Marvelous Montages

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Recently Kevin Yost (Lucasfilm editor and seen in These Amazing Shadows) sent us a link to the film, Precious Images by Chuck Workman. It features approximately 470 half-second-long splices of movie moments through the history of American film. This film has been the long considered THE standard by which all other film montages are measured. It won an Oscar as best short and was added to the National Film Registry in 2009.

We consider Doug Blush, who co-edited These Amazing Shadows, to be just as good as Mr. Workman. That point of view is supported by John Lopez of Vanity Fair who called Doug's work in These Amazing Shadows to be "the montage to end all montages."

Another great montage editor is Stephen Garrett of Kinetic Trailers. Stephen edited the These Amazing Shadows trailer. In 2010 he edited a Martin Scorsese tribute montage for Golden Globes that is considered one of the best film montages of recent memory. See it below.



When a director is working with an editor a lot of verbal discussion goes on, but it is always best to support an idea with visual aids. Way back when Paul and I were first starting to work with our editors, Doug Blush and Alex Calleros, we put together some ideas (including montages) to show them what we had in mind for TAS. Below is one early (and very rough) example of something we presented to our editors to show them what the doc might feel like. Some of it survived - but most was discarded. Ah, the vagaries of the creative process!

 

These Amazing Shadows Poster, People, Places and Things

Screen grab from the moviegoods.com website.

First it was Peter Golub's score available on itunes...now it's our Brian Oakes designed poster for sale on moviegoods.com...what could possibly be next? Dr. Billington and George Willeman lunchboxes, bobbleheads and mousepads? Gift giving becomes simple for Christmas/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice (for our pagan fans) 2011. Here comes the vast merchandising of These Amazing Shadows!
These Amazing Shadows Poster: http://www.moviegoods.com/these-amazing-shadows.asp
(in addition to standard sizes our poster is available in bus shelter poster size 43' x 62" for those of you that live in a warehouse size home)
These Amazing Shadows score on itunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/these-amazing-shadows-original/id435119696

In the fall the DVD (and hopefully Blu-ray) of These Amazing Shadows will be released by PBS Video. We spent the past week putting together our DVD bonus features. We're quite proud of the extensive DVD extras that will include:
- Lost Forever, a 25-minute short on film preservation and restoration. It's quite entertaining and educational. Seriously, we're not kidding.
- A behind the scenes look of our score being recorded in Prague, Czech Republic. It includes an interviews with composer, Peter Golub, and score mixer, Scott Johnson, that are inter-cut with actual footage of the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra performing/recording Peter's score.
- A behind the scenes look at our week at the Sundance Film Festival 2011.
- Outtakes from our interviews with John Waters, Christopher Nolan and Tim Roth.
- Deleted and alternate scenes. Example: one of our favorite people, Mick LaSalle, film critic and author describes what makes Gold Diggers of 1933 so great.
- And, a short fun piece on "My Favorite Movie" in which you will find out the answer to the burning question: Who does Christopher Nolan identify with - Han Solo or Luke Skywaker?

(l to r) Alex Calleros, Christine O'Malley, Paul Mariano and Doug Blush pose in front of the giant head of Leo.

Los Angeles is such a wonderfully interesting and challenging place. Paul and I live in different parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of the people we worked with on TAS live in LA so we have spent a lot of time down in the Southland. Paul and I just returned from a short trip to LA to work on the above mentioned DVD extras. We began our meeting with editors Doug and Alex and producer Christine with our traditional lunch at Fred62 located in the Los Feliz section of town. Super hip place - very LA. Right across the street is a gigantic mural of film stars that include Leo DiCaprio, Uma Thurman and Johnny Depp. If you keep your ears pricked up you can hear conversations during lunch of actors complaining about casting calls, casting couches and demanding directors.

Panoramic of Fred62

Panorama of mural across the street from Fred62.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences recently asked us to send them a copy of our poster for their collection. Very cool request. That lead us to discover a couple of fun videos on their site:
1) How a Oscar statuette is made - http://www.oscars.org/video/watch/making_of_oscar.html
2) The conservation process for a giant poster - http://www.oscars.org/video/watch/mhl_poster_restoration.html

We recently had the good fortune to screen These Amazing Shadows for employees at Lucasfilm and next week will do the same for the employees at Pixar. Stay tuned for photos and info from those screenings.

Alex's Triumphant Return, Stain Boy and HDNet/NFR

Co-director, Paul Mariano, and co-editor, Alex Calleros, present These Amazing Shadows at UCSC.

Have you ever dreamed of returning in triumph to high school and/or college after achieving success? I can't say that was one of Alex Calleros (co-editor of These Amazing Shadows) goals in life. But, he lived it this week on the campus of his alma mater the University of California, Santa Cruz. Alex ('08), along with Paul and I had the wonderful experience of presenting a screening of These Amazing Shadows to one of Professor Shelly Stamps' film classes. Shelly is one of the interview subjects (women directors segment) in TAS and is Alex's former professor.

