January 28, 2015 • 7m
One of Akira Kurosawa’s many gifts was staging scenes in ways that were bold, simple and visual. I’m working on a longer essay abo...Read more
January 30, 2015 • 7m
One of the many pleasures of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” (2011) is that the shots feel both tightly composed and weirdly unpred...Read more
March 19, 2015 • 7m
Can movement tell a story? Sure, if you’re as gifted as Akira Kurosawa. More than any other filmmaker, he had an innate understand...Read more
March 31, 2015 • 7m
If you want to make video essays, there’s no better film to study than Orson Welles’ 1973 masterpiece, F for Fake. There are a mil...Read more
May 7, 2015 • 7m
What can one detail tell us about a scene? If you’re Lynne Ramsay: absolutely everything. Today I consider the poetic possibilitie...Read more
May 29, 2015 • 7m
One of the great things about detailed production design is that it pays off in unexpected ways. So today I explore the weird poss...Read more
July 16, 2015 • 7m
If you grew up watching Looney Tunes, then you know Chuck Jones, one of all-time masters of visual comedy. Normally I would talk a...Read more
September 9, 2015 • 7m
Perhaps no other city has been as thoroughly hidden from modern filmmaking as Vancouver, my hometown. Today, it’s the third bigges...Read more
November 21, 2015 • 7m
Before Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson, before Chuck Jones and Jackie Chan, there was Buster Keaton, one of the founding fathers of ...Read more
December 30, 2015 • 7m
How do you emphasize to the audience that something is important? Well, you could always cut to a close-up, but how about somethin...Read more