January 27th, 2012 by Glendyn

January 23rd, 2012 by Glendyn

My photography / man crush on Joel Sternfeld deepens with the release of his new book First Pictures.

January 17th, 2012 by Glendyn

On the weekend I watched this wonderful hour long docco about the Magnum photographers agency. I love these guys (who doesn’t?), apart from producing incredible work I think most the photographers possess special magical powers. Watch in the opening sequence how Martin Parr approaches some elderly women on the street, where one would imagine a group like this would be upset with a stranger coming up and taking close-up photos of them, Martin seems to have them under a spell from the second he takes the first frame. Amazing.

Similarly Larry Towell (at around 4mins 30 secs), take photos of Mennonite farmers, the amazing thing here is seeing the footage that the documentary crew shoots, which is great, but the ‘photo’ Tony shoots of essentially the same scene is so incredibly beautiful, it’s like it was taken at a totally different time and place. Magic!

I love watching this process (some more of it here), it’s like watching a type of alchemy take place before your eyes.

Spoiler Alert: Special appearance by Henri Cartier-Bresson in the final sequence. Giving the film a poetic and playful climax as only H C-B could.

January 16th, 2012 by Glendyn

As I’m deep in the heart of watching Series 4 right now, I loved stumbling across this fan cut montage of a lot of the POV shots from Breaking Bad. I never realised this type of camera positioning was such a recurring beat throughout the show. But it’s reminded me it’s definitely one of the defining elements of the shows visual style.

via The Worlds Best Ever

January 13th, 2012 by Glendyn

While driving back down south towards Melbourne, we passed near Gosford, so I thought I’d best drop in and have a cup of tea with my Dad.

I lived in this house for a couple of years when I was 11 and I’ve only visited a couple of times since. There are a lot of memories here, both good and bad. It was good to see my Dad though.

January 12th, 2012 by Glendyn

Tamworth, New South Wales. Early evening after hot summers day.

January 10th, 2012 by Glendyn

Back from 3500kms of family road trip fun. Xmas good. New Years good. Country air, ocean air, afternoon naps and eating and drinking way to much with family and friends.

“Are we there yet… Are we there yet…?”

January 3rd, 2012 by Glendyn

Scratch this off my ‘to-do’ list from below…

Watched a screener of Dragonslayer the other night. A vérité documentary about ‘free spirited’ skateboarder Josh ‘Screech’ Sandoval. The film creates a cinematic portrait so rough and ready, yet so pure and intimate. To be honest, it’s the sort of film that makes me want to give up film making altogether because it’s the kind I have always wanted to make, and here it is, made. Well not quite… but it’s a film that both inspires me and frustrates me in the best possible ways.

The other thing that Dragonslayer does well is give you incredible access into a very ‘specific world’. I’ve seen many ‘skate films’ and films with skateboarders as characters, but none have given this kind of access into the lifestyles of this subcultures most hard-core players.

It’s such a beautifully poetic and fucked up punk of a film.

December 29th, 2011 by Glendyn

December 22nd, 2011 by Glendyn

Really looking forward to having some time off over Xmas and New Year. Should be able to get a good couple of weeks or R&R in. About to jump in the car and make the annual pilgrimage to my home town Tamworth in New South Wales. Family road trip here we come!

I had some photos to post… but for some reason after I updated WordPress to the new version 3.3 I can no longer upload images… I’m sure there is a fix around the corner, but if anyone has any hints, I’m all ears!

In the meantime, I’m hoping you all have a super Christmas and relaxing New Year!

Also… This!

December 15th, 2011 by Glendyn

Finished Beaconsfield today…!

Although that old saying does spring to mind… “You don’t ever finish a film, you abandon it…”

Don’t have an on air date as yet… but I suspect it will be early-ish next year maybe.

Some snaps taken during production that haven’t made it here after the break…

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December 9th, 2011 by Glendyn

December 7th, 2011 by Glendyn

The group show at the Centre For Contempory Photography I have been part of here in Melbourne ends this week and goes on a two year gallery tour around Australia.

