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Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos

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Posts posted by Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos

  1. He is enamored, or perhaps paid by Sony to use and promote this campaign. Who knows. I do wish he used other tools, just because I'm intrigued as to how that would look.

     

    I actually like the look, because it's different. So many films today look so much alike. This is different. Of course, the problem is that even though he says he tries to make every one of the movies he works on look different, and invents a philosophy to back it up, they do look alike. What is with that backlight in hair?! It's everywhere.

     

    And another of my pet peeves when it comes to Storaro is that he says he respects the story and the vision of the director, but it never comes out that way to me. Instead, I think he actually pushes his own thing whatever he works on. I don't mind. I just mind saying otherwise.

     

    I wish he worked more. He is so unique, and I love a lot of what he does and did.

  2. I remember finding out about these “approximate equivalences”, to put it that way, around here.

    For example, here:

    http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=59454&view=findpost&p=386059

    Daniel Klockenkemper said that “Ektar 100 is probably the closest equivalent to 50D”.

    Anthony Schilling said the same here

    http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=73026&view=findpost&p=467070

    The new Ektar 100 still film was derived from Vison3 I believe, real nice colors, finest grain film ever


    I think I’ve also bumped onto certain mentions of Portra in this regard, and now I’m a bit surprised by Mark’s comments.

  3. Things have changed a lot over the years. Take a look at how The African Queen, a movie from 1951, was scripted:

    https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/reader-question-what-does-literary-style-mean-in-terms-of-writing-a-screenplay-44c39047306b

    (Here is the full screenplay: https://www.weeklyscript.com/African+Queen,%20The%20(1951).html.)

    I think no one writes like this anymore.

    Sure, there are writers who like camera direction, and it depends on the genre. I think the most I've seen of camera directions was in a script by J. Michael Straczynski for Babylon 5 and in certain animated TV series scripts (understandable given the way this is shot).

  4. What's with all the hate and irony? It obviously wasn't made for use in professional environment, except perhaps some experiments or something like that.

    The worst thing is when they try to compare the top Samsung phone and the iPhone and end the review with a line like this:

    Of course, Apple is going to be introducing the successor to the iPhone X in about six months, and with the camera improvements that come with every new upgrade, it's likely iPhones coming in 2018 will outshine the Galaxy S9+.

     

    :blink: So banal, pointless, unnecessary. I could add a few other qualifiers, but you get the picture.


    https://www.macrumors.com/2018/03/16/iphone-x-vs-galaxy-s9-camera/

     

    Thinking about this... People around here aren't really all that much interested in phones. Not a lot of threads about or mentions of them.

  5. Some of you are directors, and I was wondering what do you think about camera-angle directions, transitions, and similar devices in scripts?

     

    I have read countless times that it is a huge no-no, especially in spect scripts, but recently bumped onto a tip by John August and Craig Mazin, of Scriptnotes: 1. "Don't write directions in your screenplay" is bad advice.

     

    Do directors really mind? Or, in reality, actually like it, as Mazin and August say?

  6. 2. Storaro's penchant these days for CSI Miami saturation look as also seen in Cafe Society is artistic as opposed to realistic - opinions???

     

    Funny you should mention it, because just the other day, when I was checking if the Blu-ray is out (and it is), I stumbled upon some reviews. The critics are not amused:

     

    1. The Irish Times:

     

     

     

    If you thought Vittorio Storaro’s photography for Woody Allen’s Café Society was a bit on the hyperglycaemic side then you had best take a bucket of insulin to Wonder Wheel. Illuminated by the arcades of Coney Island in a post-war summer, most of the film exists in golden nostalgic twilight.

     

    2. The Guardian:

     

     

     

    Wonder Wheel has impressive production design; there is a painstaking and in some ways amazing artificiality in its colour and light. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro has taken the decision to suffuse almost every single one of his shots with a golden sunset glow. Bizarrely, there is a scene in a movie theatre in which two characters are whispering in the auditorium’s darkness and a slant of this golden light somehow falls across them. Is it sunset? Did someone open a curtain in there?

     

    The weirdest moment of all is when leading lady Kate Winslet is delivering a post-coital speech to her lover under the boardwalk with the tide out. It is supposed to be night. Sure enough, that golden glow breaks across Winslet’s face – and yet, bafflingly, this coppery flare fades out halfway through the speech leaving just the silvery shade of, presumably, the moon. What happened to the fictional sunset? Was there a problem with the lights? Not for the first time recently, I wondered if Allen had used the correct take.

