David Bowie’s Music Video “Jump They Say” Pays Tribute to Marker’s La Jetée, Godard’s Alphaville, Welles’ The Trial & Kubrick’s 2001

in Film, Music | March 1st, 2016

Last week we fea­tured William Gib­son’s mem­o­ry of the first time he saw La Jetée, Chris Mark­er’s influ­en­tial 1962 sci­ence-fic­tion short film con­struct­ed almost entire­ly out of still pho­tographs. In the Guardian arti­cle on the film’s lega­cy that quotes Gib­son, we also hear from direc­tor Mark Romanek, who speaks of being “exposed to Chris Mark­er’s work at a par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sion­able age.” Romanek, known for the fea­ture films One Hour Pho­to and Nev­er Let Me Go, has worked pri­mar­i­ly as a music video direc­tor, and in 1993 he got the chance to do a trib­ute to Mark­er in the video for David Bowie’s “Jump They Say.”

“Bowie and I shared an admi­ra­tion for La Jetée, so we con­trived to pay homage to it,” says Romanek. “The idea of mak­ing those icon­ic still images move seemed both excit­ing and some­how a lit­tle sac­ri­le­gious.” The obser­vant Mark­er fan will notice strong echoes of the film in the char­ac­ters and the events of the music video, espe­cial­ly when Bowie’s char­ac­ter gets dragged off by a pack of post-apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal­ly Gal­lic-look­ing tech­no-thugs and strapped into what looks like the very same wired-up ham­mock and mask used to send the pro­tag­o­nist of La Jetée back through time.

But much more went into this influ­ence-rich project than an appre­ci­a­tion for Chris Mark­er. Bowie described the song itself to the New Musi­cal Express as “semi-based on my impres­sion of my step­broth­er” Ter­ry Burns, who had tak­en his own life eight years ear­li­er. In the video, the singer’s char­ac­ter winds up tak­ing a fly­ing leap from the 29th floor of an office build­ing, thus escap­ing the oppres­sion and para­noia of his slick­ly sin­is­ter near-future cor­po­rate set­ting, which owes much to the ver­sion of Paris that Jean-Luc Godard offered up in his 1965 sci-fi noir Alphav­ille.

We might say that the sharp-suit­ed, sharp­er-haired incar­na­tion of Bowie here jumps as a way out of a world with which he can­not rea­son, and artists who want to depict such a world have often looked to the work of Franz Kaf­ka as an exam­ple. In this case, Bowie and Romanek draw from Orson Welles’ film adap­ta­tion of Kafka’s The Tri­al (espe­cial­ly its use of cor­ri­dors), which came out the very same year as La Jetée did. Enthu­si­asts of 1960s film will also notice that 2001: A Space Odyssey also had its impact on the pro­duc­tion design (espe­cial­ly as regards female cos­tum­ing). But what did the man behind the main inspi­ra­tion think? “I was deeply relieved,” says Romanek, “to hear that Mr. Mark­er was pleased and not offend­ed by the ges­ture.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Releas­es 36 Music Videos of His Clas­sic Songs from the 1970s and 1980s

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

How Chris Marker’s Rad­i­cal Sci­Fi Film, La Jetée, Changed the Life of Cyber­punk Prophet, William Gib­son

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

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How the Coen Brothers Put Their Remarkable Stamp on the “Shot Reverse Shot,” the Fundamental Cinematic Technique

in Film | February 29th, 2016

Even if you don’t think you know what a shot reverse shot is, you’ve prob­a­bly seen thou­sands of them. Tony Zhou, cre­ator of the video essay series Every Frame a Paint­ing, calls it “the most basic thing we have in film gram­mar. Near­ly every­thing you watch is going to be filled with it.” Why? Because a shot reverse shot brings togeth­er, and often oscil­lates between, two shots: one shot, say of a char­ac­ter, and its reverse shot, tak­en from a cam­era turned around to face what­ev­er the char­ac­ter in the first shot faces — usu­al­ly, anoth­er char­ac­ter.

