One-to-one rela­tion­ships do not exist between the medieval Euro­pean Guild sys­tem and con­tem­po­rary labor unions or pro­tec­tion­ist rack­ets…. Nev­er­the­less, guilds were very much like both those things in some ways. They were also voca­tion­al schools, where young aspir­ing arti­sans could, with the right skills and con­nec­tions, appren­tice them­selves to mas­ter crafts­men, hope to receive decent train­ing, and look for­ward to becom­ing guild mas­ters them­selves should they per­sist.

Few orga­ni­za­tions like that exist today. But there is per­haps one indus­try in which—with the right con­nec­tions, skill, and persistence—a lucky and tal­ent­ed few rise through the ranks to mas­tery: the film indus­try, where a video store clerk, Quentin Taran­ti­no, can achieve last­ing fame and for­tune, as can for­mer part-time pro­jec­tion­ist, Wes Ander­son. Many direc­tors who came of age in the six­ties and sev­en­ties went the tra­di­tion­al route of film school, but one, Wern­er Her­zog, took a bandit’s way into the craft, steal­ing a cam­era from the Munich Film School, feel­ing that he “had some sort of nat­ur­al right for a cam­era, a tool to work with.”

Her­zog has cre­at­ed his own guild sys­tem, of a sort, with the Rogue Film School, a rough, infor­mal course, among oth­er things, in “guer­ril­la film­mak­ing.” Steal­ing cam­eras is not ruled out. But you’ll have to learn the tech­ni­cal stuff on your own. What mat­ters, most, Her­zog says, is that film­mak­ers “read, read, read, read, read.” These are direc­tors who have bor­rowed from oth­er direc­tors and films, and also from books, music, paint­ing, etc., dri­ven by an obses­sive and per­sis­tent desire to learn. And you’ll find them all in the super­cut above, in which Taran­ti­no, Ander­son, Her­zog, and oth­er “mas­ter film­mak­ers” like Scors­ese, Cop­po­la, Felli­ni, Welles, and more offer short, yet pro­found pieces of advice to aspi­rants.

We begin with Taran­ti­no, who argues that pas­sion is all you need to make a great film. “You don’t need to go to school” or know any of the tech­ni­cal stuff, but you do need to appren­tice your­self, with pure devo­tion and tenac­i­ty, to cin­e­ma. You won’t hear this from many of the oth­ers, but Ter­ry Gilliam also rec­om­mends a sec­ondary trade, maybe as a plumber, anoth­er pro­fes­sion that involves appren­tices and jour­ney­men work­ing their way up. It’s cer­tain­ly a trade that involves great skill, but to hear these direc­to­r­i­al guild mas­ters tell it, no oth­er pro­fes­sion asks for as much dri­ve and pas­sion as the movies, and appar­ent­ly you don’t even need to know what you’re doing at first. See the com­plete list of inter­vie­wees below.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: 00:00
JERRY LEWIS: 00:40
TERRY GILLIAM: 01:15
JOHN CARPENTER: 01:40
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON: 02:30
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: 03:54
FEDERICO FELLINI: 04:52
WERNER HERZOG: 05:56
WES ANDERSON: 07:22
SIDNEY LUMET: 07:50
JOHN LANDIS: 08:58
MARTIN SCORSESE: 10:15
GUILLERMO DEL TORO 11:38
ORSON WELLES 14:55

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Herzog’s Rogue Film School: Apply & Learn the Art of Gueril­la Film­mak­ing & Lock-Pick­ing

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing & Life Advice

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

If you don’t under­stand what makes Cit­i­zen Kane so impor­tant, just watch a few movies made before it. In his first out­ing as a film­mak­er, Orson Welles, whether by igno­rance or oth­er virtues, pio­neered so many aes­thet­ic and nar­ra­tive tech­niques that we can now hard­ly imag­ine how the medi­um ever did with­out. If you don’t under­stand what makes Welles’ last pic­ture, the qua­si-doc­u­men­tary on fact and false­hood F for Fake so impor­tant, just com­pare it to all the video essays pro­lif­er­at­ing on the inter­net today.

If Cit­i­zen Kane was just slight­ly ahead of its time in 1940, F for Fake, which came out in 1973, now looks more than three decades ahead of the curve. Nobody knows that bet­ter than Tony Zhou, cre­ator of the pop­u­lar cin­e­ma-focused video essay series Every Frame a Paint­ing.

