My friend Harriet Earle has uploaded an excerpt from her short film “Ready for Sex.” She wants to see if posting a clip will encourage people to buy the full-length film on DVD via eBay. It shows what goes on behind the scenes when a woman hears that her boyfriend is returning from a trip one day early.
If you know anyone who is attending a hen (bachelorette) party any time soon why not splash out on a DVD gift to take along for the blushing bride?
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sex, Lies and Videotape, The Silence of the Lambs, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Blair Witch Project
Every few years there is a film title that is so compelling that sub-editors in newspapers cannot help but use it as the source for pun-based headlines. The movie needs to be infamous. The combination of words needs to be distinctive, or even odd. Once a few writers make such puns, others turn to the same source:
Raiders of the Lost Dollar, Sex, Lies and Negotiation, The Silence of the Unions, Four Debates and a Funeral, The Sarkozy Witch Project
It looks like the next candidate for this treatment is There Will Be Blood. I’ve already seen There Will Be Backstabbing, and it seems there are plenty of opportunities for further headline puns based on that title.
What other film names have headline writers turned to over the years? Maybe your script needs a distinctive title too.
If you are good at raising money, it is a good time to get into the content creation business. If you aren’t a member of the AMPTP, you could do a lot worse than start checking out who the networks are ‘free’ing over the next weeks.
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that ABC is only the first of the networks who are starting to terminate development deals in the wake of the WGA strike.
Given that networks will eventually get audiences used to watching TV shows via the internet on their TVs as families and groups, others might as well take advantage. If I ran a TV production company, I would start preparing a few non-network sponsored shows to distribute via the Internet.
Available soon direct to your TV via the internet… from Worldwide Pants, the makers of “Late Night with David Letterman”…
Hear more about this idea from a podcast by Sam and Jim (web or iTunes)
How many internet drama producers does it take to change a light bulb?
I don’t know, but we’re all very excited!
In multi-touch news, Apple has just been granted a patent for a devices that use an interesting arrays of sensors:
The touch sensing device also includes a plurality of independent and spatially distinct mutual capacitive sensing nodes set up in a non two dimensional array.
At first reading the invention seems to be about varying the number of sources of capacitance compared with various numbers of sensors. I think the interesting bit is mention of a “non two dimensional array.” If two dimensions is out, there are few other options. Zero- and one-dimensional arrays are unlikely. If Apple planned to make arrays with a number of dimensions above three, they would need a few more patents to cover the technology.
So Apple patents a three dimensional touch interface device… That’s more interesting. As I’ve posted before, that means if the interface device is away from the display device (for reasons of ergonomics or scale – ‘Minority Report’-style), you will be able to get feedback of where your fingers are hovering above the device you are about to touch. Take a look at my post on a user-interface convention using this feature on current applications: ‘not quite direct manipulation.’
This seems to be the number of titles on the Internet Movie Database right now. Not as many as I expected given that they now include individual episodes of many TV shows. I got this number by finding the highest number that works in the address field for title: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1168191/ works, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1168192/ (or any higher number) as of 1744 GMT on January 10th, 2008.
This reminds me of the last page on the internet.
The last person on the imdb is Darren Booth. Odd that there are less than 3 million people listed.
I went to see “Lust, Caution” this evening. The film was great. Most of the film was in close-ups, but there were also some stunning wartime cityscapes.
The fact that big-budget movies can now recreate any city in any time-period cheers me up. In twenty years, there’ll be a simple piece of software that will be able to render any background onto any shot taken by a camera – moving as well as still. The world of 3D simulation for use in the home will start with flying over mountains in the Arctic or amongst the animals of the savannah. Eventually we’ll be able to take a walk down any street in any city in the world in any time period we choose.
City plans and photos and artists impressions and reportage will be combined to create these simulations. Brands in shops will be determined by contemporaneous photos cross-referenced by corporate archives. Streets will be populated by simulations of people based on photos taken at that time. Newspaper archives will be processed and combined with other databases into huge 4D models.
