Best of the Film Industry: July 2015

Throughout the last month I’ve saved my favorite film industry and production articles + videos from around the internet and I thought it would be fun to share in one post. If you enjoy let me know in the comments and I can make this into a monthly series!

Videos This Month

If you aren’t familiar with the YouTube channel Every Frame A Painting you are really missing out on some of fantastic filmmaking insights. The creator and host Tony Zhou has a knack for breaking down scenes and shots, but this month he took a different approach by studying the evolution of an artist — Chuck Jones. If you’re interested in what makes a great artist I highly recommend checking this out.

Next is from Bloop Animation about the story behind Pixar and how it came to be the juggernaut it is today. It’s an incredibly insightful look at what it takes to create a successful business in a creative field. If you’re considering creating a production company at some point in your career this is a great look at how Pixar sprang from bankruptcy.

Canon’s YouTube channel is starting a new series talking gear with filmmakers — the first episode was a strong entry with Ryan Connolly from Film Riot. They did a great job talking about Cannon cameras and what you should look for with each project. If you’re interested in gear starting, we also have a great gear guide here.

If you haven’t seen Kung Fury, you should probably stop reading and go check it out. It’s an over the top 80’s inspired action / cop movie…Should I say more? This is the first of their behind the scenes for their special effects and it’s incredibly impressive. Keep in mind that the guys Kickstarted the project and did a lot of this themselves, which is even more impressive.

I always really enjoy what I see from love the stuff Simon puts out  at DSLR Guide. I’m super impressed what he’s been able to accomplish at this point in his life. As usual this is a fantastic video on the top 50 Tips for Filmmakers. Shout out to Kenny in the comments who gave me a heads up about this!

 

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Reading This Month

• If you’re working on your first short film, Nathalie at mentorless.com wrote a great piece about what you need to avoid when you first start working — 9 Clichéd Elements to Ban From Your First Short Film (and Second…). When you’re starting out it’s very easy to get sucked into cliched filmmaking.

• Over at wanderingdp.com is a fantastic series on commercial cinematography — if this is a route that peaks your interest it is definitely worth checking out.

• Colorist Sam Gilling had a great post about taking a reference photo from a 1975 film and matching his most recent project. Creating the exact look is quite the process, but incredibly impressive to see the end result.

• Over at the Toronto Film Scene Katarina Gligorijevic talks about the problem of Canadian blockbusters and their non existence, “In English Canada, we barely know what our identity is, so the fact that we don’t support homegrown cinematic talent is, well, pretty unsurprising. We’re just too close to the United States. We confuse their culture for ours, and their cultural products for our own.”

• If you weren’t paying attention to the internet in July you would’ve missed one of the best music videos in recent memory for Kendrick Lamar’s Alright. No Film School had a really cool look behind the editing for the video. I always love watching other filmmaker’s process and this is another fantastic example.

• If you’re looking to make an action film in 2015, A.V. Club had a fantastic piece — How to make a good action film: 11 lessons from modern movies.

• Lots of people were asking how Michael Douglas looked so young in the opening scene of Ant Man — aging and de-aging has been around in movies for a long time, but recently it’s been taken to a whole new level.

• David Ward, the producer of the indie film Balls Out had wrote quite the plea against piracy on his tumblr page. He makes a great case against piracy especially for smaller artists, “if people don’t support the filmmakers doing original work then we’ll be forever stuck watching sequels and spin-offs and sequel spin-offs of tie-ins until the end of time. (Or until our robot-overlords ban the production of motion pictures). ” So true. Unfortunately this article over at denofgeek.com points out that there are currently 143 movie sequels currently in the works. Yikes.

• Panasonic announced two brand new cameras that shoot UHD video up to 30fps: the Lumix DMC-GX8 which will retail for $1,200 and the $600 DMC-FZ300 — you can read up on all the details here.

• IndieWire had a great article on “Roar”, which is apparently the most dangerous film ever made, “No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. 70 members of the cast and crew were.”

News This Month

• Relativity Media has filed chapter 11, “The heavily-leveraged operation has been under distress since May, when it was unable to repay a major loan and had to get an extension from lenders.”

• South Park is picked up for 5 more years — South Park is going to continue for another 5 years because of a deal between Comedy Central and Hulu. In the article Matt Stone voices his distataste for having South Park being referred to as “content”, “You can’t have shows like ours without someone like Doug Herzog who knows how to bet on talent and deal with talent,” he continued. “That’s not what you get from the technology business. Frankly, in the past I haven’t much liked dealing with the people from Silicon Valley. I don’t like our stuff being talked about as content. Spoons are metal and guns are metal, but they’re not the same thing. We don’t make content. We make television. And that’s now what digital understands it has to pay for.”

• Sony Pictures is not doing well — since the hacking scandal back in December and firing the head of production Sony Pictures has been headed down a bad road, “Sony slips into last place in major studio market share.”

• Chicago is applying a 9% entertainment tax on all streaming services, “Netflix service in Chicago is about to get notably more expensive. On the hunt for new revenue, Chicago’s Department of Finance is applying two new rules that would impact companies like Netflix and Spotify. One covers “electronically delivered amusements” and another covers “nonpossessory computer leases”.

What do you think the best article was for July? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!