UCSC Professor Shelly Stamp proudly watches her former student Alex Calleros introduce These Amazing Shadows.

The students really liked and felt inspired by TAS. They asked fun questions and even offered distribution advise. They were clearly impressed with how quickly Alex had achieved success in the film business and were eager to find out his secret(s) to success, which will be the subject of a future blog entry. Shelly told Paul and me that Alex was a great student, "who was really active and seemed to be president of every student film organization."

Professor Stamps' film class in Studio C - Communications Building on the campus of UCSC

Shelly will be presenting a paper on film director, Lois Weber, at the Doing Women's Film History Conference in Sunderland, England - April 13-15. Our big thanks to Prof. Stamp and her class!

Stain Boy

One of the regrets I have about These Amazing Shadows was not pursuing an interview with director Tim Burton. He is such a different kind of person and a great interview (see Charlie Rose's interview of Tim). Tim just came out with a new website that you should check out. The site is centered on a new book of Tim's illustrations called appropriately enough, The Art of Tim Burton. On the website you can get a preview of his art by guiding Stain Boy (via your mouse or touchpad) through a gallery. The website is worth a visit alone just for the background music.
www.timburton.com

Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean from the motion picture, Giant.

HDNet Movies regularly schedules films from the National Film Registry. Please go to the following link to see their current schedule. Their March schedule includes Giant, The Bridge Over the River Kwai and The Terminator. HDNet is available through Comcast, AT&T, Charter Communications, DIRECTV, Dish Network and Verizon. As they say..."check your local listing for exact channel."
National Film Registry on HDNet

Another day in the life at Sundance Version 2.0, Volume 2, Chapter 2

The mini marquee for theater number five at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City.

Another day...whew! They all have blended into each other. We shall begin with last night...Friday night in Salt Lake City. Most films at Sundance have a Salt Lake City screening. It requires leaving the protection of the Sundance bubble with it's festival friendly audiences and driving 45 minutes to the real world. It is conventional wisdom that the audience you get in SLC is a "real" audience and will give you a much better idea of what the public really thinks of your film. As you can see from the above photo of the mini marquee above the entrance to theater 5 we had a lot to live up to. It turns out the full house thought our doc was "Amazing." Once again, whew! Even though it was a late showing and the theater was rather warm - most of the audience stayed for the Q&A. Great questions and many pigeonholed us after for private questions. Really passionate people who love film. Great audience. Thank you SLC!

Composer Peter Golub talking with score mixer Mike Roskelley and his wife Kelly.

We were lucky to be joined last night by our composer Peter Golub and score mixer Mike Roskelley who was with his wife, Kelly. Mike and Kelly live in Salt Lake City. Kelly is a psychiatrist who practices at the local VA hospital. They are such a nice people. Several members of the team that Peter assembled to create his score are from SLC. Prior to the screening we had dinner with Peter who is a wonderful dinner companion because he can speak on such a wide range of subjects. He is one of those rare people who has strong opinions but is not preachy or over bearing. He is just very smart and personable - an unusual combination and a great person to hang with.

Co-editor Alex Calleros does some business on the web at the Sundance House HP computer center.

Our co-editor, Alex Calleros, has seen 124 films over the past ten days. Okay, that is an exaggeration, but he has seen a ton of films and reports to us daily on his favorites (The Details, Circumstance among others). He is the master at getting around town on the confusing free shuttle system. Not only is Alex out in force supporting These Amazing Shadows, attending parties, seeing films - he and two friends have launched a site called Finite Films (see link below). They propose to produce one short film every month over the next year following "constraints" that are submitted by the public to their site. They have a very clever pitch video that you must see that will explain the idea of "constraints." And, yes, they are asking for money and their pitch is really seductive. But, more importantly they are asking for your participation. You can actually collaborate with them. Simply said...these guys are talented so don't miss this opportunity.

http://www.finite-films.com/

Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Mariano discuss These Amazing Shadows distribution strategies.

We all piled out of the IFC/K-Swiss party at Jean Louis Restaurant and everyone (except me!) was handed a K-Swiss logo striped winter cap. After donning the caps Paul and Frazer transformed before our eyes into rowdy ruffians bent on besmirching the well crafted TAS public image (which was already damaged by my poor showing in the IFC/K-Swiss ping pong tournament...sorry everyone). After they realized that nobody was scared, intimidated or disturbed (well, maybe disturbed) by their gangster behavior we all retreated to our various cushy condos for some hot coco. What does it take to get the Park City police to take notice that some scary dudes are wearing stripy cozy winter caps.

Frazer Bradshaw, director of photography and co-director Paul Mariano.

George Willeman displays how a fashionable man wears a stripy cozy winter cap.