While critics gush over big screen directors come every Hollywood awards season, film directors are far from the only artists capturing their work on rolling camera. Television direction is commonly a stepping stone to take one’s talents to, in this case literally, a larger stage.Think about the similar skill sets involved. Someone who can successfully
In short, directors who spend time in television are more aptly prepared to take on the daunting task of a major motion picture. The primary difference between tv and movie direction is the sense of ownership taken on by a film’s director. Most tv directors will not direct the same show for the full length of the series, often not even a season, rather directing individual episodes at a time, rotating in and out with other directors. As a result, responsibility for the creative control and collective cohesiveness of the show ultimately falls on the shoulders of the producer(s). This stands in stark contrast to movie making, where the driving themes, motifs and character development are ultimately subject to the director’s interpretation and/or opinion. Read entire article.
Many actors dream of landing a starring role in a movie as a leading man or leading lady, while others are content to be working in a dimmer version of the limelight as character actors. Many of these actors consider themselves to have the best of both worlds. They are able to make a living doing something that they love, but since they are not known for a particular “starring” role they maintain a higher level of privacy than their A-list peers.
Occassionally actors who are first known as character actors start to get more recognition for Read entire article.
Today it can be extremely hard for new directors to get recognized considering schools are producing thousands of film graduates every year, not to mention those out there that are striving for work. However, there are quite a few that are starting to make a name for themselves.
Charlie Kaufman, most known as a screenwriter for such movies as Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaption, made this list by directing Synechdoche,New York. Although this film is his first and only Read entire article.
On January 30, 2011 in Los Angeles, California, the winners of the Outstanding Directorial Achievement were announced during the 63rd Annual Directors Guild of America Awards Dinner. The show was hosted by director Carl Reiner and featured a rousing opening by DGA President Taylor Hackford. The audience of more than fifteen-hundred guests was a who’s who of Hollywood.
Winners of the night were: Mick Jackson (Temple Grandin) for Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Mini-Series; Charles Ferguson ( Read entire article.
Directing a movie doesn’t necessarily require a degree or educational background; after all, in theory all you need is video camera and a well thought out execution plan. However, it’s nearly impossible to make any sort of name for yourself or produce anything of quality without the proper tools to succeed and networking opportunities. With the right blend of a properly tailored education, natural talent and real world experience, a great director you yet may become. Where to get started?College Attend a 4 year university while majoring in filmmaking or a very closely related subject matter. Ideally, you should choose an institution with a well-established program for filmmaking, most of which are located in either the greater New York or Los Angeles area. Go where the movies are After graduation, move where movies are actually made. Traditionally, this is again New York and Los Angeles, though tax breaks in many states have encouraged many directors to shoot a large number of films in other cities, such as Atlanta and New Orleans. Work as a production assistant Before you start directing films on your own, you will need to get a feel for how movie sets work, beyond what can be taught in the classroom. Though many production assistant positions are either very low paid or completely unpaid, it is a necessary rite of passage for many future directors, learning the basics from the ground up. Production assistants are the movie industry’s equivalent to interns, and may even be found under ads and listing for internships. Read entire article.
For amateur or novice directors, stop motion special effects offer a viable option for both entertaining and artistic filmmaking. While the process can be at times painstakingly tedious, the stop motion technique allows for a story to be told without any real acting talent required, thus no auditions, less paying wages to actors or recruiting volunteer extras, and even better, no actor egos. The most famous form of stop motion is clay-mation, in which clay figures are repositioned frame by frame to create a “flipbook” motion type of effect. Though clay is a popular choice due to the degree to which it can be easily altered, the concept works for any object with movable parts, including Barbies, dolls and action figures. While full stop motion films fall under the category of animation, thus may fall short of authentic directing in the eye of some critics, when done well they can still showcase a visionary’s brilliance and creative flair. Stop motion, and clay-mation in particular, have become staples on YouTube in recent years as comical ideas and storylines can be easily acted out without the need for big budget special effects. After all, even middle-schoolers can afford a couple cans of play-doh on their weekly allowance. The advent of social media and video sharing has catapulted stop motion back into mainstream consciousness. Read entire article.
Throughout the history of film making, directors have searched for a way to easily convey an idea, parallel or theme to an audience without having to come out and explicitly say it in the dialogue or narration. One tool which revolutionized this process is the match cut, or the pairing of two similar objects in both shape and position within the frame across two separate but chronological shots. The match cut allows for the viewer to easily infer the correlation between shot 1 and shot 2, allowing the nuances of the directors overall vision for the film to be interpreted easily and subtly by the audience. Looking back over the past several decades of film and television, the match cut has been used in thousands of instances for several different purposes. Read entire article.
Long before the modern days of Avatar, Lord of the Rings or even Star Wars for that matter, movies and television shows were being made by innovative directors without the big budgets now required to effectively showcase visual effects. This doesn’t mean the scripts they were putting on screen were devoid of the imagination that might require such illusion. As a means of coping, arguably the oldest visual effect in cinema history sprung out of a cheap camera trick: locking off. Locking off, though it probably was discovered as more of an accident than an innovation, actually played a crucially important role in the development of modern day cinema by altering viewer expectations to include even the seemingly ridiculous. Though it would not fall into the same category as say the believable effects of big, blockbuster movies, locking off provided an easy way for sitcoms and comedies, particularly those of the black and white era, to provide humor through magic and fantasy. In other words, locking off revolutionized the directors repertoire in a time when either technological or budgetary limitations would’ve otherwise siphoned creativity. So what is locking off exactly? Read entire article.
Despite what entertainment media may have repeatedly bludgeoned into your head, forced perspective is not just a what-could-have-been look back over the career moves, personal choices and fashion faux pas of a fallen from grace Hollywood star. Forced perspective is an optical illusion that is often used to create visual effects in movies, saving time in constructing large scale sets that would use more expensive materials. It is not a concept unique to filmmaking, having long been seen in various forms of art and architecture dating back centuries. Forced perception uses carefully calculated scaled objects positioned according to the viewer’s vantage point in order to manipulate visual perception and achieve a misrepresentation of an object’s relative size, length and or width. The Potemkin Stairs in Odessa, Ukraine, famously captured in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film The Battleship Potemkin, use a form of forced perspective in order to appear significantly longer than they actually are when looking up from the bottom, but much shorter than in reality when looking down the giant staircase. This is achieved through a series of flat landings between the steps and a varying width from level to level. Modern architecture uses the concept mostly as a form of entertainment particularly in larger than life arenas such as the Las Vegas Strip or Disneyland. Read entire article.
With the release of Avatar and James Cameron’s masterfully woven combination of 3-Dimensional CGI and live action marking the height of special effects film making, it’s time for a look back across the timeline of modern cinema at some of the milestones that have allowed movie making to reach such seemingly impossible heights. Here is a list of 5 of the most ahead of their time movies (in the CGI era at least) from a visual perspective, bolding integrating new technology to paint their picture on a moving canvas.5. Looker (1981) Michael Chrichton, of Jurassic Park fame, made history with this less celebrated science fiction suspense story by releasing the first commercial film with a realistic computer generated character and the use of 3D CGI shading. The film commented on the standards of beauty in the media, by portraying a day when TV and advertising could use completely computer generated actresses/actors. Ironically, that day seems to be at hand already. Read entire article.