In a new video for IMDB, director Rian Johnson expertly explains the approach he takes to plot twists in his films.

I've been a huge fan of Johnson's work — both as a creator, and consumer of stories — since I first watched Brick in college nearly 15 years ago. And what he illuminates here is precisely why. We live in an era where spoiler culture dominates, and the craftiness of a twist seems to take priority over actual storytelling. Audiences crave the thrill of the surprise, and creators cater to that, to the detriment of storytelling.

What I admire and respect about Johnson's work is that his twists are always anchored in the emotional journeys in the characters. They're the kind of surprises that are simultaneously both shocking and inevitable — arriving unexpectedly, while also being intrinsically tied to the story that came before it that they feel like an obvious, foregone conclusion. And that's what makes them resonate even more powerfully.

Regardless of whether you're a creator or a fan, it's worth spending these 5 minutes in Johnson's head.

Image via Dick Thomas Johnson / Flickr Read the rest

Slice of Life is a crowdfunded fan film that takes place in a Blade Runner-like universe and is presented as a "love letter" to 80s sci-fi films in general. Years in the making, the team finally sent their Kickstarter backers digital copies over Christmas. As soon as all of their backers get their hard copies (DVDs and Blu-Ray), the film will be made available online.

During the production process, the Slice of Life team posted lots of great video diaries on YouTube, forming something of a master class in low-budget sci-fi film-making. In the above 35-minute video, Luka gives us an impressively informative run-through of the process of building and shooting miniature structures.

Starting with nothing more than a crappy cardboard box, some kitchen trash, electronic junk, and a few plastic model and 3D-printed bits, he builds a cyberpunk-y building and then shows how they went about filming and compositing everything into a final scene. Impressive.

Here's the trailer for the film:

[H/t Kevin Kelly] Read the rest

Film editor Andrew Saladino of the Royal Ocean Film Society analyzes the exquisitely engineered airships in the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Read the rest

Swiss freeskier and filmmaker Nico Vuignier of Centriphone fame, delivers "Heatseeker," an exhilarating night skiing adventure illuminated by fiery shots from a flare gun.

Edited by Nicolas Vuignier & Jules Guarneri; Shot by Jules Guarneri; Riders: Jeremie Heitz, Nicolas Vuignier, Samuel Anthamatten, Laurent DeMartin, Florian Bruchez, Mathieu Schaer

Read the rest

A rare 1980 clip of Stanley Kubrick talking on the phone about the ending of 2001 has surfaced by way of a Reddit thread. A piece on the Esquire website explains:

...In a bizarre video, which has appeared on Reddit this week, the director seems to provide a very simple and clear explanation of the 2001: A Space Odyssey ending. It comes from a Japanese paranormal documentary from TV personality Jun'ichi Yaio made during the filming of The Shining. The documentary was never released, but footage was sold on eBay in 2016 and conveniently appeared online this week timed with the movie's 50th anniversary.

Here is the transcript of Kubrick's comments:

I’ve tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out. When you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it, but I’ll try.

The idea was supposed to be that he is taken in by god-like entities, creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. They put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him, and his whole life passes from that point on in that room. And he has no sense of time. It just seems to happen as it does in the film.

They choose this room, which is a very inaccurate replica of French architecture (deliberately so, inaccurate) because one was suggesting that they had some idea of something that he might think was pretty, but wasn’t quite sure.

The National Endowment For the Arts granted the money for the first Sundance Institute lab in 1982. The program's grown to help some of the biggest filmmakers working today: Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kimberly Peirce, and Darren Aronofsky, among countless independent voices. Esquire profiles just seven. Read the rest

VFX artists have long complained they do not get the compensation they deserve for the value they bring to the film industry. Just in time for the Oscars, Ali Rizvi and Sohail Al-Jamea have teamed up with McClatchy with Hollywood's Greatest Trick. Read the rest

No Film School has great tips for those who want to document a protest. Meerkat Media has covered a lot of public protests, and the most effective coverage requires more than just pointing a camera or phone at the action. Read the rest

Adam Savage visited Weta Workshop in New Zealand last year and has posted videos of him touring various studios within the well-known movie effects and prop studio. In this video, he sits down (on the floor) with Peter Jackson to get a tour of Jackson's collection of John Chambers' makeup kits and latex appliances. Chambers is perhaps best known for being the makeup artist who created Spock's ears and for his work on the Planet of the Apes films.

What most people don't know is that Chambers also worked with the CIA to create special agent disguise kits at the height of the cold war. Adam and Peter look at Chambers' movie makeup kits and some of his molds and appliance from Planet of the Apes, but they spend most of the time going through and discussing the CIA disguise kit. As Adam says, it's the closest we probably get to verification that Mission Impossible was at least based on some type of reality. It's insane to imagine someone actually using a kit like this in a real life-or-death getaway.

As one person on the YouTube page commented about this video:

I love that this totally feels like just two nerds doing "show and tell," but it's actually Adam Savage and Peter-fucking-Jackson!

