Rod Otaviano

Some of my picks: B&W: The Fugitive (1947) - Gabriel Figueroa The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Stanley Cortez The Trial (1962) - Edmond Richard Winter Light (1963) - Ulla Ryghe Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) - Denys N. Coop Colour: The French Connection (1971) - Owen Roizman Fat City (1972) - Conrad L. Hall Road to Perdition (2002) - Conrad L. Hall Capote (2005) - Adam Kimmel War of the Worlds (2005) - Janusz Kaminski Revanche (2008) - Martin Gschlacht

Even Hitchcock stole some shots (in "North By Northwest" :-)

I saw 'Berlin Calling' in an art-house theater here in Vancouver last year if I'm not mistaken ... and of course "The Lives of Others". A Brazilian friend who lives in Berlin recommended me "Small-Town Punks" ( Dorfpunks) but it hasn't come out on DVD here yet. Oh and ... "Good Bye Lenin", which is excellent.

Coincidently, it happened to me about two weeks ago as well, but with 7222, unexposed raw film, in moderately dimmed room and I closed the magazine really fast. I got the film back from the lab a few days ago and it was 100% fine.

Thanks for the initiative, Bill. I just sent you an email.

Do people still buy their cameras ?

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. I totally agree with you ... it's one of my favorite films as well ... Here's my list: Mary and Max (2009) Adam Elliot Transsiberian - Brad Anderson (2008) Funny Games - Michael Haneke (2007) No Country for Old Men - Coen Brothers (2007) Brand Upon the Brain! - Guy Maddin (2006) The Lives of Others - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006) Broken Flowers - Jim Jarmusch (2005) Paradise Now - Hany Abu-Assad (2005) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Michael Gondry (2004) Lost in Translation - Sofia Coppola (2003) Road to Perdition - Sam Mendes (2002) Artificial Intelligence - Steven Spielberg (2001) Mulholland Dr. - David Lynch (2001) Requiem for a Dream - Darren Aronofsky (2000) Memento - Christopher Nolan (2000) Songs from the Second Floor - Roy Andersson (2000) Werckmeister Harmonies - Bela Tarr (2000)

There's also a good example of this technique in the opening sequence of "Seconds" (1966) from John Frankenheimer. Good movie.

I'm shooting 7217 with a 814XLS and an Isco54 anamorphic lens in daylight next week. I only have a 85B for the camera lens (62mm filter thread). Is there any "problem" in using the 85b between the camera lens and the Isco? The other option would be to buy a 85b for the Isco (95mm filter thread). Thanks

According to this site, it still is: http://www.filmsite.org/boxoffice.html

A few weeks ago I accidently removed the core and took the film to Technicolor here in Vancouver. I was a little bit worried but the gentleman I talked to said it's not a big deal for them and wrote down "no core" on the can. He advised me to not take it off next time though.

Tim, You can disable that yourself. When the ad pops up, click on the question mark, scroll down the page and click the disable option. It worked here (I'm using Safari 3.2.1)

I recommend "The Fugitive" (1947) by John Ford (don't confuse it with the other "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford ...). Stunning photography and as far as I've read that was Ford's favorite picture. Another one ... "The Night of the Hunter" (1955) by Charles Laughton, his directorial debut, actually his only film as a director. I think he got depressed by the negative reviews and never directed again but ... it's a truly amazing film, a must-see for any filmmaking student (the is one of those scenes you'll never forget) I also recomend "Knife in the water" (1962) by Roman Polanski. Great use of deep DOF, unusual camera angles (and if you are a jazz lover, you can't go wrong with this one) and "Kiss me Deadly" (1955) by Robert Aldrich that has one of my favorite opening sequences ( ).

Yeah, as you said, just for a second or two. It's long shot on Newman leaving one of the halls of the museum. You just hear the German guy's footsteps as if he was right behind the camera. It's a nice effect. There's a slightly similar sequence in "The Man who knew too much" (the one from 1956), where James Stewart is "being followed" by that taxidermist from Ambrose Chappell. You don't see the taxidermist at first, but you can hear his footsteps grow louder as Stewart's become barely audible.

I've recently read an article on Indiewire written by the former president of Miramax that basically corroborates everything Richard's been saying for the last past years. I personally think if you're on the budget and want to make a feature film, I think should not worry too much about theatrical distribution but focus on making something unique, different. If it's your first film and you don't have any money, I think the important thing here is to ... learn from the experience, of course, but try to be noticed. To succeed in the indie arena, you have to be original. That's my 2 cents. Here's an excerpt taken from the article and the URL in case you want to read the whole thing: http://www.indiewire.com/biz/2008/06/irst_person_fil.html "Fifteen years ago, the Sundance Film Festival got 500 submissions. This year, they received 5,000. Virtually all of these are privately financed. There's only one problem: most of the films are flat-out awful (trust me, I have had to sit through tons of them over the years). Let me put it another way: the digital revolution is here, and boy does it suck. It's not enough to have access to the moviemaking process. Talent matters more. Quality of emotional content is what matters, period. In a world with too many choices, companies are finally realizing they can't risk the marketing money on most movies. Here's how bad the odds are: of the 5000 films submitted to Sundance each year-- generally with budgets under $10 million--maybe 100 of them got a US theatrical release three years ago. And it used to be that 20 of those would make money. Now maybe five do. That's one-tenth of one percent. Put another way, if you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own tomorrow, you have a 99.9% chance of failure." By the way, sorry for drifting away from the main topic.