Frame by Frame: The Deuce – Season 1 (2017)

Frame By Frame

Year – 2017
Decade – 2010s
Cinematographers – Vanja Cernjul, Pepe Avila del Pino (pilot)
Director – various
Aspect Ratio – 1.78
Distributor – HBO
Genre – Drama; Period (1970s)
Camera – Panasonic VariCam35, Arri Alexa (pilot only)
Lenses –  Spherical; Panavision PVintage; Panavision Primos (pilot only)
Format – Digital; Shot in V-Log in HD (1920×1080) resolution with ProRes 4444 compression

Categories
Night Exteriors           Car Shots                       Frames Within Frames     Bars
Silhouettes                   Wide Shots                    Full Shots                            High Angle
Title Cards                   Mirrors                           Shafts of Light
Mercury Vapor Streetlights                              Sodium Vapor Streetlights

Clink on any link above to see similar frames from other films.

The Show
The legalization of pornography alters the lives of the denizens of New York’s seedy 42nd Street circa 1971.

Single Frames

Tags:

frames 1.78, frames 2010s, frames 2017, frames arri alexa, frames digital, frames drama, frames hbo, frames panasonic varicam 35, frames panavision primo, frames panavision pvintage, frames period 1970s, frames spherical

85 classic German VHS horror covers

Posters and Cover Art

I don’t remember what internet rabbit hole led me there, but a while back I ended up on a Flickr stream called Leopardtronics – and discovered a cache of high-res cover scans of German VHS tapes. I’ve compiled a batch of my favorite horror covers and shared them below. The feed has thousands of more images of VHS and vintage pulp novel art to sift through.

And if you want more analog goodness, here’s some past features from the blog…
The 100 Greatest VHS Horror Covers
More than 100 French VHS Horror Covers
40 Classic Japanese VHS Covers
More than 50 Brazilian VHS Covers

Tags:

Boris Vallejo, enzo sciotti, German vhs covers, michael knepper, Renato Casaro, rolf goetze, VHS

Frame by Frame: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Frame By Frame

Year – 1968
Decade – 1960s
Cinematographer – George Romero
Director – George Romero
Aspect Ratio – 1.37
Genre – Horror, Zombie
Camera – Arri 35 IIC (More on the Arri 35 II series of cameras)
Format – 35mm; Black and White
Production Info – Budget of $114,000 and shot in 30 days, which were spread out over seven months as Romero took breaks to tend to his Pittsburgh commercial production company
Key Words – Close-Ups

Click on any of the links above to view other films featured in that category

The Movie
A group of bickering survivors hole up in an isolated farmhouse besieged by the undead in George Romero’s immeasurably influential Night of the Living Dead. The film redefined not only the zombie movie but the horror genre itself, drawing a clear line of demarcation between the genre’s history of gothic monsters and enlarged radioactive creatures and the more angry, violent and transgressive contemporary horror of the 1970s. In commemoration of Night of the Living Dead’s 50th anniversary, I’m looking back at some of my favorite frames from Romero’s directorial debut.

Tags:

31 Days of Horror - 2018, frames 1.33, frames 1960s, frames 1968, frames 35mm, frames Arri 35 II, frames black and white, frames close-ups, frames george romero, frames horror, frames zombies, George Romero, night of the living dead

Interview: First Man cinematographer Linus Sandgren

Interviews

Here’s a link to my latest piece for Filmmaker Magazine – an interview with First Man cinematographer Linus Sandgren. The Neil Armstrong biopic was shot on a mixture of Super 16mm, 35mm and 70mm IMAX with many of the effects created practically in camera by placing spacecraft replicas on gimbals in an Atlanta soundstage decked out with giant LED screens. The climactic moon scenes were shot in an Atlanta quarry and lit entirely with one 200K bulb created specifically for the film. Production had only two of the prototype bulbs – one of which blew on its first day of use.

A snippet of the story is below. Also, check out my previous talk with Sandgren about his Oscar-winning work on La La Land.

Tags:

cinematographer interviews, damien chazelle, first man, Linus Sandgren

31 Days of Horror: An alternative Halloween (2018) poster

Posters and Cover Art

(Above) Calcutta artist Rahul Jha’s take on the new Halloween “sequel” – which ignores the previous nine franchise follow-ups and serves as a direct continuation of John Carpenter’s 1978 original. With a production budget of just $10 million, Halloween (2018) earned $77.5 million in its opening weekend, making it the second highest grossing R-rated horror film in history after It (2017).

More 31 Days of Horror

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31 Days of Horror - 2018, alternative movie posters, Halloween (2018)

31 Days of Horror: Shivers (1975)

Posters and Cover Art

An Italian poster for David Cronenberg’s debut feature Shivers (1975), which finds the residents of an ultra-modern high rise apartment turned into sex-crazed zombies by a parasite. Shot on Nun’s Island in Montreal, the Canadian film was released in the states as They Came From Within.

More 31 Days of Horror

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31 Days of Horror - 2018, David Cronenberg, foreign movie posters, Italian movie posters, Shivers, They Came From Within

31 Days of Horror – A breakdown of a signature effect from The Blob (1988)

Behind the Scenes

Like John Carpenter’s The Thing, the 1988 remake of The Blob surpassed its 1950s sci-fi progenitor with the assistance of then-cutting-edge special effects. Many of the film’s most memorable gags were courtesy of effects designer Tony Gardner – including a misdirect that finds the ostensible hero, the clean-cut high school jock Paul (played by Donovan Leitch), pulling a Janet Leigh and getting devoured in the first act.

Gardner and his L.A. based company Alterian have provided effects for a host of classic genre films – Return of the Living Dead, Army of Darkness, Zombieland, multiple Chucky flicks – and Alterian’s Facebook page offers up a treasure trove of behind the scenes pics from those projects. Below are a few photos from the aforementioned Paul-melting scene in The Blob, which employed a practical rig for the actor, animatronics, and quarter-scale puppets.

Continue on past the photos to read a detailed description of the effect from Gardner and to watch a clip of the scene.

Click here to feast on more from this month’s 31 Days of Horror

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31 Days of Horror - 2018, alterian, behind the scenes, chuck russell, making of, practical effects, the blog (1988), tony gardner

31 Days of Horror – On the set of Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Behind the Scenes

Protective plastic blankets the crew in preparation for a messy effects shot on Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell (2009), which marked the Evil Dead filmmaker’s return to horror after toiling on his trilogy of Spider-Man films. Photo by unit stills photographer Melissa Moseley.

Check out more of this year’s 31 Days of Horror.

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31 Days of Horror - 2018, behind the scenes, drag me to hell, making of, melissa moseley, on set, Sam Raimi