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007 Movies Quiz [Just For Fun] Test Your 007 Knowledge

007.. Bond, The Name Is James Bond.
We all love James Bond movies. So I thought Lets take a break from the hectic film learning process and play a movie quiz just for fun. if you want to play a movie quiz then there is no better person than 007 James bond. We all know who James bond is and how he roll, the way he flirts with young ladies, drive fancy cars and has fancy gadgets. He is like a mixture cross breed of Superman and Batman who has extraordinary physical strength like superman and has fancy gadgets like Batman. (Though I always wonder being a secret agent how he blows his cover in every movie and never gets hurt... but we are not here analyse his moves.)

007 James Bond movies have been watched all over the world and as my blog has daily visitors from all over the world from far east to west and I think there is not a single film enthusiast in the whole world who has not seen at least one 007 James Bond movie. So this is the reason I choose James Bond Quiz.

Its very easy to play. You have got 4 minutes time and you have to name the 23 James Bond movies by the synonymous phrases. Its easy isn't it? Well to be frank I failed to sole the 23 names but I am sure you can very easily solve it. Ok once you finish the quiz let me know your score in comment box. Lets see who is the fastest in solving the quiz. wish you all the best and have fun and share it with your friends also.

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Stephen King's 20 Laws For Writers And How To Get Ideas

Stephen King is the guy who has huge list of adaptation of his work into films, television, comic books, stage theater and music. He is the guy who penned my favorite The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile And IT. There is no better person who can teach writing. In his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Stephen King has relieved some of the laws a writer should always follow. Here is the great learning resource for writers.

Stephen King describes the importance of writing room

Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. Your schedule in at about the same time every day, out when your thousand words are on paper or disk exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go.

Indeed, Sleep is the greatest creative aphrodisiac. Stephen King very well understood that sleep like state when you are awake increase your power of visualization, which is the basic need of a filmmaker and writer. Stephen King further describes this

