movies

Apple Final Cut for iPad Review

Apple Final Cut for iPad Review: Lots Here, But Some Things Still Missing

It's no secret that I have had an anti-Apple attitude in the past. As much as I may have made jokes at their expense, I have nothing against them. My perceived bias stems more from a fierce loyalty to the PC; I use to custom-build gaming rigs as a kid. Ever in search of more gaming power, I saw Macs as boring, work computers. However, now that I'm older, what I truly need a computer for is exactly that -- work.

Spider-Man’s Cameras: A Look at What Peter Parker Shoots With

I’m sure photographers out there are one of two minds. One is that Peter Parker being both a photographer and a superhero is amazing and that we wish we could get those crazy angles. The second is that by taking pictures of himself for money, he is a total scam artist that raised the bar on pictures of Spider-Man no one could hope to accomplish.

The Cameras Seen in Movies and TV Shows

Want to see which cameras are used by characters in movies and TV shows? Product Placement Blog is a website that tracks brands that appear on screen, and one of the categories on the site is cameras.

Movie Scenes Side-by-Side with the Historical Clips that Inspired Them

Aspiring filmmaker Vugar Efendi has created a fascinating video for history and film buffs alike. In it, he places famous movie clips right next to the historical news reels and TV clips that inspired them, showing us just how incredibly accurate some of Hollywood's period pieces really are.

Classic Movie Shots Recreated with Cats

UK couple Dave and Sarah love both films and felines, so they've launched an Instagram project that combines the two. Called @moviecats, each photo they shoot is a scene from a famous movie recreated with the help of their two cats.

Lines Reveal the Great Compositions in Famous Movies

Want to see the composition concepts used in famous scenes from famous movies? Raymond Thi of Composition Cam has been taking still frames and overlaying neon pink lines to show things like symmetry, thirds, quadrants, triangles, diagonals, and more.

Artist Photoshops John Cho Into Major Movie Posters to Protest Whitewashing

What would it be like if, instead of Tom Cruise and Daniel Craig and Matt Damon, the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood all starred Asian actor John Cho? That's what 25-year-old digital artist William Yu set out to find out in his series and social movement #StarringJohnCho, a protest against whitewashing in cinema.

The History and Explosion of Lens Flare

Lens flare was once considered a problem in filmmaking and something that should be prevented with well designed lenses and special coatings, but now it's something that's embraced and seemingly in every movie that hits the silver screen. How and why did this change happen?

Photographers Give Iconic Hollywood Movie Shots an African Remake

[re-]Mixing Hollywood is a project by American photographer Antoine Tempé and Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, who shot elaborate portraits inspired by famous American and European movies.

Many of the scenes are instantly recognizable, except they feature models from Dakar, Senegal, and Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where the photos were shot.

A Look at The Striking Low-Key Black-and-White Style of Film Noir Cinema

Cinema and photography are two close-knit relatives that help us to tell stories through the use of a camera and mindful composition. This week, we are taking a look at the visual style heavily relied upon by the film noir genre that was most prevalent in the mid 20th century. Through the exploration of Hollywood's film noir visuals, we can learn a bit more about the history of cinema while finding inspiration for our own work.

Famous Movies and TV Shows Recreated with Things Found at Home

We first featured the Cardboard Box Office project back in 2013 as parents Lilly and Leon Mackie were attracting quite a bit of attention for their creative recreations of Hollywood films with their baby boy, Orson. In the year-and-a-half since, the family has continued shooting low-budget photos, branched out into TV shows, begun doing commercial shoots with their concept, and been nominated for a Webby award.

Here's a second, deeper look at some of the work they've been creating as a family.

Movie and TV Stills Creatively Inserted Into Real Life Using an iPhone

French photographer Francois Dourlen gets creative using nothing more than his surroundings and an iPhone, but he's not an iPhoneographer. No, his iPhone is a subject of every one of his images, a little window into the magical world of movies and television inserted creatively into drab scenes in the real world.

Hunger Games & Jurassic World Decide to Go Analog in Increasingly Digital Industry

At a time when digital production workflows are becoming more and more ubiquitous within Hollywood, the news of a director utilizing an analogue workflow on a big production always seems to strike a chord with those who appreciate the aesthetic and feel of film.

Thankfully, for those of you who do enjoy such news (myself included), two major directors are choosing film over even the highest-of-res digital for their upcoming (and already released) blockbusters.

‘Head Shots’ Photo Series Parodies Violent Posters by Making the Photog the Victim

Artist Jon Burgerman thinks there are too many violent film posters greeting us everywhere we go. These posters of movie and TV show characters holding weapons are all too common, and most of them show the protagonist brandishing their weapon right at the viewer.

