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Clint Hulsey

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Everything posted by Clint Hulsey

  1. Obviously these are fantastic David. I especially liked the first two. Is there a reason you like to crop to 2:1 (other than personal preference obviously)? What lenses do you use on your Sonys and Nikon? Do you use any of the lenses they make for phones (particularly the iPhone)?
  2. [/url]Test Run May 22.00_05_38_06.Still125 by Clint Hulsey, on Flickr">http://Test Run May 22.00_05_38_06.Still125 by Clint Hulsey, on Flickr Test Run May 22.00_05_39_10.Still413 by Clint Hulsey, on Flickr
  3. Oh, I was sharing the share link and not the bbc code, oops: P1060709 by Clint Hulsey, on Flickr
  4. Had to make a flickr account (I couldn't get the photos to show up below so you'll have to follow the link), and I'm a non-professional with non-professional equipment, but: https://flic.kr/p/S97pR7 https://www.flickr.com/gp/152564260@N03/6PgVT0 https://www.flickr.com/gp/152564260@N03/qj0s74 https://www.flickr.com/gp/152564260@N03/0uK3ed
  5. I have The Town blu-ray and Affleck said they had a near four hour initial cut. I honestly think the extended cut of the movie is a little repetitive. There are a couple of good extra scenes, but I honestly prefer the regular cut (we didn't need the extra little expository dialogue for example). Maybe that is just primacy bias, and it is certainly just my opinion. I need to see Argo again. (Wasn't there some Red on Live By Night or am I wrong about that? IMDB suggests they used the Red Weapon Dragon, I don't know when it would have been)
  6. I think I am going to have to see this again. I saw this at an AMC in Dallas and for some reason the right third of the image was tinted red for the whole movie. I guess I didn't know that that was possible on a projector and I certainly don't know why it would happen or be allowed to happen. I'm a huge fan of the book (and even more of a fan of the previous book A Given Day) and I don't know that the movie really captured the darkness of it and pacing wise it felt a little rushed, as if the compression wasn't handled well in the screenplay or the editing like it was in The Town (I don't think it was as cutty as The Town though and I think in scene editing was better). Richardson is great of course, I loved the scene where Coughlin meets with the Cubans and the camera just circles around each character and moves around the room with them. Will have to see again before I can really comment on the look of it I guess.
  7. Saw this over the weekend at the Angelika in Dallas. I'm pretty sure that was the only place it was playing in Dallas and as far as I know, they only have 2k projectors so I am sure some of you in bigger cities saw a better image of it than I did so I won't really comment on how it looked. It's long, and the ending stretches out just like a novel (I haven't read the novel), but I think there is a good balance in the editing and the sparse score to really keep the movie even pacing wise, not going too fast or loud like it is Gangs or Wolf, but at least I didn't feel like it was too slow either (pacing and how a story is put together is so so subjective but at the same time seems to rule whether or not a movie is "liked"). However, while I enjoyed that aspect of the editing, and obviously Schoonmaker is one of the best, I didn't love the way the coverage was edited together. There were some mismatches and weirdness that seemed to hurt the performances a bit. I haven't seen the Japanese version and unfortunately, Netflix doesn't have a disc for it (when I had a Hulu subscription, they had it as part of the Criterion Collection section on it, maybe I'll have to get a subscription again for a month to watch it and some other movies). I did like the Japanese actors cast; seeing Tsukamoto, whose movies and style I really like, and Asano (who plays the Marlowe character in the Japanese mini-series of The Long Goodbye) was fun. The material itself is pretty heavy and your reaction to it may predicate on your religious and political views. As much as I feel like I need to see it again, some of the material doesn't necessarily encourage a second viewing, at least for me. Some shots I liked off the top of my head: a overhead shot while the priests are walking up (or maybe down) stairs while still in Portugal (much like Kundun, the actors speak English and pretend it's not, but at least many of the Japanese actors speak Japanese), the first person perspective shots of Garfield while in the cell, the Jesus painting inserts, especially the ones where Garfield is looking in the water and then sees something else in the reflection.
