Cinematographer Danny Cohen on Room & The Danish Girl
We talk to Danny Cohen, the cinematographer of two of the year’s most talked about films- Room and The Danish Girl– about how a crazy idea to actually shoot in a very small room paid off, why he and director Tom Hooper work so well together and why he’d love to tackle sci-fi.
Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson as Jack and Ma in Room.
If You Can See The Hateful Eight in 70mm, You Should
Back in the day, roughly between 1952 and 1974, select films were given the "roadshow" treatment. This meant that in cities like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, film audiences would go see a film that would include programs, an intermission, and even musical interludes. For the really big films like Gone With the Wind, El Cid, and Ben Hur, the films were a true event, with people dressing up for their big night at the theater,
Cinematograopher Goes Dark With The 33 Miner Drama
Cinematographer Checco Varese understands terror. After all, he shot horror maestro Guillermo del Toro's vampire series The Strain and in his earlier years, the Peruvian-born director of photography filmed war zone documentaries. But nothing prepared Varese for the pitch-black adventures in underground filming he encountered while making miner drama The 33. Inspired by the 2010 ordeal in which 33 Chilean miners spent 69 days trapped 2,600 feet beneath the earth,
The Great ‘Chivo’ Reveals Photos From Set of The Revenant
Long before we interviewed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, known to his friends and collaborators as Chivo, we've been huge fans of his work. The two time Oscar winner (and five time nominee) has put his indelible stamp on some of the most visually ambitious films of the last twenty years. While he's won Oscars the last two years for Birdman and Gravity (the film we interviewed him about),
Third Annual Middleburg Film Festival Draws Deep Roster of Talent
In it's third year, the Middleburg Film Festival is becoming a vibrant late festival season stop for filmmakers and film enthusiasts alike. Middleburg is in Virginia's horse country, and its beauty can hardly be improved upon in late October, but as much as a draw as the setting is, the festival itself, created by BET co-founder and Sundance Institute member Sheila Johnson and ably directed by Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker Susan Koch, is drawing people for it's discerning slate and roster of talent.
Watch How Filmmakers Use Color to Elicit Specific Emotions
Filmmakers are expert emotional manipulators. Nearly every decision made during the production of a film, from wardrobe to lighting to set design, is done to convey, and manipulate, emotions. The same is true during post production, when editors, sound designers and color graders shape the film into it’s final, and hopefully most moving, iteration.
When it comes to color grading, it’s probably the least understood and most subtlety effective means of making an audience feel a certain way.
The Legendary Roger Deakins: A Director’s Cinematographer
In 1995, cinematographer Roger Deakins — a man who had been working in the business for two decades — earned his first Oscar nomination for his work on the beloved Frank Darabont drama, The Shawshank Redemption. Now, twenty years later, Deakins has established himself as one of the most well-known and respected cinematographers in the world.
In the past two decades, he has been nominated for twelve Academy Awards for films as varied as Fargo,
Sicario Reunites Director Denis Villeneuve & Cinematographer Roger Deakins
In Sicario, director Denis Villenueve and cinematographer Roger Deakins have re-teamed after their successful first collaboration on Prisoners (2013). In that film, Villeneuve extended his explorations of morality and violence seen in his earlier Canadian films, but integrated them into conventions of the Hollywood child kidnapping sub-genre. The result was a disturbing and frightening movie that gave equal focus to the semi-abstract, atmospheric environment as it did to the stand out performances of its cast.
Steadicam Inventor Garrett Brown to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award
In July of 2014, we ran a two-part interview with Steadicam® inventor Garrett Brown. It was just announced that Brown will receive the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award during the Television Academy’s 67th Engineering Emmy Awards. There are few individuals who have made a greater impact on film and TV that Brown. Brown was awarded an Oscar for Technical Achievement in 1978 for his invention.
Brown, a Philadelphia-based cinematographer, introduced the Steadicam in the early 1970s, a device that supports a handheld camera that allows the operator to film a subject in motion without the shaking that typically comes with handheld shots.
