Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage – TCM Film Noir Daily Dose #4

July 22, 2015 Dave Cowl — No Comments

Dark PassageI have been enjoying the Film Noir course that TCM has set up and will be making some posts here to help me remember what I am learning.

Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage is the fourth of the Daily Dose clips that was posted to illustrate the kinds of films that led to the Film Noir style.

Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage

This is what Richard Edwards at TCM had to say about this film:

As we finish up our first batch of Daily Doses, you don’t get a much better and more innovative opening sequence than in Delmer Daves’ 1947 film Dark Passage.

Film noir and cinematic experimentation go hand in hand. This amazing four-minute sequence uses a first person point of view (POV) to literally put the camera where Humphrey Bogart’s head should be.

We see Bogart’s (Vincent Parry) escape from San Quentin prison literally “through his own eyes.”

This necessitates a great deal of craft and ingenuity from Daves and the rest of his filmmaking crew. First person POV allows you to feel like you are tumbling down a hill inside a barrel; you are clawing your way back to the highway; you are throwing a punch.

But in the end, even though these experiments were not often repeated in other films, these techniques are not just gimmicks in a film noir.

The best films noir get inside our heads, just like we get inside Bogie’s head for a portion of the film here.

Rather than being an innocent bystander, Dark Passage‘s experimental opening makes us much more complicit in this film than we might have expected or wanted.

William Wyler’s The Letter – TCM Film Noir Daily Dose #3

July 22, 2015 Dave Cowl — No Comments

TheLetterI have been enjoying the Film Noir course that TCM has set up and will be making some posts here to help me remember what I am learning.

William Wyler’s The Letter is the third of the Daily Dose clips that was posted to illustrate the kinds of films that led to the Film Noir style.

William Wyler’s The Letter

This is what Richard Edwards at TCM had to say about this film:

You can tell that film noir is right around the corner, if not already arrived, in 1940’s The Letter.

This film is not going to pull any punches. However, the film opens not in a gritty urban noir setting but on the grounds of a rubber plantation in Singapore.

We are brought into this world by a slowly moving camera that introduces us to some of the workers on the plantation. The camera moves about the grounds languorously, taking in what seems to be a tropical and peaceful night scene.

Though there is a full moon, Wyler isn’t tipping his hand much, and does little to prepare us for what comes next.

Considered one of the most famous opening scenes in Hollywood history, the noir style of storytelling is starting to shatter the comfortable introductions and gentle establishing shots common in classic filmmaking.

Rather than giving us time to find our footing in this new world, an opening like we find in The Letter, is intended to be a gut shot, to induce a deliberate disequilibrium in us.

We are knocked down and dragged into these kinds of stories with a new startling ferocity, soon to be a hallmark of film noir.

Jean Renoir’s La Bete Humaine – TCM Film Noir Daily Dose #2

July 22, 2015 Dave Cowl — No Comments

Jean Renoir's La Bete HumaineI have been enjoying the Film Noir course that TCM has set up and will be making some posts here to help me remember what I am learning.

Jean Renoir’s La Bete Humaine is the second of the Daily Dose clips that was posted to illustrate the kinds of films that led to the Film Noir style.

Jean Renoir’s La Bete Humaine

This is what Richard Edwards at TCM had to say about this film:

Quite literally, Jean Renoir’s 1938 film La Bete Humaine gets off to a fast start.

Shot on board a moving train, this dynamic opening sequence, filled with realistic moments more associated with documentary filmmaking, alternates between moments of mechanical gracefulness and human grittiness.

It feels often like a poetic essay on the nature of being a railroad engineer. This kind of opening sequence connects to a long line of cinematic moments that deliberately draw parallels between the cinema and the railroad.

Such an observation can look back to the very origins of cinema itself—as seen in the Lumière Brothers’ famous 1895 film, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, a film that is consciously echoed here.

In hindsight, we can trace how these train tracks will arrive one day in the American film noir landscape of the 1940s.

Smoke and fire, noise and momentum, two train engineers (Jean Gabin and Julien Carette) hurtle headlong towards their next destination.

Fritz Lang’s M – TCM Film Noir Daily Dose #1

July 22, 2015 Dave Cowl — No Comments

Fritz Lang's MI have been enjoying the Film Noir course that TCM has set up and will be making some posts here to help me remember what I am learning.

Fritz Lang’s M is the first of the Daily Dose clips that was posted to illustrate the kinds of films that led to the Film Noir style.

Fritz Lang’s M

This is what Richard Edwards at TCM had to say about this film:

Watch the opening scene from Fritz Lang’s 1931 film, M. What do you notice in these early moments from M as you watch the action unfold in the context of film noir?

How is director Fritz Lang staging his characters, moving his camera, and controlling the lighting to establish a seemingly ordinary working class city neighborhood, albeit with an underpinning of dread and unease?

What seems wrong about this place? Do we have any warning signs of trouble to come?

What are some of the aspects of this scene that you feel are related to the film noir style?

In particular, while film noir is considered a very visual cinematic style, pay attention to M’s sound design.

Listen to how Lang is building up the film’s increasingly tense and unsettling mood and atmosphere by skillfully incorporating sounds originating from inside the film’s world (such as children’s voices, cuckoo clocks, church bells, and car horns).

Come and See Team Rhobot’s Inside at the Castro Oct 10th!

September 24, 2010 Dave Cowl — No Comments

Inside PosterThe most recent Team Rhobot project Inside will be screened at the upcoming Scary Cow Festival – see http://screening.scarycow.com for tickets!

The project was tackled as part of the 48 Hour Film Project event for San Francisco and as well as competing for general round 1 Scary Cow budget, the film also be competing for a special 48 Hour Film Project prize.

As part of the rules of the 40 Hour Film Project competition we were assigned a genre (Horror), as well as a character (a consultant named Geoffery or Gigi Cook) and a prop (a plate).

The screening will be at that Castro Theatre in San Francisco on October 10th at 3:00pm.

We will share the movie on this site also after the screening is complete.

Adobe Production Premium CS5

May 18, 2010 Dave Cowl — No Comments

Adobe CS5So Creative Suite 5 is out, and it looks like the ideal film makers package is Production Premium.

It is interesting that Adobe has been working to improve render and effects times by hooking into the nVidia CUDA technology to speed up rendering.

Sadly it looks like right now the Quadro cards are the only ones supporting this, which will cost you as much as the motherboard and uP did most likely!

Edit: Maybe other CUDA cards are supported too… just not to the same extent.

The other interesting thing is that the new CS5 requires 64 bit OS to work – and really likes to have a lot of memory.

I guess it is time to save up the pennies and start constructing a new PC that is greater than any PC before…!

Microphones for Digital Film Making

April 14, 2010 Dave Cowl — No Comments

I have been looking somewhat into microphones for film making.

One interesting item I found is the Pearstone DUSM-1 Universal Shockmount for Camera Shoes and Boompoles.

On the microphone side, the Azden SGM-X – Supercardioid Shotgun Condenser Microphone with Mini Output looks interesting for a start. Cheap and will apparently connect directly.

It may need an adapter to connect into a stereo jack.

Image * After for Free Royalty Free Images

April 5, 2010 Dave Cowl — No Comments

If you are looking for images to use in a project that may have commercial application, a good place to look is Image * After.

Their library specifically states that the images can be used for anything.

I have not had much of a chance to look at the selection, but assuming the categories are applicatable, it looks like they have a decent number of pictures.