All story is manipulation. […] Truth is, we hope, a byproduct of the best of our stories; and yet, there are many many different kinds of truths, and an emotional truth is something that you have to build.
I really enjoyed this. (And, incidentally, I had an image of Ken Burns as much older.)
Source: brainpickings.org
BLADE RUNNER (1982) dir. Ridley Scott, opening sequence (FX Storyboards)
(via grooveland)
Source: ridleyville.com
And on that note … trailer for Help!
And Ringo … will he ever play the drums again?
Trailer for Dr Strangelove (via guardianfilm)
c86:
Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner, 2007
Last night I finally watched the definitive documentary on the making of Blade Runner, that along with The Shining is my favourite film of all time. With a runtime of 3 hours 34 minutes, I learnt so much about the rocky creation of the film, on set problems, and everything involved from its inception to completion and beyond. Seeing screen tests and lost scenes for the first time was a treat, as well as the extensive interviews with cast and crew
For me, one of the most interesting parts of the documentary centred on the design and art direction of the film, especially the involvement of Douglas Trumbull and Syd Mead. On a sad and slightly nostalgic note, the film was one of the last to employ special effects that were entirely created in-camera. Footage and explanation of this process were fascinating, including intricate model making, matte paintings and various visual tricks that were composited on film using a process of multiple exposures. The epic opening scene of Hades, the futuristic Los Angeles, involved a forced perspective set and up to 9 multiple passes of film exposure
Douglas Trumbull explains more about these Blade Runner effect sequences on his website:
Hades Landscape
Spinner Vehicles
The Bradbury Building / Blimp
Source: c86
I’ve been trying to think of something to write about Bombay Beach since I saw it last week. It’s hard, because while there’s obviously lots to be taken from it about poverty and marginalised communities, the film itself never makes that point explicitly. It’s a strange, impressionistic document that values aesthetics over reportage. And talking about it in those terms is problematic, because we assume that any dispatch from the modern American underclass has to be a straight-faced documentary, conscious of the terrible situation these people are in, and despairing of our society’s ability to do any better.
Bombay Beach doesn’t do that. It looks into the lives of individuals and families that we would otherwise dismiss or never even hear of, and shows them as simply people, trying to make the best of a bad situation, but all capable of connection and love. It will be impossible to watch scenes like the Parish family struggling with their ADHD son, or the old man who philosophises to the camera about the hard life he’s led, and not see them as people who deserve far more than what they’ve been given.
But the film doesn’t contend itself with “realist” documentary miserablism. There are wonderful moments where the participants dance amid the semi-rural decay of Bombay Beach; scenes that imbue their run-down surroundings with a kind of dreamlike beauty. It’s “anti-realist” in the best possible way; it shows an ideal of a better world and lets this world’s inhabitants act it out.
Live and learn how to make films. I didn’t go to film school. I just watched movies in the cinemas. And probably my greater education was actually making films, so that’s all I would ever say: watch movies, get a camera, make a movie. And if you do it enough times, eventually you start learning how films are made.
