Massify Studio

Defining Cinematography

Amy Allen — 2009-07-29T13:08:31Z

Massify Interview: Defining Cinematography from Massify on Vimeo.

Jendra Jarnagin and Sean Porter, two thoughtful and talented DPs on Massify, sat down with us to talk about their craft, tackling topics such as what it means to be a cinematographer, what makes a project successful, how to further one's career and more. This video is useful to anybody who wants to go into the field and especially to Directors, Producers, and others who work with Cinematographers. Jendra is based in New York and Brooklyn and was recently profiled in American Cinematography. Learn more about her at her site, floatingcamera.com. Sean's based in Seattle and New York and his work can be found on his personal site.

Lighting: How To Do It Right

Amy Allen — 2009-07-23T14:21:10Z

Top cinematographers share their knowledge in these short videos (found on Creative Cow, directed by Jon Fauer). An excellent overview of what light has to do, and what it can do. Helpful to all. Second video after the jump.

Ashton Blount, Art Director

Amy Allen — 2009-07-20T12:32:35Z

Ashton Blount from Massify on Vimeo.

Art Director Ashton Blount's career has taken him from Los Angeles to Dubai to New York. He's created trees from scratch and even flooded an entire set. We caught up with him in his Brooklyn office to learn more about his career and pick his brain. His advice and experience is useful for anybody who wants to become an Art Director, as well as anybody who works or plans to work with one.

Keith Gordon's Cheat Sheet

Amy Allen — 2009-07-16T16:29:34Z

Keith Gordon, an advisor to directing fellows at the Sundance Lab, has a deceptively simple post up on Filmmaker Blog. The Director's Cheat Sheet contains such gems as: "Remember the scene will NEVER be just like it is in your head. It may be better, it may be worse, it may just be different. But if you get stuck trying to make it "just the way you imagined it" you may well get stuck on the road to hell." and more. Read and print right away.

Casting Director Tells All

Amy Allen — 2009-07-13T11:53:54Z

Massify Interview: Alycia Aumuller from Massify on Vimeo.

What do casting directors really think? NY-based Casting Director and friend to actors Alycia Aumuller gives advice to those who are just starting out.

Internet Etiquette For Actors

Amy Allen — 2009-07-07T17:57:22Z

Casting Director Paul Russell's two recent advice articles on backstage pertain to the the way actors present themselves online, both on social networking sites and in email. Since Massify has a social networking component, it makes sense to expand on the topic.

First, email, since it's easier. Russell says, "For any professional, electronic correspondence an actor's email address should include the performer's name or part of it. Such as: NormaDesmond@whatever.com, N.Desmond@whatever.com
Norma_D@whatever.com, etc."

He's right, of course, and I would encourage actors to take this a step further. Acting is a business and you are selling yourself, the product. Nobody today would have a business without a website, so you should use the email address that comes with your domain name, if possible (norma@normadesmond.com, to continue using Russell's example).

ADR Advice

Amy Allen — 2009-07-06T13:56:52Z

Excellent article about how to avoid ADR headaches in The Studio Daily Blog today. Woodhall has some great advice for directors, like "In the heat of production, with a large crew, it’s easy to “move on” even after the Director has been told about car noise, airplane noise or a host of other sound issues. Often sound recordists make their issues known and are told that “we will fix it in the mix.” Many things can be fixed with good sound editing and mixing but often Directors and actors will find themselves on an ADR stage replacing bad lines of dialog." and "I always suggest to editors and directors to take a good listen through headphones of their edit to determine the quality of the audio if they haven’t by the time they are going to audio post." Good stuff.

Writing Your Way Into Plot

Amy Allen — 2009-06-26T10:19:59Z

While necessary and ultimately fulfilling, the process of developing compelling characters for their narratives can be challenging for writers and directors alike.

Author and professor Jeff Bens gives advice on creating and developing characters for fiction and film, in addition to story structure and writing in general.

Nobody Will Tweet For You

Amy Allen — 2009-06-24T17:38:48Z

...Unless you're a celebrity, of course. But for those of you unsure about how all these social media tools work, check out Clay Shirky's talk via Ted. It has Twitter in the title, but more broadly it aims to help people understand how online communication works today. Shirky points out that as everything from newspapers to movies move to the the internet, "Every medium is right next door to every other medium." And as a content creator, it's up to you to engage your audience using new tools to drive them to your content. This is a good primer.

What Does a Showrunner's Assistant Do?

Amy Allen — 2009-06-09T17:54:10Z

Over on John August's blog, Jonny Sommers gives an enlightening and entertaining first person account of being an assistant to a successful showrunner. Choice quote: '"One executive I know described the assistant-showrunner relation this way: 'You’re sort of like my fridge. I just expect it to work.'"

Making Movies That Matter

Amy Allen — 2009-06-04T15:44:28Z

In honor of the White House announcing that they'll sponsor a round of TED talks, here's a talk by Producer Jeff Skoll. His body of work, which includes movies like Good Night and Good Luck, Syriana and An Inconvenient Truth, is meant to inspire social change. In the above lecture, he touches on how some of his films have achieved this, why he believes in Humanity 2.0, and why controversy is a good thing.

Using Technology Onscreen

Suraj Das — 2009-06-01T18:20:15Z

Imagine if Hitchcock's "Rear Window" took place in 2009; Grace Kelly would have left her phone on vibrate when she snuck into the apartment across the street, and James Stewart would've sent her a text message telling her to run away when Raymond Burr's car pulled up outside. What's more, the central mystery as to whether or not Burr's wife was dead probably wouldn't amount to much of a head-scratcher - her Facebook friends and Twitter followers would have likely pieced together the puzzle long before Stewart got around to it.

Writing a good script was hard enough before the advent of cellphones and the internet made things even harder. This insightful article in The Times explores one of the greatest challenges faced by screenwriters today - making internet activities appear dramatically interesting and exciting to watch. "If fighting now looks like making up now looks like booking travel, as it does when people conduct their affairs online," asks writer Virginia Heffernan, "how do film directors make human action both dramatic to viewers and roughly true to life?"

Heffernan provides some examples of films and television shows, including Fox's "24," that feature compelling scenes where drama unfolds over the internet. I'm sure you can think of many other examples. Let us know about your writing challenges involving technology at feedback@massify.com and we'll discuss them in a later article.

John August Answers Questions

Amy Allen — 2009-05-29T18:35:56Z

Unanswered Questions from John August on Vimeo.

Screenwriters, this video from John August is worth a watch. Not only is he a joy to listen to, but he's giving you the type of advice you'd normally pay steep tuition to receive. (Hint, if you don't read his blog, I highly recommend it.) He gives some tough love, like pointing out that while you can improve your storytelling skills by reading other screenplays and seeing what works and what doesn't, "I don't know if anybody can really improve their ability to write characters, consciously." He also encourages writers to read scripts online to inspire and inform their own work. Sounds like a plan to me. What else are you doing this weekend? No, seriously.

J.J. Abrams Says Anybody Can Make Movies

Amy Allen — 2009-04-17T18:42:24Z

This was posted back in January of 2008. It's not recent, but definitely relevant. J.J. Abrams (creator of Lost, Cloverfield, many more) talks about his love of mystery and making things. Best quotes: "What are stories but mystery boxes?" and "No community is best served when only the elite have control." Check out the entire series of talks from TED.

Check out this article

Amy Allen — 2008-07-10T20:59:19Z

In his article last week in the LA Times, David Sarno talks about how the internet is not only becoming a more legitimate place for independent films to be seen but also created.