  8. I think it really depends on what kind of pacing and mood/effect you want, as well as how visible, you the interviewee, want to be. More charged documentaries like political documentaries often seem to have (I'm thinking like Moore or Josh Fox docs) the filmmaker more visible or interacting with the subject in the interviews, while more laid back ones, like director interviews etc, might flash the question over a black screen for a few seconds if the context is needed. For multiple interview docs that are cut together, usually similar questions are asked of all of them and just editing it together pretty much tells the viewer what the question generally was. I guess the same idea would work for a single interview, ask multiple questions and get answers, then cut the answers down and in a logical way to show transitions. The only thing you would have to worry about is that you have to either use some dissolves or have some jump cuts if you are doing a sitting down interview (which is why so many docs use walking shots or use multiple interviews that they can cut back and forth from). But yeah, unless they are just a prolific rambler, and you would want that rambling, you are going to need multiple questions.
  9. Dead link (at least for me) Don't know if this is what you are looking for: http://nofilmschool.com/2014/07/chart-has-everything-you-need-to-know-digital-cameras
  10. A bit of a peculiar film to place, "Blue Valentine" being full of sarcastic imagery (fireworks: end of the relationship! Future room: I want to have an abortion!), "...Pines" being a three part backwards film (most of the action early, the rest being about moral choices), "...Oceans" is about relationships breaking down and moral choices, but is told in an odd hurried slow. I haven't read the novel but the movie seemed to need to jam a whole lot of information and events, but needed to do it slowly because anything that smelled of being fast paced would be inappropriate. Problem between the two mediums that has been handled better before and can be discussed more elsewhere. If you are a fan of long dissolves and double exposure like I am, there is a lot to enjoy. Favorite shot/cut: a side look at Fassbender sitting down looking into a mirror in a way where there are two Fassbenders but not obvious glass that then has a shot of Vikander outside standing out in the beautiful New Zealand (apparently) scenery placed on it to where she is in the middle of the frame, flanked by two Fassbenders. Related to the novel idea above, the film had a rather large number of montages and multiple series of short shots of scenery mixed in with the character various reasons. How much you enjoy that is all according to personal taste, but one place I thought it worked particularly well was during the second (spoiler that I won't post) when the movie cuts around to random objects inside the house. The lighting stuff Adam already touched upon above more intelligently than I can. I will say there was a scene where I was like "obviously there is a big light shining through this door" before Fassbender opened the door and walked through it, showing there wasn't. The scene in the graveyard had some kind of weird blur to it, especially in the edges on some shots. When Fassbender is inside the lighthouse in the scene Adam discussed above, it's obviously rain tower type rain that doesn't match the shots of her out there (maybe I'm sensitive to it because I saw "A Tale of Love and Darkness" for the second time right before I saw "...Oceans" and "..Darkness" has a scene of super obvious rain towerness (to be fair, the "...Darkness" scene is somewhat surreal and metaphorical and the movie itself is one of my favorites of the year). On what Adam touched on above about the few random handheld scenes, my theory is that those were tossed in there (what shots they were early on didn't really look like it was "okay b camera, just go handheld and we'll use you whenever") so when there is the big handheld running following shot, it's not completely out of the rules of what they have been doing before then, so it is less jarring (small handheld shots to build up to a big handheld shot basically). But yes, mostly tracking type stuff, a really good one when the boathand sees the reward money sign. Fassbender is the best actor going right now in my opinion and Vikander is proving to be one of the best actresses, and of course Rachel Weiss is great. I personally don't think it's going to be a serious Oscar contender, but that's an opinion, and what do I know?
  11. I imagine, as well as the "realism" angle, they are also going for a chaotic sensibility, which the editing also accomplishes. Particularly in the CIA scenes where they are initially "hacked" and then the scene where they are tracking Bourne during the Greek riots, there is a lot of crazy camera movement inside the CIA office (?) itself, which is a break from the norm of steady closeups/steadicam walking shots in the office versus crazy cutting/handheld in the action section of the scene. I know the makers of the film explicitly said that they were going for "documentary" feel, but I think chaos and intentional disorientation was a big part of it as well.
  12. Turns out I was wrong about something above, as according to this article, it was not the Codex Action Cam that was used for the big car chase in the climax, but instead the small Blackmagic cameras: http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/blackmagic-micro-cinema-camera-jason-bourne/ I wonder what they used the CAC for then (or maybe they used a mixture of both in that scene, as this article reads almost like a commercial or something), but I personally thought those were the most impressive looking images in the movie.
