Speaking of photo books, or, if you prefer, photobooks: Wired features an enlightening interview with Lesley Martin, publisher of the Aperture book program and the PhotoBook Review, who explains how self-publishing is pushing photographers and editors toward new-found creativity, how shifting models of distribution are changing the book business, and which kinds of paper make photos look best. Read the full Story >>
Filmmaker Tom Durham has spent the last several years creating his newest independent movie, 95ers: Echoes and has endured both the highs and lows of independent filmmaking. In a recent video interview with the Red Giant website, Durham offers his hard-won insights on the business. Insight number one: Whatever you do, don’t go into debt to make your film. Read the full Story >>
What if you could get 88 cinematographers and ASC members together and ask them to share the best professional advice they ever got? That’s sort of what American Cinematographer magazine does with its ASC Close-Up interview series. Now the Black and Blue blog picks through those interviews and puts all the insights into one article. Samples: “When I was an AC, a gaffer told me, ‘Don’t run on a set,’ because you show everyone that you probably forgot something,” says Bruno Delbonnel. Read the full Story >>
Documentary filmmaker Patrick Creadon has learned how to put his interview subjects at ease, so that they look “natural” on camera. He made New York Times crossword puzzle master Will Shortz look quite natural, for instance, in his 2006 doc Wordplay. At Film Courage, Creadon offers insights about how he does it. One tip: asking the same question repeatedly. Read the full Story >>
Canon is preparing for a time when the digital camera market will only ship 10 million units annually, about 8.2 percent of the number shipped in 2010, notes PetaPixel. With that in mind, the company is slimming down its production, sales, and product lineups going forward. The news comes from an interview with Canon’s General Manager of the Image Communication Business Division, Takeshi Tokura. Read the full Story >>
If you come from a photography background and video coloring tools look intimidating, doing the job in a software you’re familiar with—Photoshop—may be a better way to go, and Fstoppers has a step-by-step tutorial on how to get it done. “I use [Photoshop] relatively often when I want to make sure a set of video clips all look identical (like when I have three clips from three camera angles from an interview),” writes Jaron Schneider. Read the full Story >>
Jonah Lehrer, a contributing Editor at Wired magazine and frequent contributor to the New Yorker, recently published a book called Imagine: How Creativity Works, in which he describes how scientists have studied how the brain works when we engage in the creative process. The NoFilmSchool blog shares a recent radio interview with Lehrer and breaks down his fascinating findings. One of the highlights: The story of how Bob Dylan recreated himself, just when he thought he had nothing left to say. Inspiring. Read the full Story >>
“I am not sure I remember how it all started,” says acclaimed photojournalist Jerome Delay of his career. In an interview at Photojournalism News, Delay talks about everything from how he prepares for an assignment to the gear he uses. “I used to look like a Christmas tree carrying three or four bodies and even more lenses when I started. Since then, I’ve learned to spare my back,” he says. He is currently working on a project about the impact of covid-19. Read the full Story >>
If there were a stock footage site that offered high-quality images at just $5 a clip, what would you assume? Scam, right? Wrong! Since launching this May, stock footage company Dissolve has been amassing stock imagery for commercial videographers and filmmakers, and offering a lot of it for just that price, notes NoFilmSchool, which features an interview with Dissolve CEO Pat Lor … who photographers may know better as the co-founder of iStockphoto. Read the full Story >>
One of the most crucial aspects of most documentaries is the interview, and, as NoFilmSchool notes, filmmakers like Errol Morris have an indispensable tool for getting them right: the Interrotron. It’s basically two teleprompters connected to two cameras, allowing the subject to look into the interviewer’s eyes while also making a first-person connection with the audience by speaking straight at them. NFS has diagrams explaining how it works, as well as examples of its effectiveness from Morris’s Fog of War. Read the full Story >>
