longest continuous (uncut) shot in cinema history?

. The long tracking shot (one continuous take) has been a cinematic marvel and a calling card of sorts for directors ever since Orson Welles opened Touch of Evil with one long tracking shot.

It's true that the advent of steadicams and digital editing have helped today's filmmakers do what their predecessors only dreamed of, but the long tracking shot continues to be one of the most impressive feats of cinematic magic out there. Scorsese used it extensively in Goodfellas, Alfonso Cuaron used a particularly long shot to show the chaotic nature of a shootout in last year's Children of Men and even Alfred Hitchcock used the technique, filming Rope in only 10 total shots.

Those shots were all impressive, but the record-holder for longest tracking shot goes to Aleksandr Sokurov for his 99 minute shot in Russian Ark. Yes, the famed Russian filmmaker actually shot his entire movie, chronicling 300 years of Russian history, in one take.

Film Festivals as Markets

The main film festivals are also markets, helping the acquisitions executive spot unsigned films that could be picked up. This is the place where you and your sales agent can start to cash in on the buzz that you have worked hard to create through screenings at smaller festivals.

There are five major markets, spaced throughout the year:

European Film Market in Berlin in February.

American Film Market (AFM) in Santa Monica in February.

Marche International du Film in Cannes, France in May.

London Film Festival, in October.

Mercato International Filme e Documentario, in Milan, Italy, also in October.

Finished product vs short clip
If you are trying to sell a movie to potential distributors, it helps if you have a finished product; surprisingly, up to 80 per cent of films submitted to Sundance are incomplete. However, incomplete projects are bought in special forums at most of the main film markets. For example, the Independent Feature Film Market each autumn in New York attracts buyers who are able to see special screenings of partially completed work. Incomplete movies are inevitably less attractive because the producer usually asks for completion funds, but distributors are well versed in deciding whether to buy based on just a small section of a film; even in full screenings, potential buyers make up their minds from just short sections of a movie and may leave midway through in order to attend other screenings.

Goran Paskaljevic

The first comprehensive American retrospective of the films of Goran Paskaljevic (b. 1947, Belgrade), one of Europe's most respected directors, featuring new 35mm English-subtitled prints of thirteen features and two shorts by the director. Though Paskaljevic's films are narrative-based, they are driven by restless, idiosyncratic, and all-too-human characters, and often veer off in surprising and fanciful directions. Paskaljevic finds the extraordinary in the reality of the everyday, and his realism, informed by the political transformations he has witnessed, is inflected with irony. He has written, "The beauty of film for me is its closeness to life. And if it is going to reflect life faithfully, it has to draw on metaphor, just like poetry."

Seven golden rules to remember for writing in films.

• Assume a conversational tone by using short sentences and an informal, approachable style.


• Engage your audience emotionally; make them care about both the people and content of your production.


• Provide adequate logical structure; let viewers know where you're going, which concepts are key, and when you're going to change the subject.


• After making an important point, expound on it; illustrate it.


• Don't try to pack too many facts into one program.


• Give your audience a chance to digest one concept before moving on to another.


• Pace your presentation according to the ability of your target audience to grasp the concepts.

biggest gross on Christmas day?

When you think of movies that had huge box office days in December, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings movies come to mind, but neither one of them came close to nabbing the title of top Christmas day grosser of all-time.


Nope, ironically, the movie that grossed the most money on one of the biggest family holidays of the year is none other than the dysfunctional tome Meet The Fockers. That's good news to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the only comedy opening this weekend.


With such new movies as National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd, one thing is for certain, this weekend will be a busy one at movie theaters.

