Master Moviemaking with the Mefites
January 11, 2012 1:10 AM   Subscribe

Can you recommend online videos or blogs which dissect, compare, and contrast different elements of filmmaking: camerawork, lighting, directing, editing, pacing, music, dialogue, color, etc? And if you went to film school or took classes, what were some lessons/first-hand experiments that really opened your eyes to the art and subjective nature of film?

I've started to be more diligent about listening to commentaries (recent ones being Laura, Sunshine, Die Hard, and The Bourne Identity), and while they can be enlightening, you only see the final edit of that particular film, and you wonder how different things could've been.

There was this detailed MeFi conversation about directing in particular, and this David Bordwell blog post about the Bourne "shaky cam." But I'd love to see video analyses since I think that's naturally the ideal format for analyzing moviemaking, and the most immediate.

And therein I'd like to see multiple examples used for compare-and-contrast, rather than breaking down, say, one particular scene in and of itself. Both from familiar Hollywood classics and amateur experimental stuff.

And in particular I'd like material that would enlighten me in terms of (seemingly) more subtle stuff like camerawork, lighting, and editing, which is often discussed so casually in director interviews and commentaries.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing to Media & Arts (1 answer total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
One thing I remember from film school that probably doesn't help you at all 'cos it's way more basic than what you're trying to find, but you asked what was eye-opening: being told that its just a common misconception that the director is the most influential/powerful person in movie-making. The editor is the most powerful. It's obvious in hindsight, but I was young enough that it had to be pointed out, but I started to think about film-making differently.

A related exercise we did was to take a movie, and cut your own trailer. It's hands-on way to explore the power of editing. And if you want to, tell a different story. Or along similar lines, forget the trailer and just have fun. :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 1:56 AM on January 11, 2012 [1 favorite]


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