“Most film­mak­ers use it as quick way to record dia­logue,” Zhou says. “Keep the actors still, use mul­ti­ple cam­eras, shoot ten takes, and then make deci­sions in post.” But not Joel and Ethan Coen (the auteurs behind films like Far­go, The Big Lebows­ki, No Coun­try for Old Men, and A Seri­ous Man).

In the new Every Frame a Paint­ing video essay on their use of the shot reverse shot, Zhou finds what makes a Coen Broth­ers shot reverse shot a Coen Broth­ers shot reverse shot, includ­ing a ten­den­cy to film their dia­logue “from inside the space of the con­ver­sa­tion,” as well as to work with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins who—in a piece of inter­view footage Zhou includes—describes him­self as a man with “a very strong feel­ing about lens­es,” and who for dia­logue scenes prefers wide-angle lens­es rather than long ones.

These pref­er­ences and oth­ers result in a fil­mog­ra­phy full of shot reverse shots that feel both “kind of uncom­fort­able, and kind of fun­ny,” a visu­al evo­ca­tion of the Coen Broth­ers’ fre­quent use of iso­lat­ed char­ac­ters trapped in “sit­u­a­tions they real­ly have no con­trol over” — and because of the choice of lens and place­ment of the cam­era, “you’re trapped with them.” And that set­up gives them a host of options when they want to empha­size or even exag­ger­ate cer­tain qual­i­ties of the char­ac­ters talk­ing or the sit­u­a­tion the sto­ry has put them in.

It even allows them to show more of the set­ting in which that sto­ry takes place, whether snowy North Dako­ta, Los Ange­les by night, 1980s west Texas, a 1960s Min­neso­ta sub­urb, or any oth­er of the regions and eras of which they’ve so vivid­ly made use. Add to that the kind of snap­py edit­ing rhythm that can make their movies’ dia­logue itself so mem­o­rable, and you may nev­er feel sat­is­fied by oth­er film­mak­ers’ shot reverse shots again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Art of Mak­ing Intel­li­gent Com­e­dy Movies: 8 Take-Aways from the Films of Edgar Wright

The Geo­met­ric Beau­ty of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Wes Anderson’s Films

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

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Watch the Trailer for a “Fully Painted” Van Gogh Film: Features 12 Oil Paintings Per Second by 100+ Painters

in Animation, Art, Film | February 27th, 2016

Lov­ing Vin­cent, an homage to Vin­cent van Gogh, promis­es to be “the first ful­ly paint­ed fea­ture film in the world.” What does that mean exact­ly? Accord­ing to film­mak­ers Doro­ta Kobiela and Hugh Welch­man, every frame of Lov­ing Vin­cent will be an oil paint­ing on can­vas, cre­at­ed with the same tech­niques Van Gogh used over a cen­tu­ry ago. To make these frames, Kobiela and Welch­man plan to hire skilled painters and put them through a 3‑week inten­sive train­ing course, teach­ing each to paint like Van Gogh him­self. Or so that’s how they explained things dur­ing their Kick­starter cam­paign sev­er­al years ago.

Although pro­duc­tion is still ongo­ing, you can see the first fruits of their labors. Above, watch a trail­er for Lov­ing Vin­cent, which fea­tures (accord­ing to the Youtube blurb accom­pa­ny­ing the video) “12 oil paint­ings per sec­ond, all done by over 100 painters trained in the same style.”

If you’re a tal­ent­ed painter and want to con­tribute to mak­ing this orig­i­nal film (you can get an idea of what that looks like below), please vis­it the Lov­ing Vin­cent web­site and scroll down to the recruit­ment sec­tion. The site also includes oth­er mate­r­i­al that takes you inside the mak­ing of this inno­v­a­tive film.

