Movie Barcodes are the result of taking all of the frames from a movie and smashing them into one image. I love them. It makes the color palette of the movies stand out and 9 times out of 10 gives you a pretty good feel for the mood of the movie even if you’ve never seen it. I’ve included three of my favorites below. If you want to check out more movie barcodes go HERE.

UP (2009)

Tron: Legacy (2010)

Back to the Future (1985)

- Ted

Best Actor

Nominees: Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg, Colin Firth, and James Franco
My pick: Colin Firth for “The King’s Speech”
Prediction: Same

Why? Because his performance was head and shoulders above the rest of the group. (sidenote: did Jeff Bridges really have enough screen time to have a chance here?) Firth made stuttering look natural. I’ll let the oddness of that statement sink in.

Best Supporting Actor

Nominees: Christian Bale, John Hawkes, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, Geoffrey Rush
My pick: Geoffrey Rush
Prediction: Christian Bale

Why? Geoffrey Rush played the part so skillfully that I hardly noticed he was a movie character. For me, the only issue is why Andrew Garfield isn’t in this list. That guy was awesome in The Social Network. As for the prediction going to Bale, I think Hollywood has a tendency to give awards to people with crazy characters. It’s a bias they can’t seem to get over. I hope they prove me wrong.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Nominees: Amy Adams, Helena Bonham Carter, Melissa Leo, Hailee Steinfeld, Jacki Weaver
My pick: Hailee Steinfeld
Prediction: Hailee Steinfeld

Why? I think the Academy is dying to hand an award out for True Grit and one of the few ways it actually has a chance to happen is if Steinfeld brings it home. She did a thorough job and had enough of the screen during the movie for this to be a possibility. I give it to her simply because she was the only reason I liked True Grit at all from a story standpoint (cinematography was good – which I’ll get to soon).

Animated Featu

Toy Story 3…. enough said, moving along now.

Visual Effec

Inception.. keep going..

Original Score

Nominations: How to Train Your Dragon, Inception, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network
My Pick: Tron: Legacy
Prediction: The Social Network

Why? How on earth did Daft Punk not get some credit at least for Tron? I mean, really? That movie was a giant music video. Anyway, my next choice is also my prediction. Well done Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, you had me at the title sequence.

Art Direction

Nominees: Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Inception, The King’s Speech, True Grit
My Pick: Harry Potter
Prediction: Alice in Wonderland

Why? Here’s an award that is too much of a wild card for me. Every year it’s something I don’t necessarily expect. I think Harry Potter deserves it, but it’s too much of a blockbuster… Plus Sweeney Todd won in 2007…

Cinematography

Nominees: Black Swan, Inception, The King’s Speech, The Social Network, True Grit
My pick: The Social Network
Prediction: The King’s Speech

Why? Probably the single, most difficult decision in this entire list. I went back and forth between The Social Network and The King’s Speech.. and then from time to time would want to throw True Grit into the mix.. However, The Social Network gets my vote and here’s why: I’ve watched it three times now, and it wasn’t until the third time that I even realized some of the cinematography aspects existed – they blended seamlessly into the movie despite my constant look at movies through a “how did they do this?” perspective. The King’s Speech was good, don’t get me wrong – but the rowing scene with In the Hall of the Mountain King playing… dang.

Best Director

Nominees: Darren Aronofsky, David O. Russel, Tom Hooper, David Fincher, Joel and Ethan Coen
My pick: Tom Hooper
Prediction: David Fincher

Why? The King’s Speech had the best acting, hands down. I know he was working with the best overall actor group of the bunch, but if your movie has the best acting across the board then I give you the Oscar…. But I think Fincher wins for The Social Network because he didn’t win for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Seriously. Also – Christopher Nolan deserved at least a nomination… come on now.

Film Editing

Nominees: Andrew Weisblum (Black Swan), Pamela Martin, (The Fighter), Tariq Anwar (The King’s Speech), Jon Harris (127 Hours), Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter (The Social Network)
My pick: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter
Prediction: Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

Why? I could probably write a while here, but let’s just put it this way: yes.

Original Screenplay

Nominations: Another Year, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech
My pick: The King’s Speech
Prediction: Inception

Why? The King’s Speech’s script was near flawless. I can’t imagine the difficulty in writing for a stuttering man. However, I think enough people will get on the Inception bandwagon to bring it home (this is a gut feeling, the smart money is probably on The King’s Speech).

Adapted Screenplay

Nominations: 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone
My Pick: The Social Network
Prediction: The Social Network

Why? I want to be Aaron Sorkin, that’s why. The man is a genius. If the two categories were combined, Sorkin still wins.

Best Picture

Nominations: Black Swan, The Fighter, Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Winter’s Bone
My Pick: The King’s Speech
Prediction: The Social Network

I’ll begin by listing off my top five favorite movies of the year:
5) Inception
4) Shutter Island
3) Toy Story 3
2) The King’s Speech
1) The Social Network

Why? I’ve decided that just because something is my favorite, doesn’t necessarily make it the best. The King’s Speech was a darn near perfect film from a technical standpoint. It was also a fantastic story. That’s why it was this year’s best film in my opinion. However, my favorite was The Social Network because of why it will end up winning the actual award: It perfectly combined an important, relevant and culture-changing event with a fantastic script, good acting and superb cinematography. Plus, I’m a web/film junkie so it was like the perfect mesh.