“I’ve stolen more ideas from this film than from any oth­er,” he admits at the begin­ning of his trib­ute to F for Fake. “Every­thing I know about edit­ing” — and he knows a lot — “I’ve learned from this film.”

The first les­son it teach­es has to do with how to struc­ture, or rather, how not to struc­ture: instead of mak­ing cuts that feel like a repet­i­tive series of “and then“s, make cuts that, in the words of South Park co-cre­ator Trey Park­er, stands for “either the word there­fore or but.” In oth­er words, whether mak­ing a video essay, a fea­ture film, or any­thing in between, build the struc­ture not out of sim­ple, unordered list-like sequences, but out of caus­es, effects, and con­tra­dic­tions.  Through­out F for Fake, “Orson Welles does the exact same thing, except he does­n’t con­nect scenes; he con­nects thoughts. Even though this movie is an essay, each moment has the con­nec­tive log­ic of a South Park episode.”

This leads into the sec­ond les­son: “Have more than one sto­ry mov­ing in par­al­lel,” so that when­ev­er one “reach­es peak inter­est,” you can oscil­late to the oth­er. (No less an edit­ing mas­ter than Alfred Hitch­cock also sub­scribed to this prin­ci­ple, describ­ing it with the phrase “Mean­while, back at the ranch…”) Welles’ bravu­ra per­for­mance, how­ev­er, rotates between no few­er than six sto­ries: of art forg­er Elmyr de Hory, of “hoax-biog­ra­ph­er” Clif­ford Irv­ing, of Irv­ing’s sub­ject Howard Hugh­es, of Welles’ girl­friend Oja Kodar, of Welles him­self (and his infa­mous War of the Worlds broad­cast), and even of the mak­ing of F for Fake itself.

Tech­ni­cal points aside, Zhou draws from all this a per­spec­tive on his work: “It’s not about what you get. It’s about how you cut it, and what comes out the oth­er end. Remem­ber, video essays aren’t essays, they’re films, so you want to struc­ture and pace them like a film­mak­er would.” And in this final major work that he him­self describes as a “film about trick­ery and fraud,” Welles presents that and every­thing else he’d learned about film­mak­ing over the past forty years doing it. Even if some say we live a “post-fact” era — a term that would have end­less­ly amused Welles, or at least the “char­la­tan” ver­sion of him­self he plays in F for Fake — the laws of cin­e­ma retain their truth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F for Fake: Orson Welles’ Short Film & Trail­er That Was Nev­er Released in Amer­i­ca

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

Alfred Hitchcock’s 7‑Minute Mas­ter Class on Film Edit­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

To most inter­na­tion­al cinephiles, the word Mos­film imme­di­ate­ly brings to mind two tow­er­ing names in Russ­ian motion pic­tures: Sergei Eisen­stein and Andrei Tarkovsky. Both direc­tors made not just impor­tant movies but took major steps to devel­op the visu­al lan­guage of film itself, and both worked for Mos­film, one of Rus­si­a’s largest and old­est film stu­dios. First estab­lished in 1923, it went on to pro­duce more than 3,000 films dur­ing the Sovi­et era, some of which now define the cin­e­ma of that peri­od. Now view­ers around the world can enjoy their aes­thet­ic lush­ness, his­tor­i­cal inter­est, and pure enter­tain­ment val­ue more eas­i­ly than ever on Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel, which offers among its many freely view­able pic­tures a selec­tion of 70 films in high def­i­n­i­tion.

You’ll want to start, of course, with Eisen­stein and Tarkovsky. Mos­film has made avail­able in HD the for­mer’s Alexan­der Nevsky (1938) and much of the lat­ter’s fil­mog­ra­phy: Ivan’s Child­hood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mir­ror (1975), and Stalk­er (1979).

For all their high artis­tic achieve­ment, how­ev­er, they may admit­ted­ly rein­force the West­’s Cold War-era image of Rus­sians as ter­ri­bly seri­ous peo­ple who sel­dom even crack a smile, let alone laugh. So why not fol­low those up with a dive into Mos­film’s con­sid­er­able HD selec­tion of beloved, light-heart­ed Sovi­et come­dies?