Enjoy…

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

13 Van Gogh’s Paint­ings Painstak­ing­ly Brought to Life with 3D Ani­ma­tion & Visu­al Map­ping

Watch as Van Gogh’s Famous Self-Por­trait Morphs Into a Pho­to­graph

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

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City of Scars: The Impressive Batman Fan Film Made for $27,000 in 21 Days

in Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, Film | February 26th, 2016

The sys­tem is bro­ken… 

A com­mon enough sen­ti­ment in an elec­tion year, but in this case, the speak­er is Bat­man, and the proof is the 30-minute labor of love above.

Five years ago, father and son Bat­man fans Sean and Aaron Schoenke spent $27,000 to make City of Scars, this thrilling­ly grim entry into the canon.

The Jok­er may have escaped, but the Schoenkes part ways with a cer­tain Hol­ly­wood fran­chise by con­fin­ing the cyn­i­cism to the sto­ry. The prospect of measly box office returns did­n’t stop them! They knew from the get go that their take would be zero. DC Comics allows ordi­nary mor­tals to use its char­ac­ters in their own inde­pen­dent projects, pro­vid­ed they don’t attempt to real­ize a prof­it.

Pre­dictably dis­mal box office fig­ures aside, the Schoenkes’ efforts have paid off splen­did­ly in oth­er ways. City of Scars, and its 2011 sequel, Seeds of Arkham, below, have gar­nered a gen­er­ous help­ing of atten­tion and awards (The Wall Street Jour­nal called City of Scars “impres­sive”), and the tal­ent­ed vol­un­teer cast and crew have ben­e­fit­ed from increased vis­i­bil­i­ty. Rather than reward­ing him­self with a new car or a man­sion in Bel Air, Schoenke the Younger broke with tra­di­tion, and cast him­self as Nightwing.

These days, the Shoenkes’ pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Bat in the Sun, has legions of fans, just like Bat­man! Super­hero devo­tees are a noto­ri­ous­ly tough crowd, but Bat in the Sun’s dark psy­cho­log­i­cal vision pass­es muster with them, as does its taste in vil­lains.

Box office totals notwith­stand­ing, the same can­not be said for the stuff the stu­dio churns out. (The sys­tem is bro­ken, remem­ber?)

The Schoenkes have chan­neled their indie suc­cess into a fran­chise of their own, Super Pow­er Beat Down, a month­ly web series where­in view­ers get to decide which super­hero won the staged bat­tle. Watch it below, in prepa­ra­tion for choos­ing the next vic­tor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

Russ­ian Super­heroes: Artist Draws Tra­di­tion­al Russ­ian Folk Heroes in a Mod­ern Fan­ta­sy Style

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. You don’t need to cos-play to hang with her at the New York Fem­i­nist Zine­fest this Sun­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How Chris Marker’s Radical SciFi Film, La Jetée, Changed the Life of Cyberpunk Prophet, William Gibson

in Film, Sci Fi | February 26th, 2016

Every­one remem­bers the first time they saw La Jetée. For cyber­space- and cyber­punk-defin­ing writer William Gib­son, author of such sui gener­is sci­ence-fic­tion nov­els as Neu­ro­mancer, Vir­tu­al Light, and Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion, that life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence came in the ear­ly 1970s, dur­ing a film his­to­ry course at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia. “Noth­ing I had read or seen had pre­pared me for it,” he tells The Guardian in a reflec­tion on the lega­cy of Chris Mark­er’s “thrilling and prophet­ic” 1962 short film, a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic time-trav­el love sto­ry told almost entire­ly with still pho­tos. (You can get a taste of it from the short clip above and a longer one here.) “Or per­haps every­thing had, which is essen­tial­ly the same thing.”

I can’t remem­ber anoth­er sin­gle work of art ever hav­ing had that imme­di­ate and pow­er­ful an impact, which of course makes the expe­ri­ence quite impos­si­ble to describe. As I expe­ri­enced it, I think, it drove me, as RD Laing had it, out of my wretched mind. I left the lec­ture hall where it had been screened in an altered state, pro­found­ly alone. I do know that I knew imme­di­ate­ly that my sense of what sci­ence fic­tion could be had been per­ma­nent­ly altered.

Part of what I find remark­able about this mem­o­ry today was the tem­po­ral­ly her­met­ic nature of the expe­ri­ence. I saw it, yet was effec­tive­ly unable to see it again. It would be over a decade before I would hap­pen to see it again, on tele­vi­sion, its screen­ing a rare event. See­ing a short for­eign film, then, could be the equiv­a­lent of see­ing a UFO, the expe­ri­ence sur­viv­ing only as mem­o­ry. The world of cul­tur­al arte­facts was only atem­po­ral in the­o­ry then, not yet lit­er­al­ly and instant­ly atem­po­ral. Car­ry­ing the mem­o­ry of that screen­ing’s inten­si­ty for a decade after has become a touch­stone for me. What would have hap­pened had I been able to rewind? Had been able to rent or oth­er­wise access a copy? It was as though I had wit­nessed a Mys­tery, and I could only remem­ber that when some­thing final­ly moved – and I realised that I had been breath­less­ly watch­ing a sequence of still images – I very near­ly screamed.

You’d think that would count as enough Chris Mark­er-grant­ed aston­ish­ment for one life­time — and what­ev­er inspi­ra­tion Gib­son drew from La Jetée, he’s cer­tain­ly put to good use — but the film­mak­er, ever-curi­ous tech­nol­o­gy and media enthu­si­ast, and “pro­to­type of the twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry man” had anoth­er shock in store. Two years after Mark­er’s death, and about thir­ty after Gib­son’s first view­ing of La Jetée, the lat­ter found that he had actu­al­ly appeared, unbe­knownst to him­self, in one of the for­mer’s oth­er movies.

“I was in a Chris Mark­er film and I nev­er knew until today,” tweet­ed Gib­son, append­ing the entire­ly under­stand­able tag #gob­s­macked. His image pops up at the begin­ning of Lev­el Five, Mark­er’s sto­ry of a com­put­er pro­gram­mer’s search for a way to vir­tu­al­ly recre­ate the Sec­ond World War’s Bat­tle of Oki­nawa, released in 1997 in France but not until 2014 in the Unit­ed States. As a work con­cerned with real­i­ty’s rela­tion­ship to its recon­struc­tion by human mem­o­ry — a fas­ci­na­tion of Mark­er’s all the way through his career — as well as with real­i­ty’s rela­tion­ship to its only-just-begin­ning recon­struc­tion by com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy, it makes sense that its nar­ra­tion, which takes the form of the pro­tag­o­nist’s video diary, would ref­er­ence Gib­son’s con­cep­tion of cyber­space.

Always mak­ing max­i­mal­ly cre­ative use of the rela­tion­ship between their words and their images, Mark­er does­n’t hes­i­tate to flash the author’s face onscreen between bursts of gray sta­t­ic (an ele­ment famous­ly evoked in Neu­ro­mancer’s open­ing) and footage of Japan (anoth­er site of deep inter­est for both cre­ators). Gib­son him­self always comes off as calm and reflec­tive in per­son, espe­cial­ly for a crafts­man of such stim­u­lat­ing­ly real­ized, infor­ma­tion-over­loaded, sweep­ing­ly influ­en­tial visions of the inten­si­fied present. But could any­one ever ful­ly recov­er from the aston­ish­ment of see­ing them­selves pass­ing through one of Chris Mark­er’s?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Gib­son Reads Neu­ro­mancer, His Cyber­punk-Defin­ing Nov­el (1994)

Take a Road Trip with Cyber­space Vision­ary William Gib­son, Watch No Maps for These Ter­ri­to­ries (2000)

The Owl’s Lega­cy: Chris Marker’s 13-Part Search for West­ern Culture’s Foun­da­tions in Ancient Greece

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

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Wes Anderson Movie Sets Recreated in Cute, Miniature Dioramas

in Art, Film | February 25th, 2016

Wes Anderson’s per­fec­tion­ist films often look like doll­hous­es enlarged to fit in human actors, but Barcelona-based illus­tra­tor Mar Cerdà has one-upped the direc­tor and cre­at­ed her own minia­ture dio­ra­mas repli­cat­ing sets from sev­er­al of his films.