     

    3. The Telegraph:

     

     

     

    And though he’s hired another world-class cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, to give this the gaudy hypercoloured glow of a pastichey Douglas Sirk melodrama, the film’s look is pushy and unattractive, as if it’s wearing too much lipstick.

  7. Panavision are probably stellar, but completely out of my range. Besides, I'm looking for a set of primes to buy, and Panavision doesn't sell lenses. And their daily rental values per lens is probably double than I would want to pay for a full set of 4 or 5 primes.

     

    This doesn't mean that I wouldn't consider renting for my next narrative project.

     

    Oops. Sorry. I presumed there would be problems of this kind with my suggestion, but I just so love the look and thought to throw them in here.

  8. Sure, at a stretch, but it's a jump cut too.

     

    Hmm. I was thinking about this just after I posted, and it perhaps might be said that it is a match jump cut (or jump match cut?). But then, I dunno. I’m not exactly sure. It does look like a simple match cut. Maybe it could probably be one of those Creative Combinations Cuts and Transitions 101 speaks about above after around 9:04.

     

     

    That was obviously shot as one or two long takes. Cutting it like that evokes urgency, discomfort, whatever. The editor may get his cue from the script but I don't know if it would have editing instructions in it.
    It doesn't apply to your example, but whereas years ago there would have been dissolves, nowadays audiences are editorially literate enough to accept a certain amount of jump-cutting to denote passage of time in a scene.
  9. Hmm, yes. Perhaps then, since a jump cut usually seems to imply no change in framing (although that Good example video does include changes), perhaps it can be QUICK TIME CUTS or QUICK CUTS (my least favourite option, I don’t know why; I guess because it doesn’t seem to imply this sort of urgency as in that scene from the Turkish series above or something like that.). I was thinking perhaps a screenwriter might include a note in the description that each new dialogue block from the same character has a jump cut before it. But then again, a jump cut might happen between lines from different characters. Which makes me think I might then put CUT in the description or, perhaps better, though using more space and looking very technic-y, put that CUT where the CUT usually shoud be, flushed right, where transitions go.

  10. The more I think about it, and google this, it seems like a jump cut. A jump cut seems to be a cut between two “events” happening at the same spot, location, with a few seconds snipped between them. Here, even with the language barrier, I kind of think it is evident that there are jumps between his lines/yelling. I got the impression that a jump cut usually doesn’t include a change in framing, which in this scene, obviously, changes. So perhaps that can be an issue. I don’t really see a way for this to be thought up by the editor without it being visible in the script. But that might just be me. Or, in any case, perhaps I exactly do want to specify it to be shot in this way for some specific and very good reason.

     

    Here is an example of a few jump cuts.

     

  11. Would the lenses Darius Khondji shot Magic in the Moonlight be seen as lenses with character?

     

    They are:

     

    Panavision Primo, C-, D- and E-Series Lenses

     

    I don’t know which series in particular produced that lovely (semi-)circular background blur. Or maybe they all did.

  12. Some time ago I came upon this scene from a Turkish soap opera Küzey Güney.

     

     

    Is this a SERIES OF JUMP CUTS and how would you shape it in a screenplay?

    Might it perhaps go something like this? (The scene is imaginary, because Küzey wishes he could snap on Simay like this.)
    BEGIN IMAGINARY SEQUENCE:
    INT. KÜZEY’S HOUSE/ENTRANCE HALL – NIGHT
    (A SERIES OF) JUMP CUTS…
    And then every time a cut happens, I start a new dialogue sequence or describe a reaction (perhaps a reaction with a – in front of the description, to denote that it’s a separate cut), include a BACK TO SCENE for reality sequences, and end it all with END IMAGINARY SEQUENCE. With a full stop there.

    How would you do it?

  13. I usually go to Postimage.org, sometimes change expiration settings, click on Choose images, find them on my drive, pick one or several, then copy the direct links, and paste them into the URL field that pops up once you click on the icon with an image of the tree above the place you type your post, or sometimes just simply type the IMG tags around the image manually.

