Posted on January 18, 2017 at 8:00 am
I am delighted that the terrific film “Hidden Figures” has been #1 at the box office over the past two weeks. If you haven’t seen it, go! Here’s a peek behind the scenes.
Posted on January 14, 2017 at 3:15 pm
Animation takes longer but there is more control. The idea we went in with was usually more closely represented onscreen when we were done. But live action has more variables. The weather on location. Live actors who get sick or break their leg. But when I was done, I thought, “That was a lot of fun.”
And he told her how his background in animation helped him create an appealing “monster truck.”
I thought, “Truck, kid, monster.” I want the truck to be a character and move like a character. We built an animatronic truck that was remote-controlled so it could lean over and pick its wheels up. We used that a bunch. There is also straight-ahead animated truck. I wanted it look like it had attitude and honored the physics of the world.
Posted on January 12, 2017 at 8:00 am
One of the greatest animated films of all time is Disney’s Pinocchio, possibly the most beautiful hand-drawn film of all time. It is remarkable to think that it was made just three years after the groundbreaking but much simpler “Snow White.” It also has one of the all-time classic Disney soundtracks, with songs like “I Got No Strings” (featured in last year’s “Suicide Squad”) and the song that is still the Disney theme: “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
The Signature Edition is available today on Digital HD and Disney Anywhere, and will be out on Blu-Ray January 31, 2017, featuring extras like these:
Walt’s Process
Pinocchio – Creating Pleasure Island
Posted on January 11, 2017 at 3:44 pm
Anyone who loves movies — and anyone who enjoys a love story — will have a wonderful time at “Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story.” It’s a love story in two sense of the word. It is the story of a deeply connected marriage of 60 years and it is the story of a love for the world of film.
You know the scene in “The Birds” with Tippi Hedren in the phone booth? And the one where all the birds are ominously perched at the playground? The movie was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, but it was Harold Michelson, the storyboard artist, who imagined the way those scenes would look. He also came up with the idea for one of the most iconic shots in film history, this one:
His wife Lillian headed up research for several different studios. When the “Scarface” producers needed to know what a drug kingpin’s home looked like, they came to her. When the “Fiddler on the Roof” team needed to know what shtetl girls wore for underwear, they came to her. And she always found out.
The story of how they met and fell in love is worth a movie of its own. While they almost never received screen credit for their contributions, Dreamworks did pay tribute to their decades of essential work in “Shrek.” These characters are named Harold and Lillian in their honor.
Posted on January 10, 2017 at 4:01 pm
Eugene Lee has designed sets for “Saturday Night Live’ since the very beginning in 1975. He spoke to the UK’s Creative Review about creating the look of the sketches and how technology and expectations have changed in 41 years.
Lee says the SNL team has just four days to prepare the show and construct sets. Every Wednesday, he takes the train from Rhode Island (where he lives) to New York (where the show is broadcast) and spends the afternoon reading through scripts submitted by writers. Once the producers have decided which scripts they’d like to use, Lee and his team will work with the writers and actors to devise each set.
“We go and talk to the writers and actors and try to work out what they see in the set,” he explains. “If the script says there’s a restaurant, we’ll say, ‘what kind of restaurant? Is it high class? Is it elegant? Does it have red chequered tablecloths?’…. SNL is best when there’s great writing – if a sketch doesn’t have that, then it’s a fail – so we listen to the writers and they tell us what they think.
