Zoltan and Chelsey have both left an indelible mark on the department and they’ll be sorely missed in the months ahead. We wish you both bright futures and artistic fulfillment.

In film school we were taught that the fill light determines the density of the shadows. What we weren’t taught was how important shadows are, and that while the “key” light certainly has directionality, the fill light can as well. Where shadows fall is just as important as how bright they are, which means that we need to look at not just intensity (which I’m not really going to cover here; that’s determined by your own taste) but at placement as well.

Click through to the article for some invaluable diagrams and first-hand perspective from a working D.P.

Have a great Thanksgiving Break!

Our whole job is based on power and control. The ability to run the set, keep emotions in check, and stay organized are the top three requirements of being an assistant director. But there are times when you stand there in the middle of it, knowing that you’re behind schedule, an actor is showing up late, another actor is fighting with makeup, the DP is being ridiculous, the director is not directing, and one of your runner PAs got lost trying to pick up lunch.

So when those moments happen of on-set vertigo, what is an AD to do? How do you get past it? How the hell do I even get past it? There are a few places you can turn to in order to get things back under control…

Visit her blog to hear how she overcomes those on-set obstacles without losing her authority and confidence of the crew.

Bryan Frye conducted an interview with Mr. McClure a few years ago, offering this introduction to his work:

Bruce McClure doesn’t make films, he performs them. Most movies are frozen on celluloid or written on videotape. McClure’s don’t exist until he creates them in the theater. Twirling knobs, flipping switches, and adjusting lenses, he coaxes a bank of whirring projectors into producing images impossible to record: moire patterns dancing in mid-air, a glowing orb rising from the surface of the screen, prismatic bursts flashing about the room. Based in [Brooklyn, NY], McClure is an architect by training, who started making films several years ago. Since then, he’s encountered remarkable success, appearing in the 2002 and 2004 Whitney Biennial, and presenting film performances across the United States and internationally, including in Canada, Scotland, Italy, Japan, and Latvia.

Once we decided that Shia would start seated, how was I going to key his face?  He was sitting very close to the lockers that surrounded him in a big U shape.  I saw all of the lockers. Where should the key light come from?  If I brought it from behind camera, that would be very flat. I knew I wanted him in a golden shaft, so this would be my starting point.  I set that hot 3/4 backlight coming through the window, using a Mole Richardson 20K Fresnel full spot dimmed down to 50 percent.  I let what naturally would happen take over.   If a bright shaft was blasting through a window and hitting his head and shoulders, it  would bounce off of the lockers and floor, so that would be his key light.

It’s a really great post and I encourage you to read the whole thing, diagrams and all.

Secondly, we’d like to welcome our two new faculty members, Charlie Anderson and Jesse Schlotterbeck. Charlie comes to us from Boston University, where he earned his MFA while teaching undergraduate production classes. He is also a writer and director of short films, including All Day Yeah. Charlie will be teaching 210, 410, and Workshop classes during his one-year appointment here at Denison.

Jesse holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of Iowa, where he completed a dissertation on musical biopics such as Ray and Walk the Line. Jesse also studies film documentaries, as well as the evolving relationship between film and television. This fall he will be teaching Film Aesthetics & Analysis and Cinema History.

If you get a chance, please stop by and introduce yourselves to the new faculty and help them feel at home here at Denison. Good luck in the new academic year!

Nigel Andrews has an answer.

It isn’t the concept, it isn’t the dialogue, it isn’t even the characterisation that makes the movie a masterpiece. It is the vision.

What do we mean by that? Let’s go back to Borges. What was the second of the “two plots” he finds in the film? It is, he says, far superior to the Rosebud plot. It is “the investigation of a man’s secret soul by means of the works he has made, the words he has spoken, the many destinies he has destroyed … The film teems with forms of multiplicity, of incongruity … the detested Charles Foster Kane is a simulacrum, a chaos of appearances … In one of Chesterton’s stories” – Borges’s beloved GK Chesterton – “the hero observes that nothing is so frightening as a labyrinth without a centre. This film is precisely that labyrinth.”