Well happy holidays everyone. I caught this sweet video on YouTube from Sesame Street. Sesame street was certainly not this cool when I was a kid…
Or maybe it was, and I was just too young to know it.
This is another gem that I found while browsing Alex Epstein’s excellent blog.
Hollywood University is a blog run by TV writer Jessica Butler. As she puts it on her site, “Hollywood University was launched to provide aspiring scriptwriters with the practical information and resources needed to successfully pursue a career in television. Posts include interviews with and recommendations from industry professionals and address the FAQs of novice scriptwriters.”
I spent a couple of hours last night pouring over the site, and wow. There are some great bits of information and resources to be found on there! She covers a ton of stuff — from sharing some of her own experiences in the industry, basics like formatting scripts and writing query letters, to ideas on breaking into the industry and networking. She even has resources for writers thinking about relocating to LA or New York.
I definitely recommend spending some time perusing the site.
Thanks to technology, the screenwriter no longer has to worry about writing scenes that would be prohibitively expensive to film. Well, they do still have to worry about the cost, but locations themselves can be created out of thin air thanks to amazing advances in computer composite-imaging technology. Here is an example of such scenes that were built almost entirely digitally. The video is from Stargate Studios (LA, Vancouver).
This technique is called a “Virtual Backlot.”
I found a new website today called movieclips.com. This could be good.
As I read in this quotd article, a website was able to acquire the licenses for 12,000 movie clips to be streamed and shared in high-quality over the internet. These are all sorts of movies from all sorts of studios in one spot.
Now… I know this isn’t the newest idea around. Plenty of sites like YouTube, Vimeo and others have these movie clips on them. Movieclips.com offers them legally.
There are lots of other good clips on the site too. Check it out! Even though there are “only” 12,000 right now, they are all free to watch and share. This is only a ‘beta’ site. So expect more clips soon if this project takes off.
In keeping with that last post….
Quentin Tarantino recently shared his favorite flicks of 2009. His list has more than a few surprises, but by now I think we all know to expect a bit of weirdness from the guy.
Right off the top he admits he hasn’t yet seen Avatar, Invictus, or The Lovely Bones, films he is “expecting things from.” He is also gracious enough to exclude his own film, Inglorious Basterds, from contention.
That said, his top eight breaks down like this:
1. JJ Abrams’ Star Trek
2. Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell
3. Judd Apatow’s Funny People
4. Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air
5. Prachya Pinkaew’s Chocolate
6. Jody Hill’s Observe and Report
7. Lee Daniels’ Precious
8. Lone Scherfig’s An Education
He then makes a point of stating that he needs to see both Bright Star and District 9 again before he’s totally comfortable excluding them from his top picks.
Overall I like his list. There are a couple of the obvious top contenders in there, but the majority of his choices are decidedly “outside the box.” I’m very excited to see that he included Observe and Report, a film that ranks high on my own ‘best of 2009′ list.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter