Featured Stories

This is Cinema!

Wed, 01/04/2023 - 12:48 -- Nick Dager

The shared experience of the cinema is unmatched. But has contemporary scrolling on individual screens hurt audiences’ ability to participate in a collective screening? What happens when a director gets to direct his audience? During an exclusive screening of Triangle of Sadness at the Göteborg Film Festival, director Ruben Östlund will break the fourth wall and step into the movie theater; not only having directed the film showing on the screen, but also directing the audience in the cinema.

Creating an Entertainment Experience

Tue, 01/03/2023 - 12:27 -- Nick Dager

When a growing movie theatre company was selected as the anchor tenant for a new high-end entertainment destination in San Ramon, California, the digital display, and cinema projection technology the company planned to incorporate would not only need to be reliable and robust; it also had to complement the stylish and elegant feel of the rest of the space.

Do Intermissions Make Sense Again?

Wed, 12/28/2022 - 11:19 -- Nick Dager

It’s no secret that movies are getting longer. Two current films – Avatar: The Way of Water at three hours and 12 minutes and Babylon at three hours and nine minutes – are just the most recent examples. One recent study found that 2021's average movie runtime was 14 minutes longer than the average for 1991, and 21 minutes longer than the average runtime of the top-ten movies released in 1981. As runtimes increase, the number of showings many exhibitors can offer becomes a challenge and could cost them money at the concession stand. Is it time to reconsider the intermission?

Shooting Avatar: The Way of Water

Mon, 12/19/2022 - 09:59 -- Nick Dager

For Avatar: The Way of Water, a new cinematic journey from 20th Century Studios and Lightstorm Entertainment, Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron and his team developed new filmmaking technology to capture the actors’ performances underwater—something that had never been done before in the history of cinema. “The key to it was to actually shoot underwater and at the surface of the water so people were swimming properly, getting out of the water properly, diving in properly,” Cameron says. “It looks real because the motion was real. And the emotion was real.”

Creating the Look of RRR

Mon, 12/19/2022 - 09:49 -- Nick Dager

Directed by S.S. Rajamouli, RRR (Rise Roar Revolt) is reported to be the most expensive film ever made in Indian cinema. It tells the fictional story of two legendary revolutionaries and their journey away from home before they started fighting for their country in the 1920s. It stars two of Telugu cinema’s biggest screen idols, Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr.

Crafting the Sounds of Battle

Mon, 12/19/2022 - 09:38 -- Nick Dager

Devotion, the new film from Black Label Media, distributed by Columbia Pictures, and based on Adam Makos bestselling book of the same name, tells the inspirational, true story of two elite US Navy pilots who helped turn the tide in the most brutal battle of the Korean War. Through their heroic sacrifices and enduring friendship, Jesse Brown, the first Black aviator in US Navy history, and fellow fighter pilot, Tom Hudner, became the Navy’s most celebrated wingmen. Directed by JD Dillard and written by Jake Crane and Jonathan A. H. Stewart, the film stars Jonathan Majors, Glen Powell, Christina Jackson, Joe Jonas, and Thomas Sadoski.

No Need to Panic!

Mon, 12/19/2022 - 09:06 -- Nick Dager

For Panic! At the Disco’s music videos for its new album Viva Las Vengeance, cinematographer Eric Bader and director Brendan Walter took up the task creating unique videos that would make up the different acts of this rock opera. With 12 songs on the album and a tight deadline for the videos, Bader and Brendan trimmed the project to a more manageable six videos.

Overcoming the Low-Budget Comedy Look

Tue, 12/13/2022 - 09:48 -- Nick Dager

Am I Being Unreasonable?, the much-anticipated comedy-thriller series co-written by and starring BAFTA award-winner Daisy May Cooper and Selin Hizli, belies its low budget with a cinematic look. Shot by Slater Slater Ling, BSC, and directed by Johnny Campbell, the series is set in a small country village where Nic (Cooper) is lonely, bored in her marriage and haunted by a huge secret. One of the biggest challenges was to move away from a standard low-budget comedy look.

Moving from Stage to Screen

Mon, 12/12/2022 - 09:15 -- Nick Dager

Cinematographer Tat Radcliffe, BSC, chose the Cooke S7/i prime lens range paired with a Sony Venice to shoot the much-anticipated Netflix film adaptation of Matilda the Musical. Although it was important to stay true to the spirit of the stage show the team had to calibrate any sense of artificial stage.

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