Posts Tagged: cinematography

What is Bayhem?

An informative video by Tony Zhou that outlines the techniques director Michael Bay resorts to again and again throughout his filmography. As Zhou illustrates, it’s distinctive, at times visually impressive, but overblown and overused to the point of exhaustion for the audience.

Five great shots from Pulp Fiction in honor of its 20th anniversary

We’re technically two months past the exact anniversary, but it’s worth a look back at a few images from what remains a groundbreaking, highly influential film.

Cineworks: Michael Mann

A four minute super cut of scenes from Michael Mann movies? Count me in.

Edgar Wright explores the art of close-ups

David Chen, the host of the Slashfilmcast, has been venturing lately into video essays, especially for year end recaps from the best in film. They’ve been fairly well done, but this compilation of director Edgar Wright’s (Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) closeup work is standout. Pay attention to the discussion between Chen and Wright as the shots play out; I learned a lot.

Gravity: vfx that’s anything but down to earth

There’s been many, many articles written since Gravity debuted on the cinematography and CGI involved in its production. But this extended feature over at FXGuide, with six videos and plenty of photographs, goes into more depth than I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m still amazed on how much they pulled off successfully in this film.

Gliding over all: the cinematography of Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad may have been gone for a few weeks now, but stumbling on this wonderful video essay really drives home how much DP Michael Slovis had influence over the show’s look. It’s illuminating to see a video essay with the original soundtrack removed like we see here; you’re left with nothing but the images and your memories of the original episodes.

Bringing Breaking Bad into focus

Great breakdown of the cinematography basics behind Breaking Bad over at The A.V. Club, as dissected by Scott Kaufman (expect spoilers through Season 5 part 1 in the full article):

Breaking Bad relies more heavily than most shows on what are called “tight singles,” or shots in which a single character occupies the majority of the frame in shallow focus. The background is usually out of focus because it’s unimportant—if you’re watching a show set in a coffee shop, you don’t need the background in focus to remember where the characters are—but in Breaking Bad, the relationship between the planes of focus (foreground, midground, background) typically matters.

The history of aspect ratio

I thought I had the basics of aspect ratio down cold, but this video by filmmakeriq.com taught me some new material (e.g. why widescreen TVs settled on 16:9 as the HD standard). It’s also very well edited with solid narration and starts simple enough that newbies won’t have trouble following along.

The view

Very well edited “back to the camera shot” montage, covering everything from Sunshine to Gone With the Wind.

Dark Forces: the story of shooting Zero Dark Thirty

This post over at Definition Magazine admittedly gets pretty technical, wading into a lot of hard core cinematography tools and cameras that I didn’t fully understand. Nevertheless, if you’re into film it’s a revealing read talking about shooting a film on the ground in often harsh, hostile conditions. Make sure you make it to the end where Zero Dark Thirty DP Greig Fraser talks about setting up a lab secretly in a Jordanian hotel. Crazy stuff; huge drives, a 42″ calibrated monitor and a Mac Pro all running through the night as principal photography was conducted during the day.