published on November 17, 2009 » filed under Film, Tech
Cool it! The man said ‘restoring’ not ‘improving’ or ‘amending’ or any other form of buggering about which Lucas has previously used as an excuse to further indebt himself to the Star Wars fanbase. Look, you owe us one Georgie-boy.
In one helluva fascinating article over at secrethistoryofstarwars.com a fella by the name of Michael Kaminski has written a very comprehensive piece about the restoration of the original Star Wars film negative. There are some tedious facts, lots of fun for colourists and video techies but also some interesting details, or to put it kindly ‘oversights’, on the part of George Lucas are revealed. Shockingly the prequels to Star Wars were all shot natively on 1080p HD ‘film’. This is disturbing because, well, I can shoot that on my camera as a fun extra feature these days… despite not having that all-important Panavision lens-set to play with. 1080p was a brand new technology, it wasn’t the future resolution– no where near it. Dagobah to Lucas! Hello!?
… another undoable element of the prequels — filmed on 1080p HD, they have, at the most, less than half the resolution of the 35mm original trilogy… they have just under 1/5 the resolution…
I’m putting together and idea that should become a short film triggered by some of my photography (compositions and portraits) from the last few years. The first shot – as it stands today – is of a plane flying high above us… arrivals and departures is a theme as is friendship and dislocation but the film will mostly be a portrait of some of my real friends and any story that ties us together I haven’t yet found but I’m excited about that.
The ’script’ exists as a number of shots and locations. There’s an architectural quality to the compositions (as there is to most of my photos – I think) and there’s no dialogue at the moment. The sound is somewhere between David Byrne & Chopin. Just thought I’d keep you up to date.
Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola having a bit of fun on the set of Marie Antoinette- found here in the DVD features in a pastiche of that odious MTV programme ‘Cribs’, which many have confused with a real way of life…
published on September 20, 2009 » filed under Music, Noteworthy
Its true that Gang of Four had been and gone before I was around… now that’s not much of statement because so had The Beatles, the Clash and Elvis… but for a band who’s sound so defines the end of a decade, my decade, these guys totally past me by. I’ll try a little comparison by way of introduction to anyone else in the dark: Gang of Four are a post-punk group that sound somewhere between DEVO and The Specials, their material is political and somewhat dated but they sound great on the albums I’ve found online. The only track I recognised was ‘Natural’s Not It’ as used in the film (I think it was actually the trailer) “Marie Antoinette”- brilliant song, go find it!
On Friday Editor of The Leither (check out the fancy new website at leithermagazine.com) and myself trundled up to the Picture House on Lothian Road. Read On »