This is metic­u­lous work done in water­col­or, then pre­cise­ly cut and com­bined into scenes both two- and three-dimen­sion­al. For any­one who has tried to cut some­thing very small and fid­dly with an x‑acto knife, you’ll appre­ci­ate her skill. (The artist in me is com­plete jel­ly, as they say.) So far she has recre­at­ed the concierge desk from The Grand Budapest Hotel, the berth from The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­it­ed, and the bath­room from The Roy­al Tenen­baums, com­plete with Mar­got and her mom Ethe­line. (If you look deep­er, you will also find this mini Mar­got box.)

Her love of Ander­son is no sur­prise if you look at the oth­er work in her port­fo­lio. Her book Famil­iari is a series of fig­ures that can be flipped to make “80,000 dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies,” all of which give off the Tenen­baum group shot vibe. And her lov­ing­ly detailed recre­ation of an entry in a Menor­ca-locat­ed house shares a love of cute and col­or­ful with the director’s art direc­tion.

Dio­ra­mas aside, by the way, her water­col­or tech­nique as well as her fig­u­ra­tive work is on point.

Cur­rent­ly, Cerdà is work­ing on a Star Wars-themed dio­ra­ma because, hey why not? Most every­body in the world loves that uni­verse. And she also just fin­ished a recre­ation of a scene from Zoolan­der. Fol­low her on Insta­gram, because there’s sure to be more to come.

via AV Club

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Per­fect Sym­me­try of Wes Anderson’s Movies

Books in the Films of Wes Ander­son: A Super­cut for Bib­lio­philes

What’s the Big Deal About Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel? Matt Zoller Seitz’s Video Essay Explains

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Orson Welles Narrates the Russian Revolution in Ten Days That Shook the World (1967)

in Film, History | February 24th, 2016

“St. Peters­burg, cap­i­tal of Rus­sia. Octo­ber the 25th, 1917. The time: twen­ty-one min­utes to ten in the evening. At anchor in the riv­er Neva, the cruis­er Auro­ra waits to take her place in his­to­ry. In pre­cise­ly one min­ute’s time, the crew, led by Bol­she­viks, will fire a shot to sig­nal the attack on the win­ter palace.” So begins Ten Days That Shook the World — not John Reed’s 1919 book of reportage on the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion, nor Sergei Eisen­stein’s 1928 film based on it, but a 1967 doc­u­men­tary by Grana­da Tele­vi­sion. And who speaks those words? You won’t have to hear any­thing more than “St. Peters­burg” to rec­og­nize the voice of the one and only Orson Welles.

Welles could tell the sto­ry of any­thing, of course, and he does the expect­ed good job recount­ing that of the fall of Nico­las II, the Keren­sky regime, the Bol­she­vik takeover, and the Rus­sia that rose there­after, work­ing from a script by the Sovi­et film­mak­er Grig­ori Alexsan­drov, who co-direct­ed Eisen­stein’s film. As we lis­ten to Welles speak, we see imagery drawn from a vari­ety of sources: pho­tographs and news­pa­per clip­pings, inter­view footage, con­tem­po­rary news­reels, and even scenes from his­tor­i­cal fea­ture films about the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, espe­cial­ly Eisen­stein and Alexan­drov’s pic­ture.

I like to think that Welles appre­ci­at­ed this method of doc­u­men­tary con­struc­tion, which com­bines an over­all adher­ence to fact with occa­sion­al visu­al depar­tures from it — though the pro­duc­tion tight­ly inte­grates the “fic­tion­al” footage with the “fac­tu­al” footage, and the for­mer has in many cas­es shaped our col­lec­tive men­tal image of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion more than the lat­ter has. He would step deep into this are­na him­self less than a decade lat­er with F for Fake, his final, sui gener­is piece of film­mak­ing osten­si­bly about art forgery but real­ly, in both its form and sub­stance, about the line between the true and the false.