  13. Thanks for the article Kevin, great stuff.
  14. Saw Jason Bourne today, and while I certainly don't post about every movie I see for various reasons (I don't feel like typing that much, I don't have anything interesting to add, most of the people on here are smarter than me, etc etc,), I noticed that there hasn't been a topic started on it yet, so I thought I'd mention a few things I noticed. The camera work is what stood out to me the most. It has been a while since I have seen Captain Phillips (probably when it first came out on DVD), but I do seem to remember it having a documentary feel (the scene at the end when Hanks is being treated by the doctors stands out in my mind). While no one will accuse a big action movie like Bourne of having a "documentary feel" (a cliche that probably isn't helpful anyway), the movie makes extreme use (or at least made to look like it did) of handheld cameras. While it doesn't quite go into "shaky cam" like you might see in "camera in universe" movies, the handheld nature of the movie is pretty intense, especially in the first half. Some scenes that stand out include Damon and Stiles early scene, especially when they are going through the Greek Parliament riot (I won't spoil anything, this was featured prominently in trailers (this Damon/Stiles scene is sort of weakened by some mediocre sound editing as the clearly ADR voices are unbelievably clear and audible in normal voice volume in the middle of a riot) and also (which is actually part of the same "scene") in the control room with TLJ and Vikander's character, as the camera just kind of spins around and looks at everything the viewer is supposed to see, including using some rough focus pulling (and even a fairly prominent focus "buzz" in Damon's initial scene). That doesn't mean that the movie isn't "cutty", as it is an American action movie (not a value statement, I just can't imagine the average shot length is more than four seconds, even with the moving camera shots) and Rouse's editing can leave you loopy (again, this by design, see Paycheck and Italian Job (I dislike how the couple of fist fight scenes were cut, as you couldn't see anything, like it was Batman Begins or something, but this may be because of the seeking of the PG-13 rating, which the film really presses the boundary of in terms of violence (just a thought that occurred to me know, there was never even the thought of sex/nudity or anything throughout the film, which considering the importance of two female characters in the movie, I think says something and may be a sign that we are heading toward a future of better female characters) though there are a couple of times, two prominently in the climax, where I feel like R violence would have made the shots/scenes much more powerful, but that is an entirely different discussion)), but walking shots usually didn't involve a stationary camera that is walked away from and then cut and we are not stationary in front of them and letting them walk to the camera (there is one hallway shot where Damon walks in direction of camera, which then turns to see him walk away for a few seconds before cutting to him by the door), and neither are they steadicam. Instead, they are handheld (especially one in the epilogue that sticks out in my mind that almost shakes the subject's entire back of head out of the frame for a step), which is really interesting. I don't remember any of Ackroyd's previous work (that I've seen, which is only 5 or 6 movies honestly) being like that, but I could be mistaken. More interesting to me was the use of zooms, especially considering how rare it is to see a zoom in a big Hollywood movie (I still laugh when I see a zoom in an 80s Woody Allen movie because I just don't notice them a lot in movies (I am sure someone on here can document a whole bunch of prominent zooms that I am missing). On a side note, I wonder if that is why some of the moving shots are so shaky, they are zoomed in!). There are a few zooms scattered throughout the film, including in the initial Damon scene that I mentioned earlier. More prominently, they are used in aerial shots, which the film is full of, not just in transitions (though nearly every scene transition seemed to have an aerial shot). I recall seeing a zoom in an aerial shot before, but I can't remember in what movie (and I am not talking about the Google map effect where it is sort of a fake visual effect zoom. I am talking about an actual zoom that just cuts the picture in half or so). Bourne uses zooms in aerial shots and even had a zoom out from in the air. Maybe there are plenty of examples that I am missing, but it seemed unique to me. On how the movie looked: I swear I saw the trailer for the movie five or six times (going to a theater every weekend or so), and it seemed like every time I checked, the IMDB technical specs added a new camera/format to the movie. In my initial viewing today, I could (of course, I have the bias of "knowing" there are different formats and therefore tried to look for them, so take it for what it is worth) see (some of the night shots looked much different/cleaner than other night scenes, for example) that the movie obviously used a couple different formats (excluding the flashback scenes, which were obviously shot/colored/etc differently), but I am not smart enough to pick them up or guess which is which (part of the reason being that the movie is such a blur as I mentioned earlier