But isn't that one of the things that we love about nerds? Read the rest

Jacob T. Swinney compares the short film "Whiplash" with the feature it became.

It's an interesting study in the shot-for-shot remake. With the exception of the location and the switch to Miles Teller as Andrew, nearly everything else is the same. Read the rest

This quirky short film was made in just 48 hours, and was named a national runner-up in The HP 48Hours Filmmaking competition. Read the rest

Drone filmmaking pioneer (and Boing Boing Video contributor!) Eddie Codel shares word on his Flying Robot International Film Festival and a fun day of workshops and demos on aerial imagery!

Event #1

The Flying Robot international Film Festival returns to San Francisco's Roxie Theater on November 17th for the world premiere screening of the 2016 FRiFF drone shorts program. Join us for a delightful evening of the planet's most incredible short drone films.

FRiFF received 180 submissions from over 40 countries across 8 categories this year. A couple dozen of the best as selected by the FRiFF jury will be shown. The world premiere screening will be followed by a short awards ceremony honoring the best selections in each category, hosted by the Internet's Justin Hall.

Details and tickets can be found on the Flying Robot site here.

Event #2

Please join us in San Francisco on November 19th from 11am-7pm for the first ever Flying Robot Aerial Imagery Day, part of the 2016 Flying Robot international Film Festival. The day will be chock-full of presentations, demos and workshops focused on various aspects of drone-based aerial imagery. Whether you're brand new to aerial photography or you're a master flying pixel tamer, there's something here for everyone.

Subject areas include aerial photography, cinematography, 3d mapping/photogrammetry, color grading, 360 & panoramic aerial photography, FPV systems, live streaming and drone building 101... to name a few.

This event will be a lightly structured day of fun and learning. We will provide a stage for presentations, an enclosed drone cage for demos and breakout areas for workshops.

Read the rest

Alex Schauer has impressive parkour skills, but just as impressive is cinematographer GimbalNinja, who manages to hold the shot while doing plenty of gymnastics himself: Read the rest

"Color Psychology" by Lilly Mtz-Seara (Vimeo)

-MUSIC- Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons "Summer" III.Presto

-LIST OF FILMS- Maleficent (2014), Robert Stromberg My Girl (1991), Howard Zieff Boyhood (2014), Richard Linklater Marie Antoinette (2006), Sofia Coppola Grease (1978), Randal Kleiser The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Wes Anderson Chicago (2002), Rob Marshall Mean Girls (2004), Mark Waters Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), Christopher Landon The Wolf of Wall Street (2011), Martin Scorsese Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), David Yates Jennifer’s body (2009), Karyn Kusama Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), David Yates Moulin Rouge! (2001), Baz Luhrmann Belly (1998), Hype Williams Spring breakers (2012), Harmony Korine Legally Blonde (2001), Robert Luketic Whiplash (2014), Damien Chazelle Big Eyes (2014), Tim Burton Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), George Miller Only God forgives (2013), Nicolas Winding Refn Hard Candy (2005), David Slade The shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick The Aviator (2004), Martin Scorsese 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Stanley Kubrick Alice in Wonderland (2010), Tim Burton Fifty shades of Grey (2014), Sam Taylor-Johnson Inglourious Basterds (2009), Quentin Tarantino/Eli Roth American Beauty (1999), Sam Mendes Upstream color (2013), Shane Carruth Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Matt Reeves The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Wes Anderson The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Wes Anderson Born to be wild (2011), David Lickley Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Wes Anderson Skyfall (2012), Sam Mendes Apocalypse Now (1979), Francis Ford Coppola The Martian (2015), Ridley Scott Pan (2015), Joe Wright The Virgin Suicides (1999), Sofia Coppola Ruby Sparks (2012), Jonathan Dayton/Valerie Faris Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), Alejandro G. Read the rest

"Wrapped" is a short film created by Roman Kaelin, Falko Paeper and Florian Wittmann from Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg, at the Institute of Animation, Visual Effects and Digital Postproduction. Read the rest

Some people prefer vinyl LPs over MP3s. And it's likely that some people would rather make films instead of videos. That's one reason why the Eastman Kodak Co. announced it will make a Super 8 film camera again. Kodak launched the first Super 8 camera at the 1964 New York World’s Fair and continued to make them until 1982, when camcorders took over.

Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke says the new camera, which will have a digital viewfinder, will be used by pros and film school students who like the unique qualities of analog recording. It will arrive in the fall, and cost between $400 and $750. Processing will cost between $50 to $75 per cartridge.

From WSJ:

Mr. Clarke said Kodak has received expressions of support for the new camera by many Hollywood directors, including Steven Spielberg and “Star Wars” director J.J. Abrams, who directed a 2011 film called Super 8 and was famously hired by Mr. Spielberg as a 14-year-old to work on the older director’s Super 8 film archive.

Great news. Let's just hope Kodak doesn't emulate Vivitar's advertising campaign:

Read the rest