joshua gallegos

Yeah. I will still go ahead and make the movie, but now with the mentality that my $60k never existed in the bank. Haha.

 

Why can't I be my own sales agent?

 

If it's of any consolation, someone named Lena Dunham made her first two features with less than that amount. Her first 60min feature Creative Nonfiction was made with 15k dollars, She was unaware of what cinema was, yet the film made it SXSW. That's what raw talent can do to even the most untrained/unknowing mind. Her second feature 'Tiny Furniture' was a substantial improvement! You never would've guessed she could improve in as little as a year, and she made that for 50k dollars. 'Tiny Furniture' was filmed on a Canon 7d, but most importantly she collaborated with a group of filmmakers, she didn't do it on her own. I may not be a fan of her work, but I sure do admire her incredible talent to write/direct/act. If you look at Creative Nonfiction, you'll see that poor camerawork can be forgiven if what you see on the screen is interesting. You don't have to be Caleb Deschanel to get noticed, you just need an interesting story, and most importantly interesting actors. I believe John Huston said 80% of directing is in casting the right actors. Here's 'Creative Nonfiction', I like the film. You can watch 'Tiny Furniture' on Netflix.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcYrT1-SnJg

 

Yes, I agree. It wouldn't make any difference if Da Vinci had painted the Mona Lisa in house paints, crayons, or water colours, for it would still be a work of art by Leonardo Da Vinci.

 

But it would not be that work we call the Mona Lisa.

 

And that's an important qualification. Well, at least if one wants to talk about the art and craft of these things.

 

It's not necessary to define these things in advance. One can still appreciate the difference between film and digital without any definitions. Just use your eyes and have a look at some films on a film projector next to some digital works on a digital projector/screen.

 

Defining this difference - or rather: accounting for (or theorising, talking about, writing about) this difference, is a little more involved.

 

C

 

Incredible work has been done on digital format, that's complete nonsense! Digital is merely an iteration of film, it's two sides of the same coin, when people diminish the works that have been done in digital or deem it an inferior art, it makes them ignorant of the fact that the art comes from the heart of man and not the canvas in which it is presented.

But what is "film look", how do people even begin to define it? The format doesn't define the film itself, if Tyler Perry shot a new Madea movie on 35mm as opposed to filming it on the Alexa, would that make it anymore interesting? Doesn't mean a thing.

In my filmmaking class, I teach "filmmaking". We shoot film, we process film, we project and edit film. Nothing we do touches anything digital because it's a filmmaking class. Jon down the hallway, he teaches "videomaking" with Red and Alexa cameras and they view everything on a color calibrated 4k, 3 chip DLP projector. When film was the mainstay, digital was very cool because it was this neat/new technology. Now that film is shall we say, more accessible then it has been in decades, it's becoming this new technology to younger people. Since they grew up with iphones and dad's camcorder, now they want to learn about what else is out their. In my eyes, teaching them to tell stories the way we've been doing it for 100 y

 

 

But "film look" is such a broad term, when I saw the new Star Wars 7, I couldn't tell the thing was shot on film, it all looks the same to me!

Hi All,

my name is Raffaele, i'm a film student in Italy, i'm going to graduate and finish my BA. I focalised my interests about Cinematography, and i want to do my final project about Black And White cinema in the last 20 years.

I already watched a lot of film both in BW or Mixed and read some books, but i want to ask you if you have any ideas, film or book about this. Any help would be really appreciated.

My challenge is to find the time at which BW has become a choice of aesthetic rather than a productive need, like first Chris Nolan feature.

Thank you in advance.

I would say B&W became an aesthetic choice since the 1960s, since color films were more pervasive around that era and became more of a standard. An example would be Robert Wise's 'The Haunting' which studio execs pressed to be filmed in color, yet Robert insisted the film needed to be filmed in b/w, as the entire film payed homage to Robert's mentor Val Lewton. Of course this is just one of many examples! Another great example would be something like 'Whatever Happened To Baby Jane' by Robert Aldrich, and the most famous of all- Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. I would look more into the 1960s as there were some filmmakers who fought to make their films in b/w. The trend has continued ever since, like Scorsese's 'Raging Bull', 'Paper Moon' by Peter Bogdanovich, etc.

I forgot to mention David Lynch's 'Rabbits' series. The whole thing is a single-shot long take. I think this film stresses the utter importance of visual artistry and atmosphere, the role the art department and cinematography plays and the choices the director make will inevitably affect how people see and think.

This is also proof that movies can survive without plot or intricate exposition.

