- Amélie: Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC
- Children of Men: Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
- Saving Private Ryan: Janusz Kaminski
- There Will Be Blood: Robert Elswit, ASC
- No Country for Old Men: Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC
- Fight Club: Jeff Cronenweth, ASC
- The Dark Knight: Wally Pfister, ASC
- Road to Perdition: Conrad L. Hall, ASC
- Cidade de Deus (City of God): César Charlone, ABC
- American Beauty: Conrad L. Hall, ASC
Click link to see the whole top 50: The American Society of Cinematographers names Amélie Best-Shot Film From 1998-2008 « the diary of a film awards fanatic
Roger Ebert posted the following to his Twitter account today:
The Tweet is a bit melodramatic, I went to the link he posted and it seems Kodak is not planning to drop production of all Black & White film stock, rather just the low speed Plus X Negative and Reversal in all gauges (35mm, 16mm and Super 8). Either way this is very sad news to me as Plus X is the first film stock I ever used and essentially the film with which I learned how to become a filmmaker.
When I began my 2nd year of film school at NYU I was taught on the 1st day how to load a dummy reel of 16mm reversal film into an Arri S 16mm MOS camera.
It took me over and hour to figure out how to load the fucker correctly. We stood around the basement of Tisch in groups of 4 with these cameras in our laps desperately and delicately slipping the film through the spools and around the little track and registration pin.
The second thing we were given was a voucher for a couple 400 foot spools of B&W reversal film. We were told we could either shoot Plus X or Tri X. Plus X was ‘good for outdoors and bright sunny days’ and Tri X was ‘good for everything else. Naturally Plus X had the finer grain and produced the more beautiful image but yet required more light. I chose the Plus X.
I shot a number of short films on Plus X, some of which are still circulating YouTube. This short film called The Vitamin C Theory became the official video for Dr. Octagon’s “Blue Flowers (Automator Remix) and somehow went viral years before YouTube even existed. Coincidentally it stars Ben Rekhi, the producer of my first feature Bomb the System.
One of the great things about the Arri S was that it shot slow motion. You literally turned a crank on the side to make the film run through the camera faster and the image came out slower (more frames per second = slower playback). Needless to say I loved the slow motion feature and I think it appeared in every one of my films. The drawback of the Arri S was it wasn’t a crystal sync camera so you had to shoot MOS. That made it ideal for music videos and silent films.
After shooting the film I took it down to a little hole in the wall place on 1st street between 1st and 2nd avenues called Pac Lab to have it processed. They’d turn it around in a couple days and I’d rush back to NYU to project it and see how it looked. There was a real nervous anticipation back then that no longer exists in the world of HD. Now when I shoot I can watch back immediately. Which I admit has its benefits. I remember the very first day shooting The Carter I went back into Lil Wayne’s bus and showed him all the best clips I’d shot that day. He was impressed and that immediately earned his trust.
After developing the Plus-X reversal (we weren’t allowed to shoot negative until halfway through the semester) I’d go into an edit room and cut the film on a Steenbeck flatbed film editing suite. And when I say I’d ‘cut the film’ I literally mean cutting with a razor blade and taping the edits together (you can see some of my splices in the short film above). The year I graduated NYU they sold all their Steenbecks and replaced every editing suite with an AVID non-linear computer editing system. Now I wonder if they’ve moved on entirely to Final Cut Pro. I work exclusively in Final Cut Pro now but I’m immensely grateful that I got a chance to learn how to cut on a Steenbeck, chopping Plus X film up with a razor and knowing (because it was reversal and not negative) I only got one chance. Every cut was permanent.
Two years later I shot one half of the split screen of my MF DOOM video for “Dead Bent” on Plus X 16mm Negative film. The image quality is cleaner and crisper than the reversal. 16mm reversal and negative produce beautiful and mysterious images, especially when projected. It sucks to see them go.
The argument is there’s no need for these film stocks anymore. You can create Black & White images in Final Cut Pro in 2 seconds. You can even do it on your iPhone with a free app. But every artist knows that’s bullshit. Artists rely on every tool at their disposal, no matter how archaic or outdated. It’s the process, not the outcome that matters most. There’s an incredible amount to be learned from shooting Black & White film. And for that reason alone Kodak should continue to sell B&W forever, at the very least in small quantities to artists and experimental filmmakers.
Important film stock discussion!
Christopher Doyle talking about his creative process with BBC (with his shirt off). He makes his intuition and spontaneity seem totally rational.
Talking Pictures has a great entry on the passing of famed set photographer Bob Willoughby.
A few weeks back, it was announced that Paul Thomas Anderson was hard at work on his next project, The Master, a film about an intellectual (potentially Philip Seymour Hoffman) who creates his own faith based organization in the 1950s. Obviously, great news for us, those who love and appreciate great movies, but then I start to think about one specific aspect. I started to run Anderson’s filmography through my head and I started to notice some interesting things.
Nearly all of Anderson depicts Southern California during a specific decade/era. Go with me for a minute:
- 1997’s Boogie Nights showcases the Valley from the late 1970s through the mid 1980s.
- 1999’s Magnolia and 2002’s Punch Drunk Love is about present day/late 90s life in Southern California
- 2007’s There Will Be Blood broadly covers Southern California from 1902 to 1927
- Let’s roughly estimate The Master will come out in late 2010 or winter 2011 and that will take place potentially in the 50s.
Which leaves out the 30s, 40s, 60s and well, anything beyond 2010. Now, the question I’m asking or at least wondering out loudly, will PT Anderson do a film set in Southern California covering every decade since the 1900s?
(via bonerparty & atencio)
Alie & Georgia Present: The Bloody Bacon & Cheese
Joins hosts Alie Ward and Georgia Hardstark as they take you on a comfort food-fueled journey of alcoholic delight and make their newest libation creation: The Bloody Bacon & Cheese. Combining the best parts of tomato soup with grilled cheese & bacon, the BBC is sure to fill you with warmth and good cheer, the perfect antidote to holiday headaches.
Created, hosted, & written by Alie Ward & Georgia Hardstark
Directed, shot, & edited by Peter Atencio
Produced by Alie, Georgia, and Peter
Shameless self-promotion of the day (I wouldn’t show it to you if I wasn’t a little proud of it).
This starts out slow, but damn what a shot. No pun intended.
My current favorite up & coming director to watch out for is Adam Bhala Lough. At just 30 years of age, he’s probably best known for the Lil’ Wayne doc The Carter, but he also directed the excellent and overlooked Weapons and Bomb The System. Weapons in particular has had a very troubled road from creation to distribution, as he discusses in this excellent (and for a filmmaker, totally gut-wrenching) interview. Here now, not seen since being cut after the film’s Sundance 2007 screening, is the original unedited opening shot from the film. Please watch it the whole way through, it’s a shocking and much more effective opening for what, despite heavy re-cutting on the part of the distributor, remains an excellent film. (thanks, Hunter)