and it being a first time, I wanted to follow the plot, etc, but I'm also no kind of expert, therefore I can't always spot the difference. I know Mullen and Purcell (and probably others) could watch it and point out each shot which used each format right then, but also one of the points of doing all the post-production effects and DI is to disguise the obvious differences so they aren't distracting (unless you are Stone and you want to show the differences for philosophical, whatever, reasons)). However, I wasn't entirely pleased with how the movie looked. I'm sure all the different formats (it is funny how big action movies, B v. S being another example, have kind of gone full Malick/Stone in using so many different cameras and formats) made it difficult or impossible (the ARRIRAW being 2.8k for example) to make a 4k digital intermediate out of it, but I guess I don't understand the point of making a 120 million dollar movie and sending it to theaters in a lower res than cheaper movies that have 4k exports. One shot that particularly stood out to me as being a real negative was at the end of the climax where a character walks away from the camera out of the tunnel (?) and in what is a particularly important shot (a shot to show you that the danger is over, the action is really over, and is the kind of shot I usually think movies should end on instead of dragging us through an epilogue, but that is a different discussion) is instead all kinds of noisy and orange and just kind of mediocre looking. It was not the big shot it should have been. Honestly, I thought the best looking images came in the big car chase in the climax that I assume was shot using the Codex Action Cam (though I probably have some bias here, as I am a big fan of through the windshield shots, but the images themselves looked really clean, unlike the aerial scenes, which I thought probably looked the worst in the way the movement just kind of blurred everything and nothing really seemed in focus, a couple different ground level wide establishing shots were kind of like this as well). One positive thing I thought the film had going for it, and this is more of a framing/camera angle thing that probably should go above, was how it photographed faces. The movie used a lot of close ups, about the neck shots, sometimes even cropping the chin out, which seem really powerful in 2:35:1 (humorously, most of the trailers were in 1:85:1. Has anybody checked whether or not the usage of 2:35 has gone down or up in recent years on a whole?) when you are sitting in a good spot in a theater (I kind of buy into the Terry Gilliam idea that closeups in wide are more powerful than closeups in more narrow aspect ratios (or wide lenses versus non)). Obviously people have used closeups before, but there was something about the way the movie used them that I can't put quite into words (perhaps it is the juxtaposition of how Vikander looks when you put a camera right in her face versus TLJ, mixed in with the angry Damon face that he seems to pull off well, just communicating, as he does in much of the movie, so much so that he seems less powerful when he talks, with just his facial expression). Other notes: As you would expect, the acting is very good, though I can't say I am a big fan of Stiles honestly. I can't put my finger on why, but it generally seems like she acts angry when she isn't supposed to be, or is trying really hard to be angry and tough. Maybe that is unfair. Acting is hard. Over the past couple of years, I have really begun to appreciate TLJ, who I used to think was sort of one note that could be played two ways, but he has pretty remarkable range in my opinion (watch No Country, Bourne, Homesman, Sunset Limited, and Three Burials within a short time period and I think it would be hard to disagree). Vincent Cassell is sort of one note (Black Swan might be an exception), but is usually a pretty good note, Vikander is great (again, a lot is conveyed just by facial expressions and lingering camera, which has to be, as she is double acting for part of the movie), and I am not sure what to say about Damon. Also, Gregg Henry! I honestly don't remember the other Bourne movies (I haven't seen the Renner one and I don't think I've seen the last Damon one honestly) that well, except the first one, which I remember being really good and interesting. However, I do remember Powell's scores, which I liked. However, I am not a musical person at all, and I usually don't really notice soundtracks unless they are bad or amazing until second or third viewing or if I hear the soundtracks without the movie. I don't know why Powell wasn't the sole composer in this one, but the music really just seemed to accompany the action in my opinion. There are two gigantic and long action scenes and the orchestra really powers up for them. I'm not sure what to say other than that. Visual effects were good because I didn't notice them, special effects were what you would expect: things crashed, blew up, etc. Whether someone would like the movie would depend on taste obviously. It's not a transcending action movie, though I don't think it tried to be. It is a political thriller with some big action and modern relevance. Anyway, I've been a long time reader of this site, but a very infrequent poster because I don't feel like I have much to add to most of the discussions here. Hopefully this post doesn't show that I should have just kept my mouth shut.
