Category Archives: solothink

Inspiration, move me brightly. (Robert Hunter)

Why? is this blog called “Movies Without Cameras” (part 1)

A good movie makes you think and feel, and puts you in touch with your self. A movie that can achieve all this without using cameras is even more worth watching.

The first time I saw a movie actually made without cameras was in 2001 when I bumped into an an animation by Norman Mc Laren, the canadian filmmaker who made most of his films by painting and scratching directly on celluloid strips.

You can see some of his original films and process here.

This one won an Academy Award in 1952, and was considered violent.

Neighbours by Norman McLaren, National Film Board of Canada

When you have time, come back to see this feature documentary on McLaren’s process

Creative Process: Norman McLaren by Donald McWilliams

(to be cont’d.)

is making a movie like playing in the band?

follow @cinemahead on twitter

My favourite filmmakers use the same crew for every film. Do yours?

For example, I am Thinking of John Cassavetes, actor -director who shot many of his films inside his own studio-house. He cast his wife Gena Rowlands and his best fiends in every picture.

Each new movie was a challenge to a familiar formation of artists. The scripts went directly to the actors, not to outside casting agents or on-shot producers. The movies were not easy to make and the edits ignored audience tastes. The film “Husbands” was cut long and much less of a comedy than the studio insisted on, costing Cassavetes and his “band” pretty pennies, but resulting in a one-of-a-kind film. (the plot? three friends go to a hotel in London after the funeral of their best friend in the U.S.)

But like a band that plays every new song different, John Cassavetes played film different. He changed the rules of a game that has today changed even more.

Especially if you are making short films, your filmmaking is already like playing in a band. An adventure with friends.

The name of the awesome band in the clip is VIDAR. Worth keeping an eye on.

The OpenWritersRoom at BBC – until 3.28.2013

You know how, well, access for writers is still kind of a problem? You write the script and it takes 2 years and nobody loves you anymore and all the lost sleep and still you can’t get good readers you can trust, industry folks who care about your work?

In the US you have to find an agent who guarantees that :

a) your script is not stolen, “plagiarised” or “inspired” by someone else’s.
b) can get into a decent pitch meeting (executives are always in a hurry).

In the UK the BBC has re:opened the writersroom doors again!

Here is what you do:

1. Find your masterpiece from last year. (It’s holding up the blue chair)
2. GO in to BBC and plop your script on the pile, digitally speaking.
3. Relax. You got nothing to lose.

What? you don’t believe it?

Real experts will read it, merit will shine, and the bells may toll for you.

go to the BCC.co.uk site or get more info at the awesome mediamuppet.co.uk

if you need to do a rewrite, or your movie was about phone booths and polaroids, stop in our twitter @cinemahead.

Dust dust off those rusty scenes just one more time. Let them shine!

Free Scene Feedbacks from the cinemahead forum You got it, free script consulting until, well, April st1 2013.

Learn code, learn story. Get under the hood, kids.

I never thought I would be posting Bill and Zuck bragging about their early coding experiences, but here I deny it and do it. Why? Because I too started to code as a kid in 1980, in school, in Naw Haven, Connecticut. I wrote a program in BASIC, called “2 minute football”, with my older brother Greg. A player had only two minutes to come back from 9 points down and win. No graphics at all. Just a number matrix and a flashing ball.

Then as a freshmen in college I coded in Assembler language and Pascal. I made a Cat & Mouse graphical video game that challenged me more than 4 years of latin in greek in high school. Solving problems for credit, what a blast. I went to work for IBM and for 3 years sold software solutions. With the money I shot my first films. What I knew as “Problem Solving”, I began to call… “Conflict”.

I love Coding because it’s problem solving in a controlled environment. It’s logical (plan, design) , abstract (math) and narrative (code begins and ends, like a story). But Code serves another primary purpose, learning form your own mistakes, debugging your own thinking process. Coding allows to do stuff we just could not do before. Coding empowered me with new knowledge and experience. And now that film is digital, Code and Story go even more together.

Thanks to Code.org for activating the EDU button in the global algorithm, and for joining two key pieces of the puzzle: kids and problem solving.

Let’ fit more puzzle pieces together.

.Danny
CINEMAHEAD

http://www.code.org

Academy Award for “Searching for Sugarman” (sweden)

The Swedish documentary “Searching for Sugarman” won an Oscar today, and I am both grateful and overwhelmed.

I am grateful for the film itself, a simple piece about a one-of-a-kind life-journey. Sugarman” is an unlikely hero who makes a unique personal choice revealing not only his own true nature, but also ours.  The film shines a  light on the unanswered dilemmas we all must face: who are we and what is our purpose in life?

I am overwhelmed with honoring and congratulating Kaj Ivanovic who took the credit as post-production colorist [Chimney Pot post-house, Stockholm] Kaj  helped turn diverse found-footage materials into an academy-award winning aesthetic in support of an unforgettable narrative.

Kaj has been part of the Cinemahead family since 2004. He brought to life the first Karlstad film workshop series (with Daniel Wirtberg, Jonas Bergergård, Sara Broos, Jenny Jansdotter and others).

Congratulations Kaj!

 

 

Under the surface.

Inspiration is waiting to meet you around some corner, on your personal film adventures. Look at this Galapagos Terrapin  showing us how to go forward without fear, how to be following only one’s own nature. [shot on HERO3 GoPro, Islas Galapagos, 2013]

Do  you remember the first time you ever felt inspired? What happened?

[The Pope resigns] like in Nanni Moretti’s “Habemus Papam”.

Pope Benedict XVI resigned today, and the film Habemus Papam [We have a Pope] by Nanni Moretti immediately came to mind. Habemus Papam is a farce about the human limits of a holy man, who succumbs to the dilemma: to be or not to be Pope? The film screened at the 2011 Cannes Festival, to mixed reactions. Fact and fiction don’t seem so far apart. What other movies have predicted the future?

Resources:

http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/cannes-review-nanni-moretti-habemus-papam-we-have-a-pope.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/13/cannes-2011-review-habemus-papam

I was introduced to Nanni Moretti as a kid in Rome, Italy. My history teacher at the “Alfieri” middle school was the austere Mrs. Barbieri, Moretti’s aunt. She spoke a few times in passing about her teenage nephew Nanni and his attempts at making a super8 feature film. History proved her right: today, Nanni Moretti’s early pictures stand as masterful low budget debuts. Films made by young filmmakers about the pains of being young people are still not common today, despite the lower costs of digital film.

You can see some clips here (Italian only)

“Io sono un autarchico” 1977 (“I am Self-Sufficient”)

“Ecce Bombo” 1978 (…)

Both films have vision, personality and an in-your-face – uncompromising desire to mix open wounds and a pinch of salt. Moretti cracked a small opening in the italian film traditions. He appeared on scene and never left, without dominating it, but with an impossible-to-ignore brutally honest take on paradoxes and contradictions of human nature: a dark self-criticism blended with utopian optimism about politics, love and family. Every Nanni Moretti film is an unsentimental drop into the bloody battleground of hypocrisy we call “middle-class life”.

 

[Resources] Starting making cents?

By now, you’re probably used to seeing Facebook “LIKE” buttons attached to content all over the Internet. The team behind CentUp wants to take that concept and monetize it — giving money to the people who create content as well as to charities. A few cents per person for a given blogpost can really add up when you think how popular some content gets. A $20 contribution earns you 2,200 cents for when the product launches!

What is CentUp?

CentUp is an intentionally simple button that lives next to all kinds of web content. It lets people toss a few cents at blog posts, photos, videos, and songs they really love. The kicker? Half that money goes to charity.

Click here to find out more about this project at indiegogo.com!