Are you getting in on drone filmmaking? Fstoppers has an interview with Canadian cinematographer Brent Foster,who talks about why you should send your camera aloft, and the challenges you will face when you do. When Foster bought his first quadrocopter, a Blade mQX, he used flight-simulation software to learn how to fly it. Now he’s got a bigger rig and hires a pilot, so he can concentrate on photography. “Setting up the UAV is not something you want to rush. That’s when mistakes can happen,” he says. Read the full Story >>
Noted photography editor/theorist Fred Ritchin has a blunt message for pros: innovate or die. In a illuminating interview with Mother Jones, Ritchin, co-director of the Photography and Human Rights program at New York University and the author of the new book Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen, calls on photojournalists to continually ask how they can create more meaningful imagery, rather than just chase the "trail of the incendiary." Read the full Story >>
“Jeff Nichols is not a director because he studied movies. He’s a director because he makes them,” notes Wired, which features an interview with the auteur. His new movie — which is only his fourth — is Midnight Special, the story of a man being pursued by both the government and religious extremists. Nichols talks about learning to make films the old-fashioned way — by trusting his instincts, even when he didn't know what he was doing. Read the full Story >>
More people today are misusing creative work produced by other people, says Katie Lane. An attorney and negotiation coach, Lane’s website Work Made For Hire is a plainspoken resource for creatives looking for advice on how to protect copyright ownership of their work. She offers more insights in a recent interview at Motionographer. Remember: copyright protects the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. Read the full Story >>
The web is so full of filmmaking wisdom that it can be hard to know where to start. PremiumBeat helps by spotlighting nine filmmaking channels on Vimeo that you should be following, from the Documentary Film channel to Film School, a collection of tutorials on topics ranging from special effects to color theory. Meanwhile, at YouTube the Borgus Network has a new series exploring the world of indie filmmaking featuring interviews with industry experts. Read the full Story >>
Photographer Michael Christopher Brown was 32 when he went to Libya in February of 2011, just as the Arab Spring was dissolving into war. A broken camera forced him to document the conflict with his iPhone, and the pictures he made over the next several months can be seen in his first book, Libyan Sugar, notes Vanity Fair. “I had never really had the experience of going to war. I’d been in Afghanistan, but I was never really interested in covering the American soldiers’ side,” he says in an interview. Read the full Story >>
His name is Fabio, but, as he says on design blog Abduzeedo, "in the concrete jungle of So Paulo, Brazil, I'm a graffiti artist known as CRANIO. I've been working on the streets of SP since 1998. My goal is to bring art to the whole population, with a contemporary language." That he has done, in So Paulo and on his popular Flickr stream, which has helped him gain a growing international audience. "I also love to skate, I like film, music, and the art of circus," he says in an interview with design website Pxleyes. Read the full Story >>
If you missed director Ben Shapiro’s feature documentary on photographer Gregory Crewdson during its theatrical release, you can now catch it on DVD and streaming on Netflix, notes Strobist. The documentary, Gregory Crewdson: Close Encounters, follows the photographer famous for his elaborate, cinematic imagery from 2005 through 2009, when he created his “Beneath the Roses” series. Go here for a recent interview with Crewdson. Read the full Story >>
Add Ochre to your photographic reading list: The new twice-a-month online publication from editor Lisa Jamhoury takes a probing look at the craft of visual storytelling. Up now, for instance, is an interview with Nairobi-based photographer Pete Muller about his most recent project on male gender roles, power dynamics, and sexual violence. Coming later this month: an in-depth look at the misuse of images across the web, and what photographers can do to manage the growing problem. Read the full Story >>
Lisa Callif, an entertainment attorney at Donaldson + Callif whose primary focus is on representing independent filmmakers, was named one of the best and brightest in her field by Variety, and now you can benefit from her advice (without paying a retainer fee). In a recent interview with Film Independent, Callif answers a number of questions she commonly hears from indie filmmakers, about everything from protecting your pitch ideas to understanding trademark law. Read the full Story >>
