CriticalMind Reviews

Naija Talk: Men and women who cheat the most?

Watch: Why It's Important to Let Your Edit 'Breathe'

There are many facets to editing, but here's one that you'll definitely want to master.

Editing is so much more than cutting. I mean, yeah, that's literally what you're doing—you're cutting digital video clips into smaller sizes in order to tell a story—but there's a whole lot more than that, or rather, a whole lot more to that than you may realize.
In this video, Sven Pape of This Guy Edits discusses "the single most important thing that you can do to make your editing better," and no, it's not using the "best" NLE available, buying a superpowered computer, or doing a bunch of fancy editing tricks. It's something subtle, delicate, and easily missed by beginners: pauses.

"Stranger Things 2" does so much right, including its clever transitions.

Stranger Things is one of the most-watched Netflix shows in their original programming line-up, and it's not difficult to see why. The incredible acting (especially that of the young cast), dynamic storytelling, and beautifully moody visuals all contribute to creating its hugely popular 80s-themed sci-fi horror universe, but there's one facet of the show's filmmaking that some may not have noticed but totally should: its scene transitions.

These items are pretty much mandatory if you want to make a film.

If we had a dollar for every time someone asked us “What camera should I buy?,” we could have bought an Alexa by now. After that, the most frequent question we get asked around here is “What else should I buy?” In his latest wolfcrow video, Sareesh Sudhakaran attempts to answer just that. Now, the title of his video is somewhat misleading, because, in truth, you will likely rent many of these items before you dive into a real investment, but these items are certainly essential on any serious film set.
Take a look at Sudhakaran’s list and reasoning, and read on for our take, below:

Whether we like it or not, filmmaking is a business.

I cannot believe how quickly the past year has flown by. Just over a year ago, my business partner Maria Springer and I graduated from the University of Oxford with our MBAs, and we've already made and broadcast a feature film, EUROTRUMP, about the "Dutch Donald Trump" Geert Wilders, which is playing this week at DOC NYC. But we think it can be done even faster.
At Oxford, we agreed that the staid, old, complex film industry—especially with documentaries—needed further disruption, beyond what Netflix and Amazon were already doing. So, armed with the LEAN principles we were taught in our technology and operations course at Oxford, which essentially have to do with creating more value for less money, we set out to make films at record speeds on record low budgets. We started a company called OBSERVATORY and, as we learned in business school, it gets faster to make a film every time you do it. You will learn tricks left and right.

What Really is an Independent Film?

Is George Lucas an independent filmmaker? He did make all his films outside the studio system and paid for them all out of his pocket. Is the $8000 horror feature created to with the sole purpose to be sold an independent film? Is the five million dollar film starring a major movie star that worked for scale an independent film?
We are all indie filmmakers but are we making independent films? Take a listen.
https://www.indiefilmhustle.com/what-is-independent-film/

Dear Filmmakers, Study More than Film

So, you eat, sleep, and breath cinema, huh?

Okay, so you're an expert on Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Steven Spielberg. You like Ozu and Kurosawa, know the dance from Bande à part, and can spell Eadweard Muybridge without googling it. You, my friend, know your shit about cinema. But still, despite the hundreds of film books and screenplays you've read and thousands of films you've seen, there may be so much more information you're failing to feed your brain. Andrew Saladino of The Royal Ocean Film Society suggests that while having an encyclopedic knowledge of and insatiable interest in cinema is great, expanding your education beyond it might actually be the best thing you could do as a filmmaker.