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My film is an attempt to represent the most profound and diverse human emotion: love. Love is a very tricky subject. With love as the subject, one can communicate essential messages with ease. The audience drops its defenses and agrees to look into the reason and mode of communication of the storyteller. In my film I have tried to capture the emotional journey of two lovers. The film starts with an intriguing insight into the pain of a man in love, only to find out that he has lost the chance to love. Although his love is alive in vivid memories of his lover, the woman who has sown the seeds of this love has disappeared into the abyss of time. The film is to communicate the fact that love comes in unfamiliar packages. A small and seemingly insignificant gesture can upturn the whole meaning of one’s life. The choice of the accompanying song is to show the intensity of the lover’s pain and the deep impact of this love in his life. Although my film is a cliché about unconditional love, I have nevertheless chosen this subject because love is one human emotion that never ceases to grip and surprise us. I believe filmmaking is all about clear communication. You are a good filmmaker when your audience can see your imagination crystal clear on the screen.

What’s a codec?

Codecs are all designed to work on two fronts: temporal and spatial y of using the internet for vidcompression.the only viable way of using the internet Tjay TtTta That means they both compress the picture in terms of the amount of information used, but do this in different ways. Beyond this, there are other ways to compress further, by reducing colour quality, audio, pixel rate or frame rate.

Within these two formats, codecs are found in either hardware or software form. Hardware codecs are fast and more efficient but more expensive, and require that the receiver of the images has the same codec device. Software codecs do not have the same quality as hardware versions but most are available free on the Internet, and are more widely used on editing programs.

There are two ways of compressing a film. Here’s how it works:

Temporal compression: Temporal compression takes out lots of information that you don’t miss by comparing the individual pixels in a frame-for example, if a frame looks almost the same as the last, perhaps with the same background colour, it recognizes this and hangs on to only those bits of information that differ from what was in the first frame, called the key frame. All other frames after the key frame it names "delta frames" and only starts a new key frame when the scene changes significantly. In this way, it manages to remove much information and reduce the overall file size.

Spatial compression: Spatial compression works differently: it still looks for data that appears more than once but instead of studying each pixel, it divides up the whole picture into blocks of pixels. It looks for patterns of repetition within these blocks, enabling it to map them using much less data. Pushed too far this can result in blocky, jagged looking images but it remains a powerful, if unsophisticated, compression solution.

Make A Movie With Microsoft MovieMaker

Capture Your Clips
The first step in using Moviemaker is to capture your clips. Start the program and after it starts, capture your video from your camcorder. You can do this by clicking the tasks icon and choosing Capture Video, or clicking File => Capture Video.

Arrange Your Clips

The next step is to use the storyboard in Windows Moviemaker to arrange your clips. In the film industry a storyboard is known as a series of panel sketches showing how the different scenes in the movie will play out, and in what order.

Microsoft Moviemaker uses the same concept: its storyboard is where you’ll set your clips in the order that you want. First make sure you’re in storyboard mode by clicking View => Storyboard. Then, begin by looking for your clips in the Collections panel. If you don’t find them, click on the Collections box and select your clip.

Once it’s in the panel area just click and drag your clip to the storyboard below. You can preview a clip in the Moviemaker monitor window at any time. Just use the VCR-like controls at the bottom of the window. Save your work, and move the clips around until they’re in the order you want. Save your work again. If you want to rename your clips to something meaningful, just right click and choose Rename.


Edit Your Clips
First, switch to Timeline view by clicking the Show Timeline button above the Storyboard, or by clicking View => Timeline. In place of the Storyboard boxes you see something that looks like a filmstrip.

To edit, double-click on a clip to let it play in Preview mode, and then choose Clip => Set Start Trim Point, where you want the clip to begin. This is the start of the clip. Now, to set the end of the clip double-click it again, and then choose Clip => Set End Trim Point. The clip will be trimmed, with extra footage removed. Do the same for the other clips, then save your work in Microsoft Moviemaker.

Add Some Transitions


To begin, let’s toggle back to Storyboard view by clicking the Show Storyboard button just above the timeline. Alternately, you could click View => Storyboard from the menus. To access transitions, from the menus click Tools => Video Transitions. You’ll see a whole list of transitions in the Collections Panel of Microsoft Moviemaker. You can preview a transition by double-clicking it, and watching it play in the Monitor window.

Now, how do we apply transitions to the clips? You’ll notice that there are smaller boxes separating the clip boxes from each other. This is where you drag your transitions from the Collections Panel onto the clip. You can use the VCR-like controls on the Monitor to view how your movie will play with the transitions. Remember, however, that with transitions, more is less. Be subtle, and you’ll make an effective presentation.