Of all Sovi­et com­e­dy direc­tors, Leonid Gaidai stands as by far the most suc­cess­ful. You can watch a fair few of his works, long and short, on Mos­film’s HD playlist, includ­ing Oper­a­tion Y and Shurik’s Oth­er Adven­tures (1965); the intrigu­ing­ly titled Kid­nap­ping, Cau­casian Style (1967); The Dia­mond Arm (1969), the most pop­u­lar soci­ety com­e­dy ever; The Twelve Chairs (1971); Ivan Vasilievich Changes Pro­fes­sion (1973), based on a play by Mikhail Bul­gakov; and It Can’t Be! (1975). It also offers sev­er­al films from Gaidai’s con­tem­po­rary Eldar Ryazanov, who worked in a more satir­i­cal vein (and showed a sur­pris­ing will­ing­ness to poke fun at the absur­di­ties of Sovi­et life): Car­ni­val Night (1956), the beloved musi­cal Hus­sar Bal­lad (1962), Beware of the Car (1966), Office Romance (1977), Sta­tion for Two (1982), and A Cru­el Romance (1984).

You may also notice the con­spic­u­ous pres­ence of a cer­tain high­ly notable non-Russ­ian film­mak­er: Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, who in 1975 worked with Mos­film to make Der­su Uza­la, an adap­ta­tion of the mem­oirs of a trap­per in Rus­si­a’s far east­ern wilder­ness. It came as just one of Mos­film’s many lit­er­ary adap­ta­tions, the most famous per­haps being Sergei Bon­darchuk’s 1969 vision of Leo Tol­stoy’s War and Peace. On Mos­film’s HD playlist you’ll also find two fea­tures draw­ing on the work of Anton Chekhov: Andrei Kon­chalovsky’s Uncle Vanya (1971), and Emil Loteanu’s My Ten­der and Affec­tion­ate Beast, or a Hunt­ing Acci­dent (1978), a fea­ture-length adap­ta­tion of A Hunt­ing Par­ty.

Mos­film’s Youtube chan­nel fea­tures not just Sovi­et-era movies, but those from more recent years as well: the mighty film stu­dio sur­vived the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union itself, con­tin­u­ing to con­tribute to cin­e­ma as a qua­si-pri­vate fed­er­a­tion of inde­pen­dent stu­dios. Its cur­rent Direc­tor Gen­er­al, Karen Shakhnazarov, boasts an impres­sive fil­mog­ra­phy of his own. You can get an HD taste of his work by watch­ing Jazzmen (1983), Win­ter Evening in Gagra (1985), Couri­er (1986),  Zero­grad (1989), The Assas­sin of the Tsar (1991), Dreams (1993), Poi­sons, or the World His­to­ry of Poi­son­ing (2001), and The Van­ished Empire (2008), all of which weave togeth­er the threads — the vision­ary, the his­tor­i­cal, the every­day, the absurd — run­ning through Mos­film’s long his­to­ry.

NOTE: Though many of the titles on Mos­film’s HD playlist appear only in Russ­ian, most of the films them­selves come with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. Make sure to click the “CC” icon on the low­er right of the Youtube play­er to turn them on.

Some of the films men­tioned above will be added to our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch War and Peace: The Splen­did, Epic Film Adap­ta­tion of Leo Tolstoy’s Grand Nov­el (1969)

Free Films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Eisen­stein & Oth­er Russ­ian Greats

When Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Watched Solaris with Andrei Tarkovsky: I Was “Very Hap­py to Find Myself Liv­ing on Earth”

Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Free Sergei Eisen­stein Films

A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Sovi­et Mon­tage The­o­ry: A Rev­o­lu­tion in Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Once upon a time, a film could impress sim­ply by using col­or at all. Now, with a wider field of visu­al pos­si­bil­i­ties open to cin­e­ma than ever, film­mak­ers must not sim­ply use col­or but mas­ter it, active­ly, as a way of con­vey­ing emo­tions, ideas, and even more besides. Chan­nel Criswell’s Lewis Bond, who describes col­or as his “favorite aspect of visu­al sto­ry­telling,” breaks down some of the main ways film­mak­ers have used it so far in his video essay on col­or in cin­e­ma.

