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Alive in Joburg: The short film that inspired District 9

via youtube.com

The actor Sharlto Copley (Wikus in District 9) makes a great appearance in here too. You can absolutely see how the concept built out in this short 6:30 piece was just born to be created into something bigger.

There's a political message in here too. The footage of South African locals talking about aliens was actually footage of director Neill Blomkamp interviewing Soweto residents about other Zimbabwean and Nigerian migrants.

Kind of an obvious allegory going on here-- aliens being a stand in for the 'other,' even among South Africans who suffered under apartheid.

District 9 was mind blowingly awesome. Can you even believe this is Neill Blomkamp's first feature film? I'm blown away, impressed and inspired.

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Filed under  //  filmmaking   short film  
Comments (3)
Posted 3 months ago

Filmmaking advice writ large: Tarantino's advice at ComicCon applies to all creative endeavor

via mashable.com

I love these kinds of questions posed towards filmmakers and media creators of all kinds. Like Ira Glass on creativity.

Great auteurs answer these questions about specific industries but they're broadly applicable to everything, including my favorite topic, creating Internet startups.

There's a certain auteur aspect to it that translates precisely. It's a business, no doubt about it. But you have to appeal to people, even change people's lives -- the way they think and act. You have to understand and communicate visually, spatially and emotionally with your audience.

There's a technical element, substitute filmmaking and editing and cinematography for software engineering, scaling, and tech architecture / ops.

How you start is the same. You create. You create until your fingers bleed, and then you create some more. Iterate and don't worry about creating crap, because at the end of it, you'll have made a movie. Or a site. Or a story. Whatever it is.

The final part spoke to me the most. Yes, it's harder than ever to become a filmmaker or an Internet entrepreneur, or an author-- a creator of any kind. There is so much competition. But that competition sucks so fucking bad, that it will be plain as day when you've created something good.

It can be done. Today. Now. Go.

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Filed under  //  creativity   filmmaking   movies   product design   short film   startups  
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Posted 4 months ago

Super 8 is the lomophotography/polaroid kitch of video

via posterous.com

Really cool video by Daniel Carbone, so retro, but you can tell its totally modern because early in the shot there's a Nissan Altima.

Makes me want to run out and play with a Super 8. Can you imagine the possibilities of Super 8 + nonlinear editing?

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Filed under  //  filmmaking   short film  
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Posted 5 months ago

Surprising side-by-side documentary footage by a $169 Flip Mino vs. $3500 Canon XH-A1

via kirkmastin.blogspot.com

Wow, Kirk Mastin taped a Flip video camera to a $3,500 Canon XH-A1 + pro mic, and filmed a mini-short with both of them filming identical footage. He then runs through it one after another, and you can barely tell the difference. The main difference actually is the sound quality, and even that isn't significant at all.

This is apparently the video blog entry that caused the NYTimes to pick up the Flip camera. Anyway, Kirk Mastin, your blog rocks.

And also I just finally ordered a Flip Mino HD myself. I'm absolutely inspired by the storytelling possibilities.

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Filed under  //  filmmaking   short film  
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Posted 7 months ago

Franklyn - Cool looking trailer for a long-awaited indie action/sci-fi film


Preest is a masked vigilante detective, searching for his nemesis on the streets of Meanwhile City, a monolithic fantasy metropolis ruthlessly governed by faith and religious fervor. Esser is a broken man, searching for his wayward son amongst the rough streets of London's homeless. Milo is a heartbroken thirty-something desperately trying to find a way back to the purity of first love. Emilia is a beautiful art student; her suicidal art projects are becoming increasingly more complex and deadly.

Filmed for $8.6 million, this UK film is still looking for a US distribution deal. But it's looking like my kind of movie, in the vein of Bladerunner, Dark City and The Matrix.  OK, How's this for cool -- the name of the city in the film is called Meanwhile City.

The trailer looks great. Hope it gets picked up in the States and we get to see it in theaters here.

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Filed under  //  filmmaking   movies   pop culture  
Comments (7)
Posted 10 months ago

The Era of HD Short Films is here... Canon 5D Mark II / Nikon D90 = new revolution in super high quality optics + high definition

     
Click here to download:
The_Era_of_HD_Short_Films_is_h.zip (187 KB)

These are real video frame captures from a short film created using the Canon 5D Mark II and top-of-the-line L-lenses. Luckily I already own a bunch of the L lenses already... so for the first time, we'll be able to do full HD footage using top-of-the-line still camera optics at a cost-quality level heretofore never seen before.

Imagine: Naturally lit wide aperture full motion HD video. Drop a 35mm f/1.4 on this camera, and be able to record what a candlelit dinner looks like and feels like -- using actual candle light.

Laforet is a photographer; he has no professional film experience and had never used the 5D Mark II before, yet was able to storyboard, cast, shoot and edit the clip in just two days, with less than 12 hours notice. In particular he noted that dumping the MPEG-4 video takes way less time than it would with an actual HD camera. The only issue that would stop a person from shooting a TV pilot solely with this camera is sound matching, he says. If that's covered, you're gold.

via Gizmodo

Wow, I can't wait... as if I didn't have enough to do already. If I got a Red One, I would have gotten the Canon EOS lens adapter anyway... now I don't even need to shell out for a different camera system.

This is a quantum leap forward... so much so, that I can't wait to see the impact on online publishing sites, like ours right here. It's a very exciting time to be helping people post all their stuff online.

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Filed under  //  filmmaking  
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Posted 1 year ago

JJ Abrams TED talk: The Mystery Box = Infinite Possibility, and you have a voice now too.

Favorite quote: "The creation of stuff is democritized... Go make your movie. There's nothing stopping you from going out there and getting the technology. You can lease, rent, buy stuff off the shelf just as good as the stuff that's used by the [pros]."

There's something to this that I think is incredibly powerful. You see super high-quality RED cameras on the scene (see awesome posterous user MrVix), and Final Cut Pro (Sachin used to work on it!) and the technology gets cheaper and better. And that means that there should be a far greater diversity in voices, especially in movies.

And a lot more dreams being realized... and hopefully a lot more mystery boxes too.

Hat tip Brad

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Filed under  //  filmmaking  
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Posted 1 year ago