Add Some Background Music

Your production would not be complete without background music and narration. To add music in Microsoft Moviemaker, in the Tasks pane choose Import Audio or Music and select your files.

If you want to add narration, just toggle to Timeline view and find an empty space in the audio track for your narration. Then click Tools => Narrate Timeline. You now have audio both in the original video clips, and in additional tracks that you created.

To adjust the audio levels in your clips, right-click on any clip in Moviemaker and adjust volume, fades or mute if you desire. If you want to balance how the music works with your clip audio, click Tools => Audio levels and adjust with the slider.

Create The Final Output
Now is the moment you’ve been waiting for! You’ll create your final output. In the Tasks Pane of Moviemaker you’ll see a list of output options under Finish Movie.

You can send to web, write back to digital video, save to CD, save to your hard, and so forth. Select the one you want to use. A wizard will come up, guiding you through the rest of the output creation process.

Depending on your selected output, you will be prompted for certain specs to supply. If you send to web, for example, Windows Moviemaker will want to know what your audience’s likely Internet speed and method of access will be like.

Operation Filmmaker.

In the wake of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," American actor Liev Schreiber had an idealistic notion: to rescue an Iraqi film student from the rubble of his country and bring him to the West to intern on a Hollywood movie (Everything Is Illuminated). It promised to be a heartwarming tale, a small victory out of the troubled mission of the U.S war in Iraq. But as in the war itself, "good" intentions yielded unintended consequences, and even this operation doesn't go according to plan. Director Nina Davenport becomes personally involved in Schreiber's charitable effort, and soon finds herself embroiled in a complex moral quagmire and all-consuming power struggle between filmmaker and subject. Operation Filmmaker is an engaging, sometimes comical political parable, taking the viewer on a riveting ride from Baghdad to Hollywood.

"No man is an island"

John Donne's statement "No man is an island" could fittingly describe the art of filmmaking, which involves a team of artists and craftsmen, each with a clearly delineated role. Though each member of the filmmaking team has a specific job, no one works in a vacuum. Their collaborative efforts combine to produce the final film, and this reciprocity in the creative process often produces singular works.

street light

Dear reader,I would like to use this platfoam to promote good cinema.Please watch the film and give your comment.





Words From The Maker.
I am cameraman for TV channel. Yes this is my first short film; literally I have done everything from direction, camera. I have written the dialogues & story, produced too. Both actor are my friend whom I told them one hour the before shoot & showed them reference of al pachino’ film scent of woman for blind character I know I could have given that electrician uniform but no money. This film could have been lot better with lot of help & little bit money but never the less will do better one next time. the quality in youtube is very low resolution than actual final film.

Wax

Wax is a high performance and flexible free video editing software program. It started out as a college project, and has since grown. Wax is good for both home users and professionals. It can be used as a stand-alone application, oras a plug-in to other video editors. The software also features unlimited video and audio tracks with top-down compositing.

It is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease everytime.

Wax can create 2D & 3D special effects and can work in two modes - as a standalone application which would appeal for home users/beginners, and as a "plug-in" to video editors/NLEs which would be more useful for professional editors. Currently Wax can work as a plug-in with Sony Vegas®, Pure Motion EditStudio and Adobe Premiere® and work for integrating with various other NLEs is in progress.

Hey, look! It's the new 'Indiana Jones' poster

May 22 isn't too far off. That's when we'll get to see the next (and perhaps last?) Indiana Jones movie -- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Paramount has released the official poster for this long-awaited fourth film in the franchise. You can see it in all its glory below.

