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Cinematography People Technology VFX

Lenny Lipton, 3D Filmmaking Pioneer, Dies.

In the Hollywood 3D community, Lipton is known for developing the ZScreen electro-optical modulator — a tool used in digital 3D projection — through his company, StereoGraphics.

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Filmmaking Interview People Technology

George Lucas, Gene Youngblood and Expanded Cinema

I ran across this video a few years ago and found it very prescient of the landscape of today’s media technology . I forgot about it until I heard Gene Youngblood died. He and George talk about how hard it is to get into “Hollywood” and that technology will allow everybody to make films, with […]

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Filmmaking Interview People Photography

Revisiting Gordon Parks

Recently TCM played two of the Gordon Parks films, Shaft (1971) and The Super Cops (1974). Both held up very well and you could see many creative influences they had on other early 70’s movies like Dog Day Afternoon and French Connection. Among his other talents he also wrote songs and poetry. Like Stanley Kubrick […]

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Disney Filmmaking People Television

The 30th anniversary of Jim Henson and Muppet*Vision 3D

Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of Jim Henson. I was working on Muppetvision 3D at Imagineering when he died. I was so excited that Disney was buying the Muppets. I think that Jim Henson was another Walt Disney

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Cinematography Film Editing Film Sound People Technology VFX

Here We Go Again: The Digital Cinema Revolution Begins

Happy Birthday to George Lucas! As we know George was a big proponent of the use of digital technology in cinema. When I worked at Sony in the 1990’s, we were on the cutting edge of using digital cameras for cinematography.

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Music People Photography

Walter Becker

RIP Walter Becker. Photos of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan that I took in Las Vegas, 2016.    

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Documentary Filmmaking People

Hitchcock/Truffaut Documentary

In 1962, French New Wave auteur François Truffaut spent a week in Hollywood with his idol, Alfred Hitchcock. discussing films such as Psycho and Vertigo.

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Filmmaking Interview People

William Friedkin Talks ‘French Connection,’ ‘Sorcerer,’ & ‘The Exorcist’ In This Podcast Interview

The director of “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” “Sorcerer,” “Cruising,” “To Live and Die in L.A.,” “Bug,” and “Killer Joe,” to name just a few, William Friedkin is one of the greats to emerge from the 1970s brat pack director’s scene that included Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and more.

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Animation Filmmaking Interview People

Joe Dante Talks About ‘Termite Terrace,’ The Film He Tried To Make About Warner Bros. Animators

Director Joe Dante (Gremlins) talks about the time he developed a film about Golden Age Hollywood animators called Termite Terrace, the unglamorous nickname of the Warner Bros. animation studio in the 1930s.

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Film Editing Filmmaking Interview People

Walter Murch at CAMERIMAGE 2015

Interview with Walter Murch who received the Camerimage festival’s Special Award to Editor with Unique Visual Sensitivity. He edited sound on American Graffiti and The Godfather: Part II, won his first Academy Award nomination for The Conversation, won his first Oscar for Apocalypse Now, and won an unprecedented double Oscar for Best Sound and Best Film Editing for his work on The English Patient.