I’m looking forward to walking down my street in London on the day that I was born. Where and when will you walk?
When I saw Transformers in the summer I had a good time. It was funnier than I expected, and my total lack of interest in the franchise up to that point wasn’t a problem. The effects were very good – I liked how grainy some of the shots were. It made the placement of the alien robots look more realistic. During some of the action scenes at the end it was sometimes difficult to follow who was punching who. The 20 metre wide image was too large. I knew that I would have a better chance to see what was going on later.
To provide some in-train entertainment on my trip over to Paris of Christmas, I copied the Transformers DVD onto my iPod. It was good fun still and passed two hours without a problem. During the action scenes there was a little too much detail for me to catch. The 4 cm wide image was too small.
A few days later I showed my father Transformers on my 1.2 metre wide TV. Like the porridge in Goldilocks’ emergency accommodation, the screen size was ‘just right.’
This shows that modern movies are designed for the home. The cinema release promotes the more profitable DVD. The shared experience of watching the film with a large audience made the emotional feedback stronger, but the spectacle worked better at home.
For now I’ll edit for the 20 metre screens…
I see that Persepolis is opening at US cinemas this week. I see that the editor of this animated film is credited as Editor/Compositor. Compositors layer shots so that they combine foregrounds and backgrounds from different sources. This is used in animated and special visual effects shots (the more recent Star Wars trilogy for example).
An interesting job combination. We editors compose by combining shots in the 4th dimension. If we are compositors too, we take shots and combine them in 2 and bit dimensions. It may be that future movies will more often record background (plate) footage so that retakes and alternate line readings can be composed into new shots by compos-editors.
Now, where’s that manual page about difference mattes…
Here’s a new design for a future London tube map.
As accessibility information must be included on the map (for political reasons), I’ve come up with light blue markers for interchanges and station ticks. This means that the disability logos no longer overpower the map.
Many think it would be useful to show distances between stations that are physically close but are not connected directly. The new official map is starting to to this, my solution is different. I’ve also shown more links than the current map does.
I’ve found a reason for Beck’s inclusion of the Thames on map – river services are now included on the map – not a serious suggestion.
I’ve also shown the proposed service changes for the Circle and Northern lines. I’ve called the new separated service “Edgington” in the tradition of the Bakerloo. Maybe “Kennware” would be an easier name for tourists to pronounce.
2007 will be marked as the year when the plans of indy studios failed. The majority of films designed for Oscar glory have failed in the U.S. market. Major studios have ‘specialty’ divisions such as Fox Seachlight, Paramount Vantage and Sony Pictures Classics. They hope for reviews and strong word-of-mouth instead of huge advertising budgets to promote their films.
Indie movies, however well reviewed they may be, are not crossing over into the mainstream. “Eastern Promises,” “Talk to Me,” “Lust, Caution,” “Into the Wild,” “Margot at the Wedding,” “A Mighty Heart,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” “Rendition,” “Love in the Time of the Cholera,” “Lions for Lambs” and “In the Valley of Elah” have been well received but not done well at the box office. Others have done better, but not compared to arthouse films from previous years: “The Namesake” – $14 million, “Gone Baby Gone” – $11 million and “The Darjeeling Limited” – $11 million.
Four out of the five best picture nominees from last year could be considered indie films: “Babel” – $34 million, “Little Miss Sunshine” – $60 million, “The Queen” – $56 million, “Letters from Iwo Jima” – $14 million. That’s an average of $41 million per film. It looks like the nominations this year will be for films that few people went to see in the cinema.
I’m not saying that Oscars should only go to movies with mainstream success, it is just that the level of sucess indie movies are managing is much lower than before. This means a reduction in the studio’s return on their investment. That means less risk taking on independent movies.Maybe there’s been too much of a ‘indie movie playbook’ mentality. Studios have been following a simplistic set of rules when greenlighting, making and promoting their films.We might need a new independent mentality that isn’t afraid of striking out into uncharted waters. Independent from the independents!
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