Watch­ing Ten Days That Shook the World here almost a half-cen­tu­ry into 1967’s future — itself a half-cen­tu­ry into 1917’s future — makes it impos­si­ble not to think about the con­tin­u­um of his­to­ry, and the shift­ing ways in which we’ve told and retold the sto­ries of those who came before us all along it. “Who dare say where the road they began to trav­el in 1917 will final­ly lead them,” asks Orson Welles of the Rus­sians at the doc­u­men­tary’s end, “and us?” The ques­tion holds up today just as it did fifty years ago — or indeed a hun­dred.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

War & Peace: An Epic of Sovi­et Cin­e­ma

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

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Take a Free Course on Filmmaking Featuring Brian Tufano (Trainspotting), Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) & Other Award-Winning Filmmakers

in Film, Online Courses | February 22nd, 2016

filmmaker course

The UK’s Nation­al Film and Tele­vi­sion School (NFTS) has part­nered with the British Film Insti­tute (BFI) to lift the lid on how to make great films, with a free 6 week course that starts today.

Taught by award-win­ning film­mak­ers from a range of spe­cial­ties, includ­ing Bri­an Tufano and Mike Fig­gis, it cov­ers every­thing from sto­ry­telling, to bud­get­ing, to under­stand­ing the impact of a sound­track.

Here, for instance, is Bri­an Tufano, the estab­lished cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, talk­ing about film­ing the infa­mous toi­let scene in Trainspot­ting — turns out you can do a great deal using half a toi­let and the tech­nique trompe-l’œil (“fool the eye”).

As part of the course, you can also can also watch shorts from recent grad­u­ates of the NFTS (a few of which are already col­lect­ing awards) and get rec­om­mend­ed videos from the Baf­ta Guru col­lec­tion — a site ded­i­cat­ed to get­ting new blood into the indus­try.

The free course, Explore Film­mak­ing, is offered through Future­Learn and gives you the chance to trade opin­ions with thou­sands of oth­er film buffs online, plus get com­ments as the weeks go by from the film­mak­ers teach­ing the course.

Here’s the break­down of what the course cov­ers:

1 — Intro­duc­tion: how does a film get from script to screen?

Nik Pow­ell, direc­tor of the NFTS and pro­duc­er of more than 40 films, includ­ing The Cry­ing Game, Mona Lisa and Com­pa­ny of Wolves.

2 — Sto­ry­telling: what’s the dif­fer­ence between plot and theme?

Des­tiny Ekhara­ga, direc­tor of Gone Too Far.

3 — Deci­sions: how to choose bud­get, sched­ule, loca­tion and kit?

Mike Fig­gis, direc­tor of Leav­ing Las Vegas, Time­Code and Inter­nal Affairs.

4 — The scene: how does a direc­tor make choic­es on set?

Corin Hardy, direc­tor of The Hal­low, recent­ly announced direc­tor of a re-make of The Crow, and direc­tor of music videos for artists such as The Prodi­gy, Olly Murrs and Devlin.

5 — Time and space: how does edit­ing affect mean­ing?

Jus­tine Wright, edi­tor of Touch­ing the Void, The Iron Lady and Locke.

6 — Sound and music: what is the impact of a film’s sound­track?

Dan­ny Ham­brook, sound design­er of Curse of the Were-Rab­bit and Le Week­end, pro­duc­tion sound mix­er on Rush.

In short — there will be no more excus­es for wrong­ly ori­en­tat­ed iPhone videos. Oh and please don’t for­get to namecheck Open Cul­ture and Future­Learn in your Oscar accep­tance speech.

You can join the course for free today.

Jess Weeks is a copy­writer at Future­Learn. Along with the rest of the Future­Learn team, she’s based in the British Library in Lon­don. Yes, it is occa­sion­al­ly like Har­ry Pot­ter.

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