Category: directing
-
PITFALLS AND PALIMPSESTS
One word is all it takes for my brain to go off on a tangent. Last weekend, Peter mentioned how the notion of palimpsests often came up in his classes at the AFI. It was a word I’d never heard before. So what does a term (mostly) used to describe ancient manuscripts have to do…
-
(max) HEADROOM
I started my latest class with Peter Markham today after some technical hiccups. With his laptop out of order, he was borrowing his wife’s machine to lead class on a freshly installed Zoom. It happened to have that auto-framing feature turned on. You know, the one that automatically tracks and reframes your head if you…
-
MATERFAMILIAS
I came to Margaret Tait by way of Charlotte Wells and by way of her Aftersun… Both women are Scottish. Both women are filmmakers. Both women are writers. I’d argue that those last two points make both women poets. Anyway. Out of pure curiosity, I got my hands on a copy of her Poems, Stories,…
-
PLAYING PRETEND
“Which do you like to animate more: action scenes or acting scene?” It’s a go-to question for me whenever I meet an animator. There’s no wrong answer. They often have a preference. As do I. * And yet… I’ve never been one to have a mirror at my desk when I’m animating. Or to film…
-
BEAUTIFUL WORK
I consider my Letterboxd Top 4 to be something of a living organism, always free to change and evolve, but I suspect that Beau Travail will always have a home there (along with an entry by Abbas Kiarostami. Right now? It’s Where is the Friend’s House?) Much has already been said of Claire Denis’s 1999…
-
LENSING AND 2D ANIMATION
(Specifically, anamorphic lenses.) Full disclosure: I am not a cinematographer. But I can get nerdy about stuff! I first read about the anamorphic process in an outdated copy of the ASC’s American Cinematographer Manual I stumbled on at the library. (Outdated’s not exactly the right word here… even though technology progresses, there’s no such thing…
