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August 19, 2018

This Super Simple Editing Hack Will Fix Your Flicker Quick


Nope, it’s not magic, just really clever editing.


You know when your video footage has that really nasty flickering in it? Yeah, that’s just the worst thing ever. “Where’s the hot shot that turned a strobe light on during the shoot,” you wonder, but hey, I promise it wasn’t the hot shots’ fault. It’s banding, or flickering, which happens when the frequency of a light source doesn’t match up nicely with the frame rate of your camera. If you’re like, “Yeah, cool information…wish I knew that before I shot all my footage,” don’t throw your work out just yet. Filmmaker Peter McKinnon has a ridiculously quick and easy hack that may fix your flicker problem completely. Check out his tutorial below:





Earlier this year, we posted a similar “flicker fix” technique from Blue Mantle Films that had a couple of extra steps and left a bit of a blurry double-exposure look to the footage. McKinnon’s technique, which you might’ve previously seen on a Philip Bloom tutorial several years ago, simplifies the process slightly by requiring just two video layers and doesn’t seem to produce much visible blur.

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 18, 2018

Want to Edit a Blockbuster? Stay Organized with This Free Premiere Pro Timeline Template


Credit: Vashi Visuals

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 18, 2018

Stories of Hidden Hunger Before and After Hurricane Harvey, Recorded with Feeding America

More than 41 million people face hunger in the U.S. today. In fact, people face hunger in every community across the U.S., which means someone you know might be struggling to get enough to eat. It can be easy to ignore the crisis of hunger that’s happening all around you if you’ve always had enough. Sometimes it takes emergencies, like the hurricanes that swept the country last year, to shed a light on the hidden problem of hunger.

In 2018, StoryCorps partnered with Feeding America — the nation’s leading hunger-relief organization — to share the stories of people facing hunger in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas. As part of the partnership, our facilitators traveled to two food pantries supported by the Houston Food Bank, the food bank’s own Emergency Food Pantry, and West Houston Assistance Ministries to record conversations with the people they serve. We heard stories both from folks who have leaned on the pantries since before the hurricane and from folks who only needed help post-Harvey.

The conversations we heard centered around themes of fear, loss, and displacement and family, friendship, and resilience. Participants described food pantries as a vital form of assistance during illness or periods of unemployment. They emphasized that when you lose everything — either after a layoff or a catastrophe that displaces you from your home — finding food is a first priority. Accordingly, food pantries are a helping hand and a source of hope during bleak times.

Universally, participants reflected on the challenge of accepting assistance given America’s emphasis on personal responsibility and independence. Even though circumstances outside their control led them to seek help from food pantries, many people described feeling ashamed to visit a pantry for the first time. They felt discouraged because being able to provide for their loved ones on their own was central to their identity. Given their role as caretakers, parents in particular discussed the challenge of swallowing their pride and asking for help to support their children, even in the face of displacement and extreme loss.

Below, watch animations based on a few of the conversations we recorded with Feeding America.

Mother and son Mary and Jaylon Colon talk about struggling with hunger even before Harvey. The Colons depended on the Emergency Food Pantry at the Houston Food Bank when Mary got fibromyalgia and couldn’t work.

Beverly and Key Dauterive lost their home and jobs in the wake of Harvey. They discuss the destruction which forced them to travel from place to place after the storm and the sacrifices they made to make sure their family had food.

Feeding America is the largest hunger-relief organization in the United States. Through a network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs, it provides meals to more than 46 million people each year.

Source: SNPR Story Corps

August 17, 2018

‘Juliet, Naked’: How Adapting a Famous Novel was Like Solving a Puzzle for Its Screenwriter


For screenwriter Evgenia Peretz, one of the most challenging things about adapting Nick Hornby’s ‘Juliet, Naked’ was working on character backstories.


To adapt Nick Hornby’s novel, Juliet, Naked, for the screen, director Jesse Peretz and screenwriter Evgenia Peretz took a very dense, complex narrative and transformed it into a genial and entertaining film.



The performances are evenly skilled: Rose Byrne is relaxed as Annie, a director of a small museum in a British seaside town. Her characters lives with Duncan, a somewhat less relaxed academic (played with believable angst by Chris O’Dowd), whose greatest love is the website he has built around Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), a rocker who has lived out of the limelight for nearly two decades. When Duncan receives an unreleased album by Crowe in the mail, Annie listens to it after accidentally opening the package.

