Creative Inspiration
“Spaceship Earth:” When the Story You’re Telling is True… and Also Science Fiction
“I assumed these images were staged for a science fiction film, but when I learned that this is in fact a real structure, and...
Creative Inspiration
How To
How That Eight-Minute, Single-Take Shot in “Homecoming” Happened
The complexity of the shot required detailed storyboards, a special set house built with removable walls, and a precisely timed choreography.
Creative Inspiration
What You Can’t See: Negative Space and Cinematography for “The Invisible Man”
“Leigh and I really loved how artificial and austere the motion control camera moves were,” says cinematographer Stefan Duscio
Creative Inspiration
First Dispatches from “The French Dispatch”
“Many times he will describe what he wants to shoot and I will think ‘that’s going to be really difficult,’ but somehow we always...
How To
How “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (and M. David Mullen) Locked Down the Long Take
Series DP David Mullen discusses the cinematography behind the Emmy-winning series, now in its third season on Amazon Prime.
Creative Inspiration
“Tales from the Loop:” Making These Fantasies a Reality
“We didn’t know at the end of all of this whether or not there would be a place that would embrace the kind of...
Creative Inspiration
“Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered:” How to Make a Crime Documentary That’s More Than a Crime Documentary
Through many interviews and a trove of archival materials, the HBO series focuses on these murders, the victims and those they left behind.
Video
Stay Indoors Inspiration: View the Infinite Wonder of a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room
“A mirror-lined chamber populated with a dazzling and seemingly vast array of LED lights creating a disorienting sense of limitless space”
Creative Inspiration
Achieving the Poetic Visuals for “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”
“Believe the hype: The film is beautiful and shattering, a paean to the female gaze that’s shot by women, directed by a woman, and...
Video
Stay Indoors Inspiration: All the Filmmaking Contests and Challenges We Can Find (Updated Daily)
Check back, create stuff, maybe win a thing!
Video
Stay Indoors Inspiration: Spend An Afternoon With Roger and James Deakins (and Then Subscribe to Their New Podcast)
Films, formats, philosophies: “I remember what John Huston said — ‘You shoot with your gut, not with your head! I really believe that.’”
Creative Inspiration
Once Upon a Time in “Hollywood:” The Lights, Camera(s) and Action for the Netflix Series
“Ryan wanted the obvious glitz and glamour but also to pull back the gilded curtain of Hollywood and expose the darker side of sex...
How To
A Day in the Life: “The Assistant” and How to Skillfully Tell a Terrible Story
“Condensing the action of one day in the life of someone at the lowest rung of the power hierarchy into an hour-and-a-half cinematic experience...
Creative Inspiration
Benh Zeitlin’s “Wendy” and How to Make Your Own Mythology
Director Benh Zeitlin: “Life should be a great adventure!”
How To
How Documentarian Matthew Wolf Tackled an Archive of 70,000 VHS Tapes for “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project”
A visionary media critic and public access television host, Marion Stokes sought to create a comprehensive archive of American television that would one day...
Creative Inspiration
Fever Dreams: How Pablo Larraín Invents a Whole New Filmic Structure With “Ema”
“The film isn’t a closed-off piece; it allows for a space, a crack through which the spectator can enter and exit.”
Creative Inspiration
“Beastie Boys Story” and the Kind of Genius Concept of a “Live Documentary”
“More like an avant-garde comedy special or a particularly cool TED Talk than a traditional doc”
Creative Inspiration
How “Devs” Creator Alex Garland Fuses Tech, Tension and Apprehension Like Nobody Else
“It’s very clearly the case that technology and technological advances are happening at a rate that we are not able to keep up with.”
Creative Inspiration
True Detective: How “Home Before Dark” Is Something That Hasn’t Really Been Made Before
“It just felt like an amazing challenge, to make this world about a young woman that needs to be taken seriously."
Creative Inspiration
“Selah and the Spades:” How to Subvert a Genre and Make It Your Own
"It’s not about you having all the right ideas. As a director, it’s about how can we have the same goal and collaborate on...
Creative Inspiration
“Tiger King:” Obviously, We’re Going to Talk About This Bonkers Production
“The challenge was to create a new type of series that looks at the pathology of animal people and the ethics of keeping exotic...