I think you have to approach the subject-matter through character. Attempting to understand a person's state of mind, maybe see the world through their eyes, do some actual research about it. For instance the short film 'Doodlebug' by Christopher Nolan is interesting, certainly we're in the mind of someone who is isolated and going deeply mad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhKt_CkXD0

 

The black and white imagery, the sound, the lighting, it all presents a very unnerving atmosphere. Therefore, a film of this subject-matter should be deeply atmospheric, which means you'll need very good technicians to pull it off. And it's only 3 minutes long, which is perfect! The shorter the film the better. Utilizing heavy exposition or dialogue is your worst enemy, never explain things, just look at any Kubrick film, the most effective way to make a short film is by utilizing pure cinematics.

 

Here's a great example, this are anti-meth ads, directed by Darren Aronofsky. I've learned the hard way to not be boring with a camera, it needs vitality, it needs your energy. I love this ad, because it says so much with very little, just mere seconds of cinema, and we see the darkness of meth-addiction, it's brilliant!

 

I think you should try and discover what disturbs you most. The world certainly doesn't understand another human being at a glance, but cinema certainly does. An entire life can flash before you in seconds, that's what cinema can do if it's done right and with passion. I had to learn that the hard way.

One of Kubrick's underrated films is definitely 'Eyes Wide Shut', it's obviously a very strange film about the occult. I always felt Kubrick knew a deeper truth about this world, it's why his films are so mysterious. He doesn't bog down his vision with exposition as many modern films do, you either keep up or you don't , which is why I think he never pleased critics. Sure his composition is part of that Kubrick allure, but his understanding of color theory is also substantial element of his aesthetic. What I gather from most of his films is that he presented a distorted, deeply deformed view of mankind, but made it artful. The bizarre orgies depicted in 'Eyes Wide Shut' are not too farfetched to believe, even the founding fathers of America were freemasons, Benjamin Franklin himself was an occultist and part of many elite secret societies, in fact many modern-day politicians are involved with the occult.

 

Obviously, Kubrick was anti-Hollywood, in the sense that he didn't make films that followed structural traditions in storytelling, they were moving portraits- a most puritan form of cinema not seen since the silent age of filmmaking. There's more to Kubrick than just beautifully-framed shots, it's just everything- his sense of space and time, movement, he was plain and simply a man with a unique vision.

 

I remember watching 'Eyes Wide Shut' late at night, and I was pleasantly shocked by this sequence, which is the ritual sequence. It's mesmerizing, this is what cinema is, you don't explain what it is, you just show it, and let the viewer decipher it, take it all in. Absorb it. Film is a medium of emotion and fragmented memory, and his use of sound and music is still unsurpassed.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTwRRwUb4IE&nohtml5=False

Cinematography: Theory and Practice

 

Search some journals, this one by Peter Oxford was very good.

http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/3/83.extract

Congratulations on such an achievement! I've never interacted with you much, but I've seen some of the films you've worked on, including Steve Jobs, which I liked.

I think you should start from the very beginning, from the early films of Lumiere and Edison up until now, the pioneers like Melies, Edwin Porter, etc, shot films in one long take, using a wide shot, so it wasn't defined into cinematic terms as we know now, at least not until D.W. Griffith created cinematic language, and defined it with cutting, giving each frame dramatic context and heighten emotionality. In short, what gives a cinematographer his/her style is their ability to put images together, making them mean something. I believe in the early days, there weren't any cinematographers, or at least credited. It didn't become a recognized profession until the silent film era early 20s.

 

I think you could start with someone like Gregg Toland. For instance, the visual style differed between his work with Orson Welles, William Wyler, and John Ford. I think if you watch Citizen Kane, Grapes of Wrath, and The Little Foxes you'll see how visual style differs depending on the story and film, and of course the director. The Little Foxes had more of a stage quality, as it mostly deals in interiors, but his style opens up more in films like Grapes of Wrath and Citizen Kane. I know for a fact William Wyler liked using deep depth of field and mainly filmed with short lenses, something that was very difficult to do at the time, but he achieved it. You would benefit from selecting your favorite cinematographers and watching the films he shot.