Spanish Cinema

For all those who - frequently and with abandon - toss out the dismissive phrase, "It's only a movie!", and for others who claim that no movie can approach the breadth and depth of "real life," here comes Solitary Fragments (La Soledad) as one of - perhaps the - best corrective you'll encounter. This is not a documentary, although it possesses the feel and sound of one, if not the look. Most of us by now know that, while the documentary may be truthful, it can also be biased and judgmental, coming, as it does, from a single viewpoint and often taking in a single character, subject or event. But La Soledad is a narrative feature.

films

Films, also known as movies, motion pictures, flicks, the pictures, and the cinema, are undoubtedly the most influential art form of the 20th century. From the early days of Hollywood to the high-tech cinema of today, the silver screen has projected our dreams and fantasies, presented both glamour and works of social conscience, and served as our collective memory.

what to consider when purchasing a camcorder?

The basic attributes to consider when purchasing a camcorder are

Firewire/IEEE 1394 support

Lens Quality

LCD Size

Optical Stabilization System

Digital Still Image Capability

the first attribute (Firewire support) is absolutely critical. Never buy a digital camcorder that does not have Firewire support . The other attributes like lens quality, LCD size and optical stabilization are nice to have but should not matter if you are just an average home user.


The last attribute - digital still image capability - gives you the ability to shoot pictures just like a digital still camera. I personally think there's no need for this feature, as it jacks up the price tag way too much. I'd prefer to get a basic videocam and a proper digital still camera separately if I want to both shoot videos and take still pictures.

2007 ALL ACCESS SCREENWRITING COMPETITION

Dear Reader,

There are just 8 days to go until the entry deadline for this year's All Access Screenwriting Competition!


You can choose to take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity for talented screenwriters to open the door to Hollywood and its deal-makers and have your work submitted to participating companies that have already requested the top three Winners.


Additional prizes for the winners include software giveaways, cash, and special exposure to the winner.


There are plenty of other opportunities and prizes to go around, with five finalist prize packages and random entry prizes.

Snake Eyes in 'G.I. Joe' comes true

Ray Park has been cast as Snake Eyes in 2009's G.I. Joe movie. Park is best known for his role as Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.

Park's performance as the barely audible Sith apprentice is the perfect foundation for Snake Eyes. After all, the mysterious G.I. Joe character is a martial arts-trained soldier known for his stealth abilities. Snake Eyes also happens to be a mute.

The Scotland-born Park, himself a world champion martial artist, also played Toad in the first X-Men movie. There is talk he'll star as the martial arts comic book hero Iron Fist in his self-titled movie.

Park becomes the second actor cast for G.I. Joe. We carried the news previously that Sienna Miller would star as Baroness, the evil Cobra's intelligence officer.

Billy The Kid

I’m not black, I’m not white, not foreign…just different in the mind – different brains, that’s all…" explains 15 year-old Billy in Jennifer Venditti’s provocative coming of age film. Billy's intuitive commentary and intimate verité footage reveal a unique attitude as he responds to a painful childhood, first time love, and his experience as an outsider in small town Maine. By turns humorous and disturbing, this portrait challenges the viewer to look beyond labels and contemplate the future of a teen still in the process of becoming.

GIUSEPPE DE SANTIS

Giuseppe De Santis (February 11, 1917 - May 16, 1997) was an Italian film director. One of the most idealistic neorealistic filmmakers of the 1940s, he made films punctuated by ardent cries for social reform

He was first a student of philosophy and literature before entering Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. While working as a journalist for Cinema magazine, De Santis became a major proponent of the early neorealist filmmakers who were trying to make films that mirrored the simple often tragic realities of proletariat life using location shooting and nonprofessional casts


De Santis unites a cinema instinct of the highest order and a deep directing wisdom. In Tragic Hunt (1947), Bitter rice (1949), No peace under the olive trees (1950) he transfuses his curiosities for a rural world, theater of conflicts and tensions represented in the characterizing key of an adjourned and sophisticated fiction of appendix, soaked of democratic contents. Bitter rice marks the explosion of an erotic bomb in the Italian cinema, Silvana Mangano, in whose footsteps a squad of florid and seductive beauties , defined curvaceous women because of their attributes, will oust the stars' dominion survived to the war uproars.

A Little Fable

"Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it.

Breathless original poster

Breathless shocked contemporary audiences with its bold visual style and editing—much of which broke the rules of classical Hollywood cinema. Most notable of its innovations were jolting jump cuts and hand-held camera.