 that isn’t a remembrance, but I think captures exactly what made Hoffman great.

The Making of That Close-Ups Video Essay

This week I published a new video essay at /Film on the art of close-ups. I was grateful and honored to have Edgar Wright’s participation on this essay. But how did it come to be?

This essay started as a much simpler supercut of all the close-ups in Wright’s Cornetto trilogy. I cut together what this would look like for Shaun of the Dead as a proof of concept:

I showed this video to a few people and…it didn’t really do anything for them. They didn’t react with “Wow, this is so cool!” or “This mashup is illuminating!” so I kind of put it on the back burner for awhile. Separately, I’d been wanting to do a feature with Wright for /Film for quite some time – we’d always meant to get him on as a guest of the podcast around the time that The World’s End was released but the timing just never worked out.

The thing with filmmaker interviews is: they are legion. Filmmakers go through a press gang bang every time they promote a movie in a big way and over time, all the questions/answers have to take on the feeling of sameness. It is virtually impossible to ask questions in a way that feels novel or revealing. I felt bad subjecting Wright to yet another press interview, so I wanted to try an alternate tactic. I reached out with the proof of concept video above and asked if he’d like to record an interview with me on the art of close-ups to be released in video essay form. Fortunately, he agreed.

We chatted for about 20 minutes or so on Skype. I edited that interview down into a 8.5 minute monologue, then proceeded with the painstaking process of finding all the footage that matched what Wright was talking about and putting the essay together. The entire video essay took about 4-5 weeks of work, on and off, on nights after my day job and during weekends.

This video hit the web on Wednesday morning, and gained some traction via Youtube thanks to a few prominent tweets:

The art of close-ups with @edgarwright via @slashfilm http://t.co/6ImSPsjCTn
— Wes Craven (@wescraven) January 29, 2014

Check out this interview I did with @slashfilm about close ups. http://t.co/b17ABEjkQg Don’t count the number of times I say ‘like’ though.
— edgarwright (@edgarwright) January 29, 2014

On Saturday morning (2/1/2014), Vimeo made the video a Staff Pick, giving the video a whole new life.

 

It’s been a long-time goal of mine to make the Staff Picks page, so I was incredibly grateful and honored to be chosen.

As a video-maker just starting out, it is quite challenging to monetize these types of videos. There are a few possible pathways for it. You could build a massive following on Youtube/Vimeo, then sell ads or get a bunch of cash via Tip Jar. Or you could run your videos on a site that has a high-tech custom video player and a seasoned ad sales team, and is thus able to pay you handsomely for your efforts. I didn’t really have access to any of the above, so the only substantive reward for this project was the feeling that I contributed to our collective knowledge on a specific topic of interest – a challenging bar that I generally try hard to reach with all my work.

I joked a few times that if I had known how long this whole process would take, I never would have attempted it in the first place. Having seen how many people have enjoyed the video, all of that work now feels worth it. Simultaneously, there are thousands and thousands of people who are way more talented than me at this, who toil endlessly to produce videos of far greater craft and import, and who never get their work noticed on a significant scale. As much as possible, I try to rectify this by highlighting their work whenever possible using the platforms I am blessed to have. But the feeling I’m left with after the exhausting process of creating and promoting this video essay is this: I can always do more.

12 Years a Slave and Ender’s Game Reviews

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with trailer-length video reviews for slashfilm.com. The objective is to deliver something that’s visually and aurally stimulating, but not so much work that I can’t sustain it on a weekly basis (with my full-time job and other podcast obligations). So far, the response to these short reviews has been really positive so I plan to keep them up, but I do hope one day that it will lead me to create videos that have more creative editing. Perhaps when I have more time…


The fine line between (soundtrack) homage and rip-off

[This post may contain SPOILERS for Captain Phillips, but only if you don’t know what Phillips’ fate was in real life. It also contains spoilers for Inception]

Captain Phillips was one of my favorite films of the year. I’m a huge fan of Greengrass’ hyper-real style, which ratcheted up the tension throughout, and Tom Hanks gives one of the best performances of his career. The score by Henry Jackman was also pretty solid, but one thing about it did catch my ear: the very last track.

I knew it sounded familiar, but as the track went on, its similarity to Hans Zimmer’s “Time” from his Inception score became impossible to ignore. Here’s the latter track:

The chord progression is obviously the same, but so is the instrumentation and the way both tracks play with dynamics (i.e. hear how the volume swells at the same point in the chord progression in both tracks). Furthermore, both tracks play at similar points within each film: right at the end as the credits begin, when some relative level of safety has been established for many of the main players.

Sure, certain chord progressions have been borrowed time and time again in different scores, songs, symphonies, concertos, etc. But their implementation is often so different that new iterations are either transformative or unrecognizable.

This, on the other hand, feels like almost a direct lift. If I had to guess, I’d surmise that “Time” was used as a temp score for Phillips, and it worked so well that Jackman had to create something incredibly similar, but different enough that his film couldn’t be sued. What do you guys think?

Update: Readers have pointed out that Zimmer received a “The director would like to thank…” shout out in the end credits of Captain Phillips.

Eowyn

My friends named their child Eowyn, after the character in Lord of the Rings. I asked them why. This was the result.



This video was shot using a Canon 5D Mark III. Sound was recorded using a Zoom H4n (onboard microphones) and then synced up in post. For all of the shots, I either went handheld or used the brand spanking new Manfrotto monopod I just purchased. I did not think it was possible to spend more than $200 on a mononpod, but having used the Manfrotto, I now don’t feel I could ever live without it. It is super easy to use, convenient, and extremely effective at stabilizing shots.