Creative Inspiration
How Alan Yang’s “Tigertail” is Both an Immigrant Story… and a Very American One
“My editor was like, ‘Man, you bit off a lot with this one. It's in a different language, it's period, it's a...
Creative Inspiration
“Charm City:” Three Years, Three Crews, Three Baltimore Communities, and A Lot of Questions
The film, director Marilyn Ness says, addresses "the most challenging questions facing police, citizens and the leaders tasked with protecting them."
Creative Inspiration
“Crip Camp:” How to Make the Personal Political (and Political Personal)
“You see that a group of folks with disabilities can rally around and be incredibly savvy and make some incredible decisions and plans and...
Creative Inspiration
“Emma.” and How to Make Your Movie a Tasty Treat
“I told all my departments,” explains “Emma.” director Autumn de Wilde, “the colors need to feel edible.”
Creative Inspiration
Stay Indoors Inspiration: Take a (Virtual) Museum Tour (or 10)
“From interactive, 360-degree videos and full 'walk-around' tours with voiceover descriptions to slideshows with zoomable photos”
Creative Inspiration
“Blow the Man Down:” It’s a Maine Murder Mystery Mashup
“We liked the idea of small-town Maine as a kind of ‘alternative Wild West’—a remote, on-the-fringe place with its own rules, familiar but still...
Creative Inspiration
One Big Score: Capturing the Frenetic Pace of The Safdie Bros.’ “Uncut Gems”
Filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie team with acclaimed cinematographer Darius Khondji for a high stakes thriller set in the Diamond District of New York...
Creative Inspiration
Stay Indoors Inspiration: Watch These 30 Amazing Music Videos (Possibly the Most Amazing of All Time)
Go inside the imaginations of directors like Spike Jonze, Michael Gondry, Dave Meyers, Dom & Nic, and OK Go’s resident genius Trish Sie
Creative Inspiration
“The Plot Against America:” Philip Roth’s “What If..?” Is David Simon’s “What Now?”
“Staying true to the intent of the book, while also doing the things necessary to make it a viable miniseries, it was kind of...
Creative Inspiration
Follow the Light, Follow the Mood: Making Terrence Malick’s “A Hidden Life”
Employing natural light and nearly hour-long takes, the “Tree of Life” director’s first all-digital film tells the story of Nazi resister Franz Jägerstätter.
Video
Contained Chaos: Analyzing the Cinematography of “Parasite”
“In Parasite, every single shot drives home visually the vital themes of wealth, disparity and the myth of class mobility with every set constructed...
Creative Inspiration
Night and the City: “21 Bridges” With Sony’s VENICE (the Why and the How)
“This was now going beyond the step of just emulating film or trying to get as good as film to where I actually now...
Creative Inspiration
Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables” and the Fusion of Narrative and Nonfiction Footage
French filmmaker mined 100 hours of documentary footage shot in the wake of the 2005 Paris riots for his feature.
Creative Inspiration
Stay Indoors Inspiration: Hurlbut Academy’s Isolation Filmmaking Challenge
Make the mundane... magical
How To
Crafting a Literal Political Thriller: Alex Gibney’s Documentary “Citizen K”
Editor Michael J. Palmer blends archival footage with newly-shot interviews for prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney’s portrait of the disgraced Russian oligarch-turned political dissident who...
Creative Inspiration
American Pastoral: Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow”
“It’s not capturing grand landscapes, but people who have very small lives.”
Creative Inspiration
Stay Indoors Inspiration: GoPro Launches Daily Video Competition
“Each day GoPro will pick five of its favorite entries from around the world and give the winners their choice of a Hero 8...
Creative Inspiration
We Could Be Heroes: Ferras Fayyad on Documenting the Extraordinary Doctors in “The Cave”
“The Cave” provides an unflinching look at the courage, resilience and solidarity that exists between female physicians working in war-ravaged Syria.
Creative Inspiration
“The Invisible Man” and How to Make a Modern Monster Movie
Director Leigh Whannell made creative use of the different types of frights you could come up with — the quiet opening of a door,...
Creative Inspiration
“This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection:” “Subconscious” Storytelling and the Software to Make It Happen
"Being able to complete post production using a single piece of software makes so much more sense to me creatively.”
How To
The Pretty, Pretty Good… Cinematography on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”
“We're pretty precise as far as the... planning what's going to happen in the scene and we have really good people that know how...