Being African American has got nothing to do with cinema. Greatness is found out no matter what color, creed or sexual gender. Sidney Poitier defined what it meant to be an African American who rose above the hatred, but now it seems Afro American filmmakers have gotten carried away, telling the same story over and over. How many slave in bondage movies must we see? Or ghetto thug with a heart films? Racism affects everyone, not just African Americans. There are countries in the Middle East who want to wipe out Jews from the phase of the earth. Mexicans who are subjected to low wage incomes and face deportation and hatred by politicians like Donald Trump. It's time Afro American filmmakers departed with their tiresome agenda. We've seen the same film a thousand times, and most of them make such films to inspire sympathy and win awards. Sidney Poitier embodied the oppressive nature of racism, and rising above it without using violence as in the film 'No Way Out'. Those were great films, and politically correct. Nowadays, we are witnessing many propaganda films, which are instigating hatred between races- slavery has been abolished and it is a thing of the past. Instead of going forward many African American filmmakers go backwards and linger on past hatreds. In retrospect, I can see why something like 'The hateful eight' was ousted from awards, because the subject is tiresome- even though it's fantastically structured film, it's time to move on to more socially relevant things.

I stopped watching the Academy Awards since last year, I think Americans tend to over-exaggerate the importance of people who make films, and it bothers me how a future cinematic classic like 'The Master' wasn't recognized, when they parade a movie like 'The Revenant' or 'Mad Max' with multiple nominations. No one remembers Best Picture winner 'Crash', or 'The Hurt Locker'. These aren't serious awards, they've become just another gaudy award show manipulated by politics. I guarantee no one will remember 'The Revenant' in the coming years, it was bland storytelling saved by its flashy cinematography. Awards do not make films better, nor does it mean that the Best Picture was the best film of the year. Bullshit awards.

Awards a re irrelevant. Everyone will forget who won in the next year.

Exposure settings vary, depending on what you're filming. I think the most logical sense would be to use DSLRs, I think porn watchers don't necessarily want a story, the key thing is to entice visually, and DSLRs are smaller/compact, and you could have more of them running- multiple cameras to maintain better continuity in the editing. I don't see how anyone would want to film porn, what if you accidentally get doused in fluids and contract a disease.... not worth it.

 

Some people really like making genre movies!

Reservoir Dogs was a great genre movie, but it was unique because it had a different take on the genre. Like I said, if you don't have anything interesting to say, or at least a fresh take on something, then why do it at all. Why would anyone want to remake The Departed on 16mm film with bad actors, if the real film is already there. it's just wrong and pointless to leech off of another great film just to bang out a buck. Roger Corman gave a lot of great, young filmmakers their start, but those films weren't the most original of films. Someone like Scorsese gained invaluable experience, something he would use in Mean Streets, but other than that, Boxcar Bertha wasn't really a Scorsese picture, it was a Roger Corman movie.

 

Waaaaaaa? I'm seeing a 12.7M domestic gross on this. Still damn impressive, but a long long way from 100M.

 

R,

Regardless, every filmmaker thinks they are owed something just because they make a film of any kind, and I certainly used to be one of those people. My point is, if the film is excellent, it will be found out, all this other crap will be swatted away, and that's the truth. Not many people were cut out to do this, so there has to be at least some level of passion for those who can't get anything going. If filmmaking because a drudgery, then that would be the right moment to quit. Even a small indie horror film like Paranormal Activity, which was made for 20k dollars was made with passion, it just shows when there is vigor involved. Anyone trying to rehash from other successful films are just flooding the moviemaking landscape with insignificant films. And it's not so much about the idea, it's about the execution of the idea. Stanley Kubrick's 'Fear and Desire' was a terrible screenplay, with people who couldn't act, yet his vision was so good that everyone noticed that talent of his, and that's how he made a second film. So...

Umm, no not at all. It's a way to get recognized and once you HAVE recognition and a positive reputation, you can make anything you want!

 

People get this whole thing backwards, they think experimenting and making what they want early on is the right thing to do. Yet in reality, the best thing to do is make commercially viable products, even if they're short. Bang out a few short films a year, good quality one's that have a positive message and tell a good story. Have a very marketable feature script in your back pocket that's VERY low budget and find some low-end investment to make it happen based on the success of your short films and the quality of filmmaker you are.

 

Freya is 110% right and if you wish to be a filmmaker (which is a career, not a side thing) what he says is filmmaking 101, it's a business. It's not about the creativity really, in the long run filmmaking is a business.

 

I can't help but wonder why anyone would even bother to pick up a camera to just try and make "commercial" films, whatever that means. Why not be honest to your own vision, and not care about what everyone else would want to see. I think that's why today there's a lot of insignificant films flooding the moviemaking landscape, if film was just a "business" then why not become a real business man, you certainly don't need a camera for that.

I think that people making art films often have another job. Sometimes they get work in academia.

 

There are lots of options for making different kind of films and financing them. One problem is people get all this stuff confused. If you are looking to make a commercial film then you need to think about marketing the film and genre and various other stuff. If you are making a more personal film then it might be best to forget all the fancy equipment and really keep all costs right down.