  15. I think it got literally one showing in Dallas if I saw the theater times right this weekend.
  16. Saw this three times probably about a month ago (would have seen it more but it jumped out of even the art-house theaters pretty quickly, I was surprised by the wide-ish release it got, but I assume that was because of Amazon, as Refn's last two films have purposely been made to run as far away from a general audience target as possible), definitely one of my favorite films of the year so far, perhaps my favorite (it is between this and "Knight of Cups" most likely, though I am a big Refn fan anyway). Just visually, the surreal scenes, particularly the post-bathroom "party show" scene, the transformation fashion show scene where she sees her own reflection, and the chase scene (and even the first couple of photography sessions and the scene where she leans up against the wall to hear the horrible things going on next door before calling to get out of there) are just amazing. Strobe lighting in club scenes have been so overdone that they often seem kind of lazy pace changer scenes, but I have never seen anything like that post-bathroom "party show" scene. Of course, Refn loves his tinting, especially his reds, but there are some greens and blues in there (in his commentary for "Only God.." he says that most of the tinting and coloring was done in post, though they did do some light bulb changing, I wonder if that was the same for this and how much of the strobing, etc, was done on set). It always gives his films an intense feeling and I don't think you can watch a Refn movie (even the Pusher movies) and not know pretty quickly that Refn made it. It's unique, it is something you don't see very often in movies, which I think is why it is so powerful. I liked the way the scene where the main character and her not really boyfriend are standing out by their car on the hill with the moon out was lit. Especially when the shot was toward him, he was lit almost fully (but not in an extreme way) while the entire background was pitch black. The photography session with Fanning and the creepy photography guy (Harrington) had some extreme surreal whites and the flash to black and then back up again, especially with her in such an obviously vulnerable condition, were really forceful. Just a lot of great scenes and setups throughout I thought. Probably one of those things where Production Designer Elliott Hostetter ("Night Moves", "Spring Breakers", a dresser in some Malick work) should get a lot of credit. One thing I thought, non-visually, he did really well in "The Neon Demon" was his juxtaposition between the big music scenes (of course Cliff Martinez is fantastic) and the "dry" scenes. The best example occurs early on when the opening scene has the big music, no dialogue, and the disturbing images, followed immediately by a dialogue heavy scene with no music. I think this really helped pace the movie much better than say "Only God..." (which I absolutely loved) or "Valhalla Rising" (which I....liked less). There is plenty of dialogue, but there are plenty of scenes without any dialogue and instead filled with arresting images (much less staring intently at each other than "Drive" or "Only God...", which worked in those, but probably wouldn't have worked in this one). Story wise, it also broke the conventions of story telling and screenplays for reasons I won't go into because of spoilers, but it has an exceptionally long "epilogue", but not in the way that many mainstream movies go two scenes too long or "Batman v. Superman" dragged on after the movie was over, or the end of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. In just the oddest way, it worked and tied the movie together by making sure that not everything in the story ties together in a neat way, and not in the bad horror movie twist at the end way. Another note: I'm glad he used a female DOP, female writers, and a female cameraman for this movie. I think it really shows because this movie could have been exploitative, but it wasn't, in my opinion (though discussing this in detail would require a lot of spoilers I think). I really liked Braier's work in "The Rover", a very different slow and stylized film with occasional moments of extreme violence. I want to rewatch that film now.
  17. 5 favorites that I don't think I have seen on this thread that I can think of: Nosferatu (technically on David's big list) Detour Murder, My Sweet (one of my favorite scenes of all time) Alphaville Sunset Boulevard
  18. Looks great! I would definitely say that was a good trailer (without knowing what material you are working with). The only thing I would do if I were you (and you may not care and I wouldn't blame you so please don't take this as a critique) is work on the way the font looks in the opening (over the black it looked good, but that looked like a different font anyway). It doesn't look as good as your images, but hey, maybe that is just my opinion.
  19. Guy Ritchie does this in the opening little character introduction montage scene in RocknRolla (he says in the commentary that he thinks he set a record for whip pans in a row). My favorite movie, My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done, uses a couple as well (along with some overlapping audio and repetitive dialogue to make the flashbacks transition more naturally).
  20. I think the best thing about ShotOnWhat is the ability to sort by camera, lens, stock, etc, etc, something you can't do on IMDB. Agree about the design as it seems to be an abnormally large site and sometimes pulls down my cheap little internet connection (IMDB does so occasionally, but many times you just have to refresh)
  21. Not sure this is what you are looking for, but TV Tropes actually has good index pages on this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CameraTricks http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutToTheIndex http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ContinuityEditing http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Montages The different pages are good because they have some examples in them (a lot of the links seem to be dead however). Again, it is not really "professional", nor a book, so I don't know if it is what you are looking for. I learned a lot from reading those pages, but I'm an idiot, so...
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