Self-evaluation form is here. Thank you.

There sure are a lot. And people really care.

We watched International Cut (1982). And then the ending (and interpolated unicorn scene) from the Final Cut (2007).

Article in the New York Times magazine about Brett White, who specializes in editing Apatow-style improv comedies. He has an interesting take on critics’ obsession with continuity errors:

“You run into editors who say, ‘I can’t make that cut, the glass of water is in the wrong place in that take,’ ” White said. “But I’ll say: ‘Who cares? The performance is strongest in that cut!’ Why would you match the glass and take on that worse performance? ‘Matching is for sissies’ — that’s one of the things Dede would say all the time.” White argues that as audience members, we “look at actors’ eyes most of the time, so as long as they’re engaging, you’re going to be connected to that person, and whatever happens elsewhere in the frame is less important.” Increasingly, White is able to have his cake and eat it too, paying digital-effects houses to swap out an unwanted portion of a frame with one more desirable, say, or superimposing an actor’s head at the bottom to fabricate visual continuity between shots.

Bokeh simulator and depth of field calculator

Self-evaluation form is here.

As with first semester, the class exam period is spent watching final projects. Seniors who hope to meet exemption guidelines for senior exams need to have their final film ready for showing by June 4, the last senior class period for Blue 2. Elsewise, they need to show up with their film on June 8.

From College Humor

Film noir is . . .

1. A French term meaning “black film,” or film of the night, inspired by the Series Noir, a line of cheap paperbacks that translated hard-boiled American crime authors and found a popular audience in France.
2. A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending.
3. Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all.
4. Cigarettes. Everybody in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, “On top of everything else, I’ve been assigned to get through three packs today.” The best smoking movie of all time is “Out of the Past,” in which Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoke furiously at each other. At one point, Mitchum enters a room, Douglas extends a pack and says, “Cigarette?” and Mitchum, holding up his hand, says, “Smoking.”
5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa.
6. For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs, calling the doorman by his first name, high heels, red dresses, elbowlength gloves, mixing drinks, having gangsters as boyfriends, having soft spots for alcoholic private eyes, wanting a lot of someone else’s women, sprawling dead on the floor with every limb meticulously arranged and every hair in place.
7. For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners, protecting kids who shouldn’t be playing with the big guys, being on first-name terms with homicide cops, knowing a lot of people whose descriptions end in “ies,” such as bookies, newsies, junkies, alkys, jockeys and cabbies.
8. Movies either shot in black and white, or feeling like they were.
9. Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death.
10. The most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic.

(from Roger Ebert’s Journal)

Classic web series, as reported in the New York Times, that started as self-financed, and then got a Vimeo contract. Former Mt. Ararat students are starting a web series in April, Good Grief.

iPhocus is a well-made iPhone app that lets you control depth of field. It will even do rack focus (if you can hold the phone steady enough).