And so, Burgerman decided to fight back using a little bit of fake blood, a sense of humor and photography.

Awesome Miniature Movie Stills Shot Using LEGO and Baking Powder

LEGO and baking powder, that and some Star Wars inspiration is all Finnish photographer (and PetaPixel reader, we might add) Vesa Lehtimäki needs to blow your mind and send you into a nerd frenzy that'll have you digging up your old D&D set.

Well, at least that's how we feel about it, because we couldn't have geeked out any harder than we did when we stumbled across Lehtimäki's miniature movie scene photography.

Parents Recreate Famous Film Scenes with Cardboard Boxes and Their Baby Boy

I don't have kids just yet, so I can't say from experience, but it seems one of the benefits of having a child is the ability to feature the adorable little guy or gal in creative photography projects. Examples abound: from Queenie Liao's wondrous naptime photos, to Nagano Toyokazu's series My Daughter Kanna.

Now, another great project has popped up on our radar. This one is called Cardboard Box Office, and it's the result of a parenting duo's creativity, an excess of packing materials and the addition of a baby boy to the family.

The Living Tin: Making Movies Using Only Collodion Tintype Photography

If you don't really think about it, it's easy to take video for granted. After all, you can pull out your cell phone and be recording video in a few seconds flat (even fewer if you have Pressy). But what if you were limited to older photographic techniques? No, we don't mean film, we mean wet plate photography.

Capturing even a 12fps animation for only a few seconds would seem an enormous task, and yet, that's exactly what director Kellam Clark and his 40-person crew -- altogether The Living Tin -- are doing. They're shooting video made entirely of collodion tintypes.

Portraits of Projectionists: Photos of the People Who Play Movies at Theaters

Sitting in a movie theater is probably a very familiar experience to most of you, but what's it like to watch the movie from the projection room -- that room with a small window at the back of each theater that holds the projector.

New York City-based photographer Joseph O. Holmes has a new project called The Booth that offers a glimpse into these rooms and the people who work in them.

A Supercut of Hollywood Movies About Photographers

Supercuts of movies are all the rage these days; here's one that'll be of interest to photography and camera enthusiasts. Simply titled "Photographers," the video was created by English artists Mishka Henner and David Oates, who spent hours upon hours watching more than 100 movies. The duo extracted short snippets from each one and spent months turning them into the giant whirlwind tour seen in the video above (warning: there's a dash of language, violence, and risqué business).

Famous Movie Scenes Revisited Using a Printer and Digital Camera

Living and working in New York City, Canadian writer and producer Christopher Moloney walks past many locations used as settings in movies. This past summer, he began documenting those spots with an awesome "photo in a photo" project. Using a simple black-and-white printer and a cheap digital camera, Moloney visits the exact locations where famous scenes were filmed at, and shoots a photograph of a printed movie still from just the right perspective so that it blends into the background. His website, titled "FILMography" (film + photography) has hundreds of these creative images so far.

Photos of Neatly Arranged Outfits Worn by Characters in Famous Movies

Earlier this week we shared a series of photographs by photographer Dinah Fried showing notable meals found in famous novels. It's difficult to catch the meals when reading the books, especially if they're only mentioned once or twice, so major props to you if you recognized more than one or two of the meals.

French photographer Candice Milon's project La Mode en Grand Écran, or "Fashion on the Big Screen", is much more accessible. The series shows famous outfits worn by main characters in well known movies, from the snazzy skater style of Marty McFly in Back to the Future to the droog look worn by characters in The Clockwork Orange. The clothing items are arranged neatly on backgrounds of various colors. See how many you can recognize (answers at the end).

A Documentary About Hollywood’s Transition from Film to Digital

The photography industry isn't the only one transitioning away from film and into digital; Hollywood's undergoing the exact same thing. Side by Side is an upcoming documentary film produced by Keanu Reeves that offers a look into this major transition that's underway

For almost one hundred years there was only one way to make a movie — with film. Movies were shot, edited and projected using photochemical film. But over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge photochemical filmmaking.

SIDE BY SIDE, a new documentary produced by Keanu Reeves, takes an in-depth look at this revolution. Through interviews with directors, cinematographers, film students, producers, technologists, editors, and exhibitors, SIDE BY SIDE examines all aspects of filmmaking — from capture to edit, visual effects to color correction, distribution to archive. At this moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, SIDE BY SIDE explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring.

Top 10 Films that Feature Nikon Cameras

Here's a top ten list, in no particular order, of Nikon movie roles! Often appearing as uncredited extras, these Nikon SLRs have been present at some of the greatest moments in movie history.