Watch a Brutal Bear Attack inThe Revenant’s New Trailer
At 50 seconds into The Revenant's new trailer, you see the moment that changes everything for trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio). Glass and his fellow trappers, including John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), are moving through the forest when a huge grizzly attacks, crashing atop Glass. The moment is thrilling, terrifying, and very realistic. Grievously wounded and therefore a burden, Fitzgerald decides to bury Glass alive rather than care for him until he's healed.
New Photos of Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy in The Revenant
As we wrote back in July, there is just a ton of reasons to be very, very excited for The Revenant. The film's director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki (we've interviewed both, you can read our chat with Iñárritu here, and and Lubezki here), both took home Academy Awards last year for their work on Birdman (which also won Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay).
Cinematographer Bradford Young on Pawn Sacrifice
Bradford Young is one of the brightest young cinematographers working today. He’s won the Sundance Film Festival’s Best Cinematography award three times (for Pariah, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Mother of George). He helped turn director Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014) into the powerful, heartbreaking work it was. Two sequences come to mind when considering what Young pulled off in Selma: The hideous murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson,
Hollywood vs the Elements: Top 5 Challenges of Shooting Everest
In 1996 two expeditions set out in an attempt to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, when they were hit with a deadly blizzard. Everest tells the story of their bid for survival in some of the harshest conditions nature has to offer. Here are some of the difficulties the cast and crew of Everest faced in an attempt to authentically recreate the ordeal:
- Lugging equipment up mountains
Leonardo DiCaprio & Tom Hardy in Epic The Revenant Trailer
Fresh off Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Cinematographer, Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki are back with The Revenant, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy as two seriously bearded and bedraggled 19th century frontiersmen.
DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a man on a revenge mission after being left for dead following a bear attack (glimpsed in the trailer),
Behind the Controls With Chappie Drone Operator John Gore
It’s a good time to be a drone operator. As the basic devices have gotten cheaper and the more expensive ones more sophisticated, drones have proliferated, not just in the film industry but for applications like mining, surveying and search and rescue.
John Gore, a South Africa-based drone operator who has worked on nine features to date, including Chappie, The Last Face and Seal Team 8,
Lies, Illusions & Murder: A Look at True Story
Journalist Michael Finkel had a promising career ahead of him when he started at the New York Times Magazine, although his future was soon shattered by his own mistakes. Finkel was caught fabricating elements of his feature story “Is Youssouf Malé a Slave?” which looked at the life of the young, titular laborer on a cocoa plantation on the Ivory Coast. Although Malé was a real boy, it was revealed that Finkel had create the version you meet in the article from a composite of several boys he met,
Berlinale 2015: A Q&A With The Filmmakers & Star of Koza
A bleak, beautiful entry from Slovakia in the year’s Berlinale, Koza starts off slow and static and stays that way, even as worlds heap themselves on the titular main character. An uncommon blend of reality and fiction, the film stars the real life Koza, birth name Peter Baláž, more or less as himself. The Roma boxer competed in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic games for Slovakia, returned home, and over the ensuing years, slipped back into the chronic poverty that’s typical of what many Roma face across Europe.
Project Almanac Shoots Found Footage With Cinematographer Matthew Lloyd
As director Dean Israelite spun Matthew Lloyd a tale about kids creating a time machine, showing him detailed storyboard panels with picture of teens with a secret tools that looks liked a dark graphic novel, Lloyd made a decision. He would be the cinematographer for the Paramount feature Project Almanac.
The next challenge was figure out how to make the film’s found footage style work. The duo decided to split the difference,
2014 in Review: DP Robert Yeoman on The Grand Budapest Hotel
When people think of Wes Anderson’s films, often the first thing that comes to mind is their singular look. Here is a director with a signature style, whose films look like nobody else’s. As the year draws to a close, we’re looking back on some of our favorite films and chatting with the people who helped bring them to life. Today, that means cinematographer Bob Yeoman, the man who has helped Anderson achieve his look since Anderson’s breakout 1996 debut,
Building the Sets of Middle-Earth for The Battle of the Five Armies
Peter Jackson and his crew shot The Hobbit trilogy concurrently over 266 days (the same total number of days it took to shoot The Lord of the Rings trilogy). Another 10 weeks was needed for cast and crew for pickup shooting for The Battle of the Five Armies on the performance capture stage, which ends the Middle-earth saga that Jackson and his team have been working on since last century.