 

People seem to get caught up in a lot of stuff that doesn't matter that much.

 

Freya

What about Darren Aronofsky who made 'Pi' for 50k dollars, it was considered an odd little art film and it went on to win the Sundance grand prize. The only marketing he had were pamphlets of the movie and a trailer. Marketing a film for the masses would cost millions of dollars, so the best bet for any new filmmaker is to hope their film has a festival run and get noticed. A film is a film no matter what, there is no such thing as a "commercial" film, unless it's made by the Warner Brothers or Lionsgate. No one thought Juno or Beasts of the Southern Wild would exceed 100M at the box office, and certainly they weren't considered "commercial" films. The world has changed, anything is possible, it's all about having a unique story- something many filmmakers can't do, because they're caught up in some formula for success, which there is none. It's all a risk, no matter what you do.

I think "selling a film" should be the last thing on a filmmaker's mind, if the film has a unique story and great vision it will be found out no matter what. There's only a dozen of those movies out of the thousands and thousands that are made each year. Making any kind of film shouldn't feel like a waste of time, it takes great audacity to go out and do anything. A lot of great films have been made for under a million dollars like Sound of My Voice which Zal Batmanglij directed, Rachel Morrison shot the film with two Canon 7Ds, it's really the idea and the execution that counts. The film was picked up by Fox Searchlight once it played in various festivals. I guess my point is that just because you make a film, it doesn't mean that you will get anything back. Film doesn't owe us anything, so if someone's reason for making a film is purely for self-aggrandizement or monetary gain, they will most likely fail. Passion shows, and a film done will is a film made with passion and skill.

 

This is a trailer for 'Sound of My Voice' made for 300k by former AFI students - Zal Batmanglij, Rachel Morrison, and Brit Marling. It's great that originality is praised, we shouldn't become resentful because our own work wasn't recognized, because there are other filmmakers out there who are truly pouring their heart out.

 

We're going to make a trailer soon, so stay tuned.

 

I know it seems silly putting in three years of your life on a film financed by yourself and a friend using people who can't act.

 

But, you only live once. We did everything without compromise. Rightly or wrongly. At least I did it. Was like film school.

 

Plus point, it looks mint as you like. We hired Cooke S4's using My Arri-3.

 

Wanted to approach it Peter Jackson, Bad Taste style. Toil over something for years. And now we have something pretty demented and quite possibly un-sellable.

 

But, maybe not.

 

DCP is costing 500 quid. Not that much money, in the scheme of things. I don't want to do a private screening for family,friends, cast at the Prince Charles playing a MOV file off my laptop of some piece of poop 1080p export from FCPX..

 

There's nothing wrong with that, Lena Dunham used her own family in Tiny Furniture and they never acted in anything before. Let the film speak for itself, put it out there in film festivals and someone might just notice it.

In the coming year I was thinking of making films about cults and religion. I think short films should at least be a voice for something that is socially relevant, I wouldn't want to do any gimmicky stories that deal with nonsensical things, The medium of the short film should have a higher purpose in my own view. I think people try to masquerade behind beliefs to hide the fact that life is utterly meaningless. We like to pretend we are at the center of the universe, that there is a god that watches over us, and I tend to have very nihilistic views about that. Every major religion started as a cult, it's only through exponential growth where it becomes a religion, and it's interesting because nowadays terrorism masquerades behind religion and it is highly infectious like a virus. The problem today is extremist Muslim groups who attack people's sense of self and sense of reality. Brainwashing is nothing like it's presented in the Manchurian Candidate. Every person feels they are at the center of the universe and that they exist for a higher purpose. So I can imagine some little boy, who lives in destitution in Iraq, perhaps with resentful emotions toward Americans, for causing so much grief. And here comes an ISIS recruitment group, looking for holy warriors to die for a higher cause, and these recruiters use this resentment as a foundation to implant an idea. And it's the idea of giving people a higher purpose in life that drives them to commit suicidal acts of terror. So, this war against terror can't be fought with weapons, because the idea itself needs to be destroyed. And, I think that's near impossible, because extremist Muslims are growing exponentially, and it has become a pervasive issue all over the world, and it's tearing the world apart. It's just fascinating how an idea can infect an entire population. There's great stories surrounding smaller cults like Heaven's Gate. I know when people hear the word "cult", they think about Charles Manson, but that's not even close to what they truly are and how they prey on the vulnerable to grow and capitalize. I can't even tell you how cults have a major influence on Hollywood, something Kubrick tried to show us in Eyes Wide Shut, his daughter Vivian is actually a Scientologist.