The images I had in the show form part of a larger series of photographs I made last year in Vladivostok, a remote city in the far east of Russia. The boys were skating in a park on the edge of town that featured a large statue of King Neptune. They were like kids anywhere else in the world hanging out, killing time.  But to me there was something about these boys that represented a city and a country in transition.

Exhibition tour dates and more images of the CCP show after the break.

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December 1st, 2011 by Glendyn

November 27th, 2011 by Glendyn

Happy Birthday Rosebud!

November 24th, 2011 by Glendyn

Been spending the week sitting in the dark, colour grading guys sitting in the dark.

Most our conversation about the grade has been about how ‘dark’ we can make ‘the darkness’. I wrote  a few months ago about how black a mine really is and I know if we were grading for ‘cinema’ we could perhaps go a sniff  darker than we have. But as Beaconsfield is for broadcast we have to take into consideration that people may watch the film, heaven forbid, with a light on or even wierder, they may not be watching the film on a ‘broadcast calibrated monitor’.

Regardless, I’m really happy with the direction the grade is heading and it feels great to be on this side of a long production schedule and to be almost ‘finished’.

November 21st, 2011 by Glendyn

When I first saw the clip below, my first thought was how useful this would be to see if how effective your visual storytelling is, to asses composition and to study how an audience views a sequence.

My second thought was how all the marketing folk will use it to asses if an audience is staring at their hamburger/cereal box/car long enough.

And my third thought was how incredible Paul Thomas Anderson’s  has ‘blocked’ this scene! The way the camera leads you to reveal the other characters and open up the dialgogue between those characters.

Either way this is pretty bloody fascinating!

‘This is an excerpt from There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007). 11 adult viewers were shown the video and their eye movements recorded using an Eyelink 1000 (SR Research) infra-red camera-based eyetracker. Each dot represents the center of one viewer’s gaze. The size of each dot represents the length of time they have held fixation.’

More info and research examples from TheDIEMProject here.

Thanks John Brawley!

November 15th, 2011 by Glendyn

Spent some time in Sydney over the last week with Stephen Rae who is composing the soundtrack for Beaconsfield. Being a story that takes place predominatley underground, early conversations were about ‘elemental’ and ‘organic’ sounds. The sound of rocks, air and water and music that forms in and out of the environment. For the past few weeks (amongst our discussions about cameras, watches and motorbikes) we have been working through demos and musical sketches and these ideas are now becoming more defined.

Through Stephens sonic explorations we have settled on the clarinet as one of the key instruments. I must admit I’ve never been drawn to the clarinet, I tend to steer clear of  ‘reed instruments’ in general, (except I’m quite fond of the oboe), but  the way Stephen is using it is really different. Then I realised there is a whole album I love that uses the clarinet in a beautifully textured and ambient way. So I’m really looking forward to see how it all keeps progressing.

Below: Sydney mid afternoon storm, recording studio flowers and Peter Jenkin (lead Clarinet of the Sydney Opera) recording clarinet sounds for Stephen to compose and edit with. 

November 3rd, 2011 by Glendyn

October 31st, 2011 by Glendyn

Took the kids to see Red Dog a few weeks ago. So good to sit in a ‘packed’ cinema for a Australian film, and one you can take the kids to see too. Red Dog is a lot of fun and I can see why audiences have been going to see it in droves. But rather than this be a post all about Red Dog, I thought it could be a good excuse to post one of my all time favourite short films. Two/Out which is directed by Kriv Stenders, who also directed Red Dog.

Two/Out was a bit of revelation to me when I saw it for the first time. There was and still is something so compelling about the simplicity of this film, which is so brutal and raw, yet at the same time, so warm and human.

Every now and then I go and chat to film students and I always try and show them this film in a hope to inspire and acknowledge that you don’t need much to make a great film. If you have a good story, all you might need is two characters, one room and a single locked off camera. Can’t really get more simple than that.