Film Noir Infographic

The BFI have created this beautiful infographic on What is Film Noir. Not only has it got a great overview of the genre, but the specific filmmaking techniques that imbue the style, from 'Choker' close ups to the Dutch tilt.

They rightly crowned 'Double Indemnity' the most film noir movie of all time. This classic directed by Billy Wilder is adapted from the American pulp fiction novella by James M Cain, and contains the most elements of the stark and poetic genre.

Joss Whedon - Bafta Guru

The Bafta Guru site is a bountiful resource on filmmaking, they've got screenwriting lectures, interviews, and opportunities. This interview with Joss Whedon for their 'Life in Pictures' strand isn't just a great overview of the writer/director, it's also amazing what you can learn from just listening to him. Plus it's really fucking funny. Like really really funny. I've probably posted it before but after revisiting it last week, it bears repeat listening. This is the guy who created Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Serenity. He brought the Avengers together in a bickering harmony. I could listen to him all day.

Wes Anderson - Red & Yellow Supercut

This nice lil supercut by Rishi Kaneria shows off Wes Anderson's love of red and yellow, a couple of warm, striking and evocative colours that are strongly prevalent throughout his work. By splicing together clips from the likes of The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, and Fantastic Mr Fox Rishi's work delineates Wes Anderson's clear signature style - you always know a Wes Anderson movie when you're watching one, and it's no surprise Grand Budapest Hotel took away four Oscars last week.

Red & Yellow: A Wes Anderson Supercut from Rishi Kaneria on Vimeo.

Sticking to a limited palette is a great way of maintaining consistency throughout a visual story, and as the above short demonstrates, a good way to developing a trademark aesthetic.

Hearing Tarantino supercut

Jacob T. Swinney's edited this awesome supercut of the sounds of Tarantino. 'Hearing Tarantino' demonstrates the power of the right sound in the right place, from the shhhink of a samurai sword and the sppplatter of blood, to the slurrrp of a tasty beverage and the sssizzle of a cigarette drag, audio embeds tension, gives action impact and can really make a scene stand out.

Hearing Tarantino from Jacob T. Swinney on Vimeo.

Red: A Kubrick Supercut

Red: A Kubrick Supercut from Rishi Kaneria on Vimeo.

Rishi Kaneria's collated the clips from Kubrick's work to highlight the auteur's penchant for red, from The Shining's elevator of blood to the colour's prominence throughout 2001.

Zoom Shots Supercut

What zoom are you staring at from OFFBEAT ESTUDIO on Vimeo.

Christopher Nolan on 'Following'

Here Christopher Nolan talks through the making of his first feature - Following. It's a neo noir tale with a twisty turny plot that keeps you guessing right up to the end. In this interview he elucidates on how having no budget can be used to your advantage, from choosing to shoot black and white, to the use of sound, and elements to include or not to avoid betraying your lack of finance, as well as how it helped him develop directorial techniques he's been using ever since.

Despite his budgets increasing to astronomical figures, Nolan hasn't changed his methods, he still prefers to shoot single camera, still draws a lot from the crime and film noir genre, and still uses inserts for both storytelling and editing reasons. It's an in-depth interview where you can learn a lot about first time film-making, as well as the story behind the production of a very strong début feature.

Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy

This video compilation by Tony Zhou perfectly demonstrates not only the cinematic flair and comedic talents of Edgar Wright but also analyses how the English auteur uses every frame as an opportunity to tell the story visually. And it reminds me how pissed I am that he's now not directing Ant-Man. Stupid Marvel.

Tony's beef and disappointment with American comedies is well articulated, calling them out for their lazy filmmaking - "the use of picture and sound to deliver jokes is... boring." He rightly argues that when you're predominantly using close up shots of your actors delivering dialogue, you're not using the full potential of cinema. And this is what Edgar Wright does so well - visual storytelling. In Tony's words, "the frame is a playground, so play."

The Symmetry of Wes Anderson

Kogonada's doing his thing again, this time highlighting Wes Anderson's penchant for symmetry. It's just one of the elements that contributes to the auteur's cinematic style but the neat little montage shows how perfectly balanced his compositions are. Initially, this approach seems to go against the rule of thirds - the guideline to composing visual images that are naturally pleasing to the eye - however it's only vertically that Wes Anderson's symmetry eschews the rule, horizontally it often still adheres to it.

Wes Anderson // Centered from kogonada on Vimeo.

Kogonada's videos are wonderful gems that typically focus on demonstrating directors' thematic style, including the sound of Darren Aronofsky, Stanley Kubrick's one point perspective and Tarantino from below. They're all worth watching and here's to hoping he makes more.

The Art of Close Ups with Edgar Wright

He's got one of the most distinctive directorial styles of any auteur working today and his collaborations with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have resulted in some of the best British comedy films ever made, not to mention my favourite British sitcom Spaced. Here Edgar Wright talks to Slash Film about the art of the close up, as well as whip pans and snap zooms, all shots he's particularly fond of and the use of which is a large contributing factor to his visual flair. He shares some tricks and techniques, for example the whip pan onto a close up is usually done in reverse, although their camera operator was such a don he didn't have to do this.

"I'm a big fan of getting into a scene late and getting out of a scene early." Good advice often cited for writing an affective scene, in any form be it for the page, screen or stage. Edgar Wright also references James Cameron's tooling up montages as a big inspiration in Shaun of the Dead where he applied it to typically mundane sequences of everyday life such as boiling the kettle and tying shoe laces. Then in Hot Fuzz he took the Tony Scott and Michael Bay fetishization approach of slick cuts and sexy visual affects to the usually boring parts of police procedure such as the paperwork.

Charlie Brooker interviews Vince Gilligan

Breaking Bad is one of the best TV dramas ever made. A black comedy, a Shakespearean morality tale, and a show that epitomizes the current trend in TV drama for unsympathetic protagonists, every episode is an incredible example of high tension storytelling with some of the tightest writing on the screen. At the Edinburgh International TV festival Charlie Brooker interviewed the show's creator Vince Gilligan. They cover everything from the inspiration and development to Vince Gilligan's entry into the industry.