“Since before we were even able to actu­al­ize sound in film, we’ve been obsessed with col­or,” Bond says, hav­ing shown us clips drawn from the work of Stan­ley Kubrick, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Hayao Miyaza­ki, Ang Lee, and oth­er direc­tors known for their visu­al­ly lush pic­tures.

“Film has always been about the visu­al, and the pri­mor­dial age of cin­e­ma dis­plays the lengths we were will­ing to go to just to cap­ture its essence.” Then came Tech­ni­col­or: when Dorothy passed into the land of Oz, “we became com­plete­ly free to use col­or how­ev­er we want­ed, and artists began to under­stand the dis­ci­plines of aes­thet­ics and sym­bol­ism.”

Yet “the meth­ods of the silent era,” a time when film­mak­ers had to hand-tint each black-and-white frame they shot with the prop­er­ly evoca­tive col­or, “have held through to the 21st cen­tu­ry.” Red, per­haps the strongest col­or, sig­nals “hate and cru­el­ty” just as force­ful­ly as it does “pas­sion and love.” And while “a lus­cious green field gives us hope and shows us fer­til­i­ty,” oth­er green loca­tions “show the mun­dane and life­less, and the green on a per­son” — again, The Wiz­ard of Oz pro­vides the go-to exam­ple — “tells us who the mon­ster is.”

Bond finds tra­di­tions in the use of col­or that con­nect the films of the clas­sic era to those of mod­ern mas­ters like the appar­ent­ly col­or-obsessed Wes Ander­son, whose use of non-con­trast­ing greens, browns, and yel­lows in Moon­rise King­dom “suits the film’s nos­tal­gic tone,” and who fills The Roy­al Tenen­baums and The Grand Budapest Hotel of pinks and beiges in order not to pile on emo­tion­al weight, but to reduce it, to tell us not to take the events of the sto­ry too seri­ous­ly.

Quentin Taran­ti­no, a fan of both the sub­tle and the unsub­tle, uses col­or in a vari­ety of ways, from the code­names of the thieves in Reser­voir Dogs to the bright yel­low track suit (itself a trib­ute to the films of Bruce Lee) worn by the pro­tag­o­nist of Kill Bill. In Apoc­a­lypse Now, sub­ject of anoth­er Chan­nel Criswell essay recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Vit­to­rio Storaro “used a bal­anced col­or scheme in kurtz’s com­pound, but the orange mist gave a feel­ing of tox­i­c­i­ty in the air.”

In Bernar­do Bertoluc­ci’s The Last Emper­or, “as the char­ac­ter dis­cov­ers more about the world around him, the col­or palette shifts. The world of tra­di­tion and the char­ac­ter’s naiveté is dis­played by the world of red. How­ev­er, as the char­ac­ter begins to learn more, the col­or goes from red to orange, yel­low, and final­ly, once he becomes ful­ly com­pre­hen­sive of his sur­round­ings, he’s bound­ed to green.” And so, by the end of the movie, “both the char­ac­ter and the wheel have turned 180 degrees.” Bond means the col­or wheel, a cir­cu­lar dia­gram of the col­ors first devel­oped by Isaac New­ton and still cen­tral to col­or the­o­ry.

If cinephiles give that sub­ject a lit­tle study, they’ll see how their favorite films tell sto­ries in a more, well, vivid way. No mat­ter how many times you’ve seen Ver­ti­go, for exam­ple, a work­ing knowl­edge of col­or will help you appre­ci­ate exact­ly why it has such an impact when Scot­tie first sees Madeleine in a green dress sur­round­ed by a field of red. Alfred Hitch­cock­’s mas­ter­piece stands, of course, as one of the most effec­tive cin­e­mat­ic exam­ples of col­or as a sto­ry­telling device. Should any film­mak­er work­ing today both­er try­ing to top it? Bond quotes cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins as say­ing “that it’s easy to make col­or look good, but hard­er to make it ser­vice a sto­ry. He’s prob­a­bly right, but let’s try and prove him wrong.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free MIT Course Teach­es You to Watch Movies Like a Crit­ic: Watch Lec­tures from The Film Expe­ri­ence

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Strik­ing Super­cut of the Vivid Col­ors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Obses­sion with the Col­or Red: A Super­cut

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.