  14. Fuji Velvia 50 for fashion photography? How interesting. :) I don't think I've ever came across that use.

     

    Whenever I'm in the mood to soak in the warm and vibrant photography made with Velvia, I drop by Ken Rockwell's page on the stock

     

    http://www.kenrockwell.com/fuji/velvia-50.htm

     

    He really adores it. (And yes, I know: Ken is a controversial figure in the photography world, to put it like that.)

     

    I wish VSCO made that emulation as a preset in their app for VSCO X subscribers. I'm hoping it will happen soon. Too many of their filters are too desaturated, joyless, and cold. I need something sparkly and colourful.

  15. I always save these in PNG format and preferably from a Blu-ray source using a variety of ways, most frequently the VLC one Samuel mentioned above. I also never use the attachment feature of the IP.Board, instead opting to upload an image to one of the many image-upload websites, usually Postimage.org. I don't think Postimage.org compresses files, but I haven't checked.

     

    David, which portable Blu-ray player do you use?

  16. ... but with him it seemed to become a signature style, to be used regardless of subject matter.

     

    Can't the same be sait of, say, Storaro, who from film to film has certain ways of lighting that appear regardless of the period the film is set in, the subject, the atmosphere, or anything like that?

     

    And I presume he's not the only one.

  17. Yeah, it did seem silly to delay a purchase because of this. I just had a small bypassing thought "But what if the new, 2018, chips get released without this flaw? Perhaps I could wait a little more. I'm not in a hurry." They'd probably come with another flaw, so it's quite unhelpful to think about these things.

     

    I just might send an e-mail to HP to see what they have to say.

     

    In the meantime, if someone knows of a better laptop, do tell. :D

  18. I had this impression, and now it looks like a lot more than that, for some time now that the apps for iOS are either better or exist exclusively for it. I thought, at least in a case of one particular app, that somehow Apple secretly incentivizes that app's developers to always make it better for Apple's devices and that they might have some kind of a secret contract that slows down Android development in favour of iOS.


    Then a few days ago I typed into Google "why are apps better for ios". This popped up in one of the results (it's from 2015):



    For my target demographic and audience, the people who have iPhones are far more desirable than their peers with Android phones. When talking with teens and 20 year olds, having a big, gold iPhone 6 Plus is like carrying a Prada bag or driving a BMW. It signifies a social status, a place at the top of their social circle. You buy an iPhone because you want the best.



    Young people I talk to with Android phones have them because it was cheap, or free, and their goal is to buy an iPhone a year or two from now when they have the money. They settled with an Android phone and now they’re settling with clunky implementations of the apps their friends had before them on their iPhones. I’m building for iOS because I want to target users with taste and buying power.


    :lol: at the Prada bag and BMW comments! Not that it's not true. :ph34r: Not much change in the recent few years, although I could say an iPhone in this sense is not what it once was. Also, on the other hand, the competitors just can't take this crown from Apple, no matter what they do, it seems.


    I think that another result even said that Google's own apps are better for iOS. :lol: :blink: :ph34r:


    In that iMac Pro thread I saw that Android vs. iOS popped up briefly.


    So I was wondering what are your thoughts and experinces, likes and dislikes, when it comes to both of these operating systems and their possibilities.


    Why do you prefer the one you use?

  19. I know that manufacturers have in recent weeks released software patches to fix these things up, or are about to, but if I understood correctly, there still remains some sort of a chance of something going wrong by someone using these flaws, since they are at a hardware level.

     

    Has someone followed this? If you have, do you perhaps know if the next generation of chips will have this fixed and how much might the performance of these chips be affected? I guess we won't know until some testing is done?

     

    I was considering buying this laptop

     

    http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-envy-laptop-17t-best-value-2rx66av-1

     

    but choosing the Performance set-up in Recommended Configurations, and even then changing some small bits in components and software.

     

    Perhaps there's something better in the same class? This just happened to be a touch-screen laptop, something I don't care much about. I only saw it some time after bumping onto this computer.

     

    Is now a time as any other when considering buying a new computer? Or is it better to wait a little?

  20.  

    From experience the effect of the gold reflector is quite pronounced.

     

     

     

    The gold can be a bit too much on caucasian skin, but works really nicely with darker skin tones.

     

    Gold indeed does seem like a bit to much in that Spanish panel above. treasurechest.giftreasuresmile1.gif

     

    I’d really like to know what they used it for for The Last Knight. I’m a bit intrigued. :) It’s not a big frame, it seems to me.

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