There are many ways to shoot a chase scene, but not all of them will give a sense of speed. Today I’m going to look at the chases in a couple of my old films and see what we can learn from them about enhancing the impression of speed.
First of all, here is the car chase from my silly 2002 action movie, The Beacon. (You may notice I’ve tried to increase the sense of speed through extremely fast editing, with only limited success.)
When 3Pod tripods first showed up a couple years ago, it was as a division of Flashpoint, the photography/videography accessory company whose equipment is distributed exclusively by Adorama. Recently, however, 3Pod has split of into its own separate company (although it’s still distributed by Adorama), so that they can focus marketing specifically on the tripods they’re making.
Award of Superiority
It’s clear that one of 3Pod’s missions is to make a sturdy, yet economical tripod that offers stiff competition to heavyweights like Bogen and Manfrotto and, from what I’ve seen testing out the V2AH, they’ve done a pretty good job with this mission.
Michael Curtis had been a successful and award-winning post production editor before launching into full film productions for a broad range of clients through his company EditLab. Several years ago he formed a film collaborative, Filmstigator, to draw together fellow creatives and produce independent films.
“After years of working as a television editor and producer,” Curtis explains, “I yearned to branch out and start creating the kinds of personal films I’d never had a chance to make before—the kinds of films that had originally drawn me to the industry. I wondered if there were others out there like me, and I began actively looking for them.”
While attending the Orlando Film Festival in October of last year, I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Michael Curtis. He was there for the showing of his first film short, "Gift." Like many independent filmmakers, he has spent many years doing commercial film projects for clients but finally wanted to create something entirely his own. In this article I will cover Curtis’ entry into the commercial film production world and some of the projects he has worked on. In a second article, I will discuss how Curtis brought all that experience to his first independent film project and the creative process to make "Gift" a reality.
The Good Book is the story of how people’s lives are impacted by a single book—a red-covered Gideon’s Bible—that gets passed from person to person in the course of a series of events. With the hook being that this is a silent film, all the stories are presented solely through music and visuals (albeit, sans title cards).
Daniel (Even Fielding) makes a poor decision about illumination in his home one night and ends up with a house fire. Scared to deal with the repercussions, he runs away, learning about the real world through a series of providential encounters, one of which provides him with a copy of the aforementioned Gideon’s Bible. The Bible goes on to Alex (BK Bomar), a detective who helped Daniel find his parents, then the narrative follows him as he and his wife lose a child and are forced to struggle with their pain. From here it moves on to a homeless woman, a preacher’s daughter, an overworked waitress, and so on.
Following the success of her TED talk (shown below), which in turn was inspired by her successful $1.2 million kickstarter campaign for her then-upcoming album, Palmer was asked to write a book. Palmer’s book, The Art of Asking, is a story about how a street performer and musician is able to create meaningful connections directly with her audience by being open to that connection, and by not being afraid to ask for that connection. As the name implies, the book is about the art of asking and how we all can use a lesson in being able to ask for help if we’re going to be successful at our art. It meditates on both the difficulty and the necessity of asking for help and shows us how Palmer uses twenty-first century tools to make a living as an artist which doesn't involve marketing ploys but focuses on building your own community, gathering your own tribe and letting them help you. This is one artist’s life laid bare as an example of the risks and rewards that come with the vulnerable act of asking.