 

But that's the driving force for my next slew of short films, it's deeply fascinating stuff, and something that hasn't been shown in movies too often.

So where digital technology has helped people tell their story for less money, it's not necessarily opened the doors for better products being made. You still need a decent amount of money to make it work.

 

That's true, the sad part about filmmaking is that it requires a budget, because without it the creativity will be stifled due to lack of resources and time. With writing you only need a pen and paper, with painting you need a few essential tools, but with movies, you have to truly hustle to get any project off the ground. But again, to reiterate, there have been some filmmakers who have gotten around that obstacle like Richard Linklater, his early films don't look cinematic, and his composition isn't exactly terrific, but his writing is so strong that people could forgive the subpar quality of the image. But he still had a crew working and he had made several other short films before that, so he was already a seasoned filmmaker.

 

The hard part for me is dealing with people, I can recall my first short film, I had my small canon t4i on a flimsy tripod that creaked, and the most awful thing was trying to level the tripod legs, it was so time consuming. I also had to change lenses, and the actors gave me looks, and I realized they didn't care the moment they showed up. So, I was alone, and I'm glad I at least finished it, and the audio guy which I paid money, quit on me and returned some of that money back. But, it's great to take a beating, because even then I managed to make a second short film, and I still want to make more. So, I know it's not a fluke, I really love this and, I guess the way love works is you have to take so much poop and still care at the end of the day. But I know deep inside that, those two short films I made is not the best I can do, it's the lack of technical expertise that hinders me and stifles my creativity. And I specifically wrote them to fit a non-budget scenario, because there's no way a no one with no prior experience in the business can raise any kind of money on Kickstarter or other crowd funding sites, you need legitimacy. And I was apathetic to the stuff I had written, I really considered them experiments, if I write something that I'm truly passionate about, I'd be willing to go through hell to make it happen and to make it work, which means I'd raise the money myself somehow. I'm still trying to figure out what short films mean to me, there's no way i could ever make a good short film if i don't get what this thing is. To do this you have to be self-motivated, and be incredibly tenacious and do everything within your power to make the film better, it's all about going beyond the distance to capture an image that is worthy of being captured.

I should add, very rarely there comes a time, when someone can make a short film with hardly any money. This is one of Ryan Coogler's short films, which is one of the ones I truly admire. It's one of his student films, and he worked with a pretty big crew, so having people who share the same passion and on top of that possess some technical expertise is the key to making something worthwhile. You can tell Ryan was deeply passionate about the story and it was rather tenderhearted, you can tell this is something he has personally struggled with, the prejudice of being treated by the way he looks. Also he captures the poor side of Oakland so well, the setting is defined, so it helps make the story much more real. It's really an impressive film, because we experience his fears and paranoia just by the shot selection, it's very Rear Window-like. So, this is proof that great composition, story structure, and performance can excel any high budget short film. It's certainly not easy to do, but I think it's just a matter of finding the right story.

 

Looking back at my failed filmmaking attempts, it's really so easy to see how intermediate/ professional filmmakers differ from a novice, and it's really so simple. Time and money make a huge difference. My second short film was an 8 page screenplay which i shot in 8 hours, and Orson Welles couldn't have said it better, the adage "what you see, is what you get" is profoundly true. A film requires time and attention, and rushed work will look like rushed work. Cinema has a certain prestige which all audiences have gotten used to, and a lot of them will usually nod off or just give up after three seconds, and that's because people have the attention span of a fruit fly, and so it's very difficult to produce something that can compete with other short films that have 10k dollar budgets. What's funny is that most of these high budget short films look like a Progressive TV commercial, the cinematics are quite exaggerated, with ultra fast cutting, you hardly have time to absorb what's going on. Usually i've seen that most Vimeo short films use gimmicks like silent films "guy dies, goes to heaven" "guy in walrus costume runs to ocean", "man digs hole, gets arrested, daughter finishes digging hole", it's hardly a well sough out narrative. Short films are certainly very different from feature film narratives, in this case, I think an episode of Hitchcock Presents is a short film, because story-wise, they are far more superior than what's being put out there.

 

 

just look at this short film from Vimeo, it's one of the top short films. The production value is high, but it's not a real story, this is a softcore porn movie, I personally would've made the white guy a Muslim and would've entitled the short 'Abdullah and the 72 Virgins', and make it more relevant. But really, nowadays contests like SXSW and AFI look at the visuals, they want eye candy- and it's difficult to produce if you can't raise the money.