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 17, 2018

VR experience shows caregivers what it’s like to live with Alzheimer’s disease

Los Angeles-based VR startup Embodied Labs has developed a virtual experience that puts users in the shoes of a person with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common type of dementia in the U.S.

The post VR experience shows caregivers what it’s like to live with Alzheimer’s disease appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source: Digital Trends VR

August 17, 2018

The Daily Chord Weekly Recap – Friday, August 17

SXSW 2019 Daily Chord

The Daily Chord salutes Aretha Franklin, mourning her passing this week and listening to her records for the foreseeable future. Check back each weekday for music news updates, and subscribe to the email blast for a simple reminder.

Monday, August 13

Tuesday, August 14

Wednesday, August 15

Thursday, August 16

Friday, August 17

The post The Daily Chord Weekly Recap – Friday, August 17 appeared first on SXSW.

Source: SxSW Music

August 17, 2018

Watch: How a Filmmaker Edited a Family’s Home Movies to Craft a Fictional Narrative


A mockumentary culled from found footage? A doc-com? A hybrid? Dean Fleischer-Camp’s ‘Fraud’ often defies description.


If a film’s visuals provide ideas, the edit in which they’re strung together provides the meaning. Perhaps no greater example of this exists than in Dean Fleischer-Camp’s Fraud, a found-footage documentary that’s very description should come bookended by quotation marks.



Surveying over 100 hours of footage derived from a nuclear family’s personal Youtube channel, Fleischer-Camp and his editor pick-and-chose isolated moments from the family’s home movies, creating a devious, dark narrative that implicated the parents as criminals desiring insurance money. Of course, none of this was true; Fleischer-Camp structured the footage in such a way that only made it appear as such.



As the film debuts on digital platforms today, we’re excited to host an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at how the cinematic magic trick of illusion was pulled off.



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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 17, 2018

Welcome to Moscow Photography Series

Welcome to Moscow Photography Series

Moscow has been in my bucket list of places to visit at least once in your lifetime. I am sure that I would be totally stunned by its architecture and culture. Vadim Sherbakov surely helps a lot by giving us a beautiful photographic glimpse. Vadim is working as an interactive art director and his photography series shows his great skill set. He also included two time-lapse videos where you can get a sense of his workflow and of course to learn something for your own pictures.

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Welcome to Moscow Photography SeriesWelcome to Moscow Photography SeriesWelcome to Moscow Photography SeriesWelcome to Moscow Photography SeriesWelcome to Moscow Photography SeriesWelcome to Moscow Photography Series

Time-lapse Videos (BTS)

AoiroStudio
Aug 17, 2018

Moscow
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Source: Abduzeedo Photography

August 17, 2018

Learn How to Build a DIY Ring Light like Roger Deakins


One of Roger Deakins’ secret cinematographic weapons is a ring light that you can actually build yourself.


Becoming a world-class cinematographer like Oscar winner Roger Deakins doesn’t happen overnight. (Obviously.) It not only takes decades of experience and experimentation but also a lifelong love of and openness to learning new things about your craft. Thankfully, Deakins is not shy about sharing his wealth of knowledge, and one thing he often talks about when describing his gear is a lighting tool that can really help you up your game. In this video, Todd Blankenship and Logan Baker of Shutterstock show you how to build one. Behold, the Roger Deakins ring light.





Ring lights are great when you want to create a nice, soft light to a scene, and the size of this thing will ensure that it not only covers plenty of area but that the light is also and soft as possible. (The bigger the ring, the softer the light.) This build will fit roughly 25 tungsten bulbs, so, yeah, it’ll be quite large.

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Source: NoFilmSchool

August 16, 2018

Premiere Status and Eligibility for 2019 SXSW Film Festival Submissions

Navigating premiere status and eligibility for your film or project can be tricky. The SXSW Film Festival recognizes four types of premiere status defined below. To be eligible for SXSW 2019 your project must have been completed in 2017, 2018 or be on track for completion in early 2019. Please note that each submission category has different premiere and eligibility requirements.

The Premiere status of your film is an important factor; and all things being equal, the premiere will get the slot. But it’s not absolute – SXSW makes exceptions for films we love regardless of where they’ve screened. For example, the majority of our 2018 Festival Favorites section was comprised of non-premieres.

While there are numerous screening sections that makeup the film festival, SXSW Film will determine the ultimate place for your project. Take a look at our past programs here.

The Early Submission deadline for the 2019 SXSW Film Festival is on August 23. Head over to our Film Submissions page for more information about additional deadlines and fees.

Premiere Status

  • World Premiere: Your film has never screened publicly at any festival, in theaters, broadcast on television or online.

  • North American Premiere: Your film may have screened internationally, but has never been shown in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, in theaters, broadcast on television or online.

  • U.S. Premiere: Your film may have screened internationally but has never been shown in the U.S., in theaters, broadcast on television or online.

  • Not a Premiere: Your film may have screened publicly at any festival outside of Austin, but has never been made available to a general public audience theatrically, broadcast on television or online.

Features

  • If your feature film HAS NOT screened in Austin, Texas, and has NEVER been available online or broadcast you are eligible to submit to SXSW.

  • Your feature film is NOT eligible for SXSW if it has had a public screening, will be publicly screened in Austin, Texas at another event or festival, and/or if it has been publicly available as VOD/Digital, Download/DVD or in any other form online or broadcast before SXSW 2019.

  • Our Narrative and Documentary Feature Competition, consist solely of World Premieres.

  • Check out our guide to submitting a feature for more information.

Shorts

  • If your short film HAS NOT screened in Austin, Texas, you are eligible to submit to SXSW.

  • If your short film HAS been publicly screened or WILL be publicly screened in Austin, Texas at another event or festival before SXSW 2019, your short is ineligible.

  • The SXSW Film Festival doesn’t place tough restrictions on the premiere status of shorts. If we really connect to and love a short film and it hasn’t received a huge amount of attention, we will try to share it with our audience.

  • Take a look our short film submissions guide for more details.

  • If you are a Texas high school student and are interested in submitting a Texas High School Short click here for all the details.

Episodic

  • If your Episodic project HAS NOT screened in Austin, Texas, you are eligible to submit to SXSW.

  • If your Episodic project HAS been publicly screened or WILL be publicly screened in Austin, Texas at another event or festival before SXSW 2019, your Episodic is ineligible.

  • Similar to shorts, SXSW doesn’t place tough restrictions on Episodic premiere status.

  • For more specific information about Episodic submissions take a look at Episodic Guide.

Music Video

  • SXSW does not place any restrictions on the premiere status of music videos. The vast majority of music videos screened at SXSW will have premiered online prior to the festival.

  • It’s important to note that only OFFICIAL ARTIST APPROVED Music Videos are eligible for SXSW.

  • The music video should be the official music video for that song by that artist. As in, the artist and/or label commissioned the video and has their approval to be made.

  • Take a look at our Music Video Guide for more information.

Virtual Cinema

  • If your VR/AR/MR project HAS NOT been exhibited in Austin, Texas, you are eligible to submit to SXSW.

  • If your VR/AR/MR project HAS publicly exhibited in Austin, Texas at another event or festival it is ineligible.

  • Just like shorts and episodic submissions, SXSW doesn’t place tough restrictions on premiere status for Virtual Cinema.

*Find out more information about submitting to Virtual Cinema here.

Title Design Competition

  • SXSW does NOT place any restrictions on the premiere status of title design entries.

  • Eligibility for the Title Design Competition is open to any Film, Television, Conference Title, Student Project Title, or Video Game title sequence.

  • The title sequence can stand alone, and does not have to be related to a feature or short film submitted to the film festival.

  • All title design submissions must be less than 10 minutes in length.

  • Read our Title Design Guide for more info.

For more specific questions about submitting, look no further than our Film Submissions FAQ. Still have questions? Don’t hesitate to email filmfest@sxsw.com.

Submit Now

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Registration and housing are now opens for the 2019 SXSW season!

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See you in March!

American Animals Screening – Photo by Alexa Gonzalez Wagner

The post Premiere Status and Eligibility for 2019 SXSW Film Festival Submissions appeared first on SXSW.

Source: SxSW Film