Menu 

Join Now!

It's Free and Easy

Login

Join To Bookmark

John August’s New Courier Prime

Screenwriter John August worked with type designer Alan Dague-Greene to create a new pleasing form of courier especially for screenwriters.

The Courier typeface was designed in 1955 by Howard “Bud” Kettler for IBM. It’s classified as a monospaced slab serif, with each character taking up the same space and constructed with even stroke widths. IBM deliberately chose not to seek any copyright, trademark, or design patent protection on Courier, which is why it’s royalty free. It was the standard typeface on IBM’s best-selling Selectric II typewriter, and soon became the default typeface in Hollywood.

By standardizing around one typeface set at a specific size, we can take advantage of some rules-of-thumb.

For example, one page of screenplay (roughly, sometimes) equals one minute of screen time. More importantly, producers can be assured that a 119-page draft really is shorter than a 140-page draft. Unlike college freshmen, screenwriters can’t fiddle with the font to change the page count.

The biggest problem with Courier is that it often reveals its low-res heritage. Designed for an era of steel hitting ribbon, Courier can look blobby, particularly at higher resolutions.
But it doesn’t have to.

John August | Read the Full Article

Join To Bookmark

Artificial Photosynthesis Could Convert Sunlight and Carbon Dioxide into Alcohol

An Artificial Photosynthesis System developed by Panasonic could solve global warming and energy issues. Efficiency levels on a par with plants have been achieved, with CO2 being converted into useful organic substances. In the future, Panasonic hopes to operate artificial photosynthesis plants, which would absorb CO2 from factories and produce ethanol.

 

Join To Bookmark

Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola on “Moonrise Kingdom”

Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola recall their collaborative process in scripting Moonrise Kingdomand explain why, for them, writing dialogue is like a musical experience.

Since his first feature, Bottle Rocket, Wes Anderson has forged a distinctive voice while collaborating with a string of co-writers: Owen Wilson, Noah Baumbach, and with Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom, Roman Coppola. Anderson’s films are marked by the full-armed embrace of artifice, putting a stiffly positioned narrator out front, for example, or with deliberate tracking shots which show the constructed set. All aesthetic elements show a stylization and awareness of the storytelling going on, from the dialogue, frequently earnest and stilted, to the meticulous retro-inspired design, which tends to make his stories hard to locate in time.

Moonrise Kingdom, however, is placed firmly in 1965, on an island off the coast of New England, where two slightly disturbed and alienated 12-year-olds, Sam and Suzy, fall in love, them against the world. While at scout camp, Sam, an orphan in foster care, reviled by his campmates, escapes into the wilderness with Suzy, after they meet at a church play. With a storm brewing, parents, police and scoutmasters track them as they set out to make their own way in the world.

Wes, you’ve worked with collaborators on all your films, I believe. They are all distinctly in your voice, so what does a collaboration give to you? And why was Roman the right collaborator for you on Moonrise Kingdom?

Wes Anderson: Roman and I worked together with Jason Schwartzman on the script for Darjeeling Limited. That story, the characters and world very much came from all three of our experiences. It was an especially collaborative thing, and such a good experience. I had been attempting to make this script of Moonrise Kingdom for about a year. I had a few pages and some notes, but I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t get past the first 10 pages or so. I asked Roman to read them to see if he could help me and work with me on it. He was very encouraging but also immediately asked several key questions that got the thing going again, and the two of us had a complete script in a month or five weeks.

What were those questions? And how did you see your roles break down this time in the partnership?

Wes Anderson: The most memorable thing that began this process of us writing, that for me was crucial because it really had an impact, was when you, Roman, read the beginning. It’s maybe the first 10 minutes of the movie; these two kids have met in these woods. You were very encouraging about it but you said, “How did they meet in these woods?” And you said you thought they had arranged this, and I said I didn’t know what had come before that. So you actually asked the question, more like suggested, this is a secret meeting that has been arranged previously. It was like it was already meant to be there but I didn’t know.

Roman Coppola: And there was the question, Well, what do the parents think? I recall you saying “He doesn’t have any parents.” I said, “What’s the story there?” So, in the case of our roles, I would ask questions just out of genuine curiosity that seemed to trigger a response, and then you’d start to uncover the possibilities and put it down.

WGA.org | Read the Full Article

via Go Into The Story

Join To Bookmark

4 Tips for Using a Polarizing Filter to Shoot the Perfect Sky

Using a polarizing filter in your landscape photography is a great way to darken skies and create images with real impact. These 4 tips for using a polarizing filter will help get you started right.

Polarizing filters have a number of uses, but one of the most basic is to darken blue skies. This can help to enhance the contrast between sky and cloud, making it ideal for landscape or architecture shots.

Using a polarizing filter is also perfect for removing reflections and glare from non-metallic surfaces. This enables you to improve the color and definition in your waterfall, sea and river photos, but it’s also effective for darkening windows in buildings and helping to remove unwanted reflections on still-life subjects.

Using a polarizing filter also reduces the amount of light reaching your camera’s sensor by around two stops, which can either be a benefit or a hindrance, depending on what you’re shooting and the effect you’re trying to achieve.

On the plus side it will allow you to use wide apertures for shallow depth of field effects, or longer shutter speeds for creative blur, in bright conditions. But this reduced light can make it difficult to get sharp results, especially in low light, without using either a tripod or increasing the ISO to compensate.

Digital Camera World | Read the Full Article

Tropfest NY 2013
Join To Bookmark

Philip Bloom Reviews the 4K Capable Canon 1D-C

Philip Bloom goes in depth about the workings of DSLR that brings 4K to the table in his review of the Canon 1D-C

The price of the camera and the 24p limitation at 4K put me off the camera, despite this beautiful footage. So what is it that made me really want to check it out properly? Is it actually worth the dosh? What is the image like, and of course, is it any good? All of these questions and many more are answered in my video review. It’s super in-depth and has lots of example footage.

I will be sharing lots of native footage both 4K and HD via wetransfer.com links of native footage. You can find these links below the video, and I will be adding to them the more I manage to upload…it takes a while. Upload speed here is very slow!

Philip Bloom | Read the Full Article

Join To Bookmark

Andy Warhol Told a Young Kathryn Bigelow to Get Into Movies

The Oscar Winning director Kathryn Bigelow began her career on the advice of an artist who’s famously painted cans of soup.

Kathryn Bigelow is on the cover of the next Time, looking cool as all get out in a slim white suit. Though the profile and corresponding Q&A (the full profile is currently under a paywall) mostly focus on Zero Dark Thirty and the controversy that surrounds, it starts with this fun fact about why she switched from painting to film a few decades ago: “I think I had a conversation with Andy Warhol somewhere in all this, and Andy was saying that there’s something way more populist about film than art — that art’s very elitist, so you’re excluding a large audience. ” Yep, she got into making movies because of a conversation with Andy Warhol. (“In the future, everyone will have a world-famous fifteen-minute torture scene.”)

Vulture.com | Read the Full Article

Newer Posts
Older Posts