As for the rest of the nominees and other movies I mentioned, I could blog for days about it probably. But you wouldn’t want to hear it now would you?

What do you think?

- Ted

*EDIT: No Best Actress Pick from me because I didn’t know what call to make yet.. I’ll add it later*

It’s one thing to do this with a film. I thoroughly enjoy a movie from time to time where at the end of it I’m left going, “What the heck just happened? I don’t get it.” and then dwelling on it for a bit.

It’s an entirely different thing when instead of a two hour film, it’s a 117 hour Television series wherein, between every single episode I’m left conjuring up ideas of what is going to happen next and how it will ultimately play out in the end. You can’t tell me they ran out of time.

Now, maybe my disappointment in the ending is because the biggest questions I wanted to know the answers to were A) What is the Island? and more importantly B) Why is the Island?

If you’re alright with the ending being that everyone was sucked into an electro-magnetized island, then fought and killed one another, for the purpose of eventually reuniting then so be it – but that’s not why I was watching the show.

Perhaps the biggest reason it irritated me is because I felt like I was seconds away from having my answers. The entire show – up until the last 10-15 minutes or so, was the best two hours and fifteen minutes of television I’ve ever seen. It looked like I was going to be able to forgive some of the random side stuff that was unanswered throughout the story because those are the questions I wouldn’t mind conjecturing about.  I could even see a way for them to work Walt back into the mix so that we could figure out why he was truly, “special” and that was something to which I never thought we’d return.

Seriously, it was epic. I even tweeted about it early because I was so confident that things were coming together. Then Christian Shephard walked into the frame and let us know that flashing sideways is parallel not only to your current time, but also to purgatory.

I know, I know.. some of you loved the ending. That’s totally fine – you were just looking for a different type of resolution than I was from the outset.

Feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments.

- Forever a Lostie regardless of the end

Ted

Anyway, I circumvented my OS’s feeble attempt to keep me from screen capturing with the DVD player open and got 8 frames that I think really sum up the move nicely. (Click here for the movie synopsis)

The first frame is John Wayne’s character Sean Thornton and Barry Fitzgerald’s character Michaleen Oge Flynn. The frame sums up both of their on screen persona’s nicely.

The second depicts the beginning of the rivalry between Thornton and Danaher who is Mary Kate’s (The lead actress and Wayne’s crush in the movie played by Maureen O’Hara) brother.

The third is of Mary Kate (Will your 1950s self please marry me?).

The fourth and fifth sums up Sean and Mary Kate’s relationship quite nicely. One second it’s great and passionate, the next it’s gone and confusing.

The sixth sums up Sean Thornton’s masculinity – he’s just struck his match on the crossbeam above his head in this frame and he is about to put Mary Kate in her place. This was my favorite scene in the movie.

The last two are of the gigantic boxing scene at the end which alone makes the movie worth watching.

Hope you enjoyed this! Let me know if I should do more “movies in 8 frames” (I’ll probably go into more detail in the future as well)

- Ted

Akira Kurosawa is a Japanese filmmaker who directed films in the 40s, 50s and 60s. The clips from above are from one of his more famous films, Rashomon. Kurosawa basically puts on a school for shot composition and texture throughout every scene I have watched of his so far. I love the way he uses the camera narratively and the overall look of his movies. His movie Seven Samurai is incredibly long, but definitely worth the watch if you are ever feeling like a black and white movie night.

As a random tidbit: George Lucas was influenced by Kurosawa. Something about Samurai swordsmen perhaps?

- Ted

I recently got to spend a week in Hawaii with seven of my friends and naturally I took my camera.

Although it was an absolute pain to separate my computer, camera and microphone into different containers to be screened before boarding the plane it turned out to be absolutely worth it. I ended up shooting about an hour and a half’s worth of footage which I then edited down to about fifteen minutes. Then I broke that down into a YouTube version which is what you see above.

I colored a lot of the clips you see above individually in post to give it a slight old-school feel. However, at one point I just started copying and pasting the same effect onto clips with similar subject matter because the difference was very minute and I have other stuff I have to work on.

Anyway, I found that with a gaussian soft edge border and some color correction into the blue/cyan area of the color wheel and a slight adjustment of the contrast with the proc amp tool (my favorite video correction tool in Final Cut) that you get a High Definition version of older film. Cool, huh?

- Ted

No. Don’t read this yet. Watch the video above first.

Alright now that you’ve gotten that out of the way:

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I’ve noticed a recent trend in video/film in the emphasis of ordinary sounds – taking normal, minute sounds and making them the most audible parts of the clip.  Now I may be wrong, but I honestly think this is partly due to the way we currently like to participate in media. We expect response when we engage and so when we see visuals of earthy things, we expect an overly earthy response (such as the beginning of the video above) and we are able to attain this if the sound matches the engagement.

The film I noticed it in most recently was Shutter Island, which I saw over the weekend. Martin Scorsese used a very intricate interaction between imagery and sound in the direction of this film. Robert Richardson also did an absolutely incredible job with the cinematography as his images made the emphasized sound relative.

Anyway, I’m interested in trying this in the next short I make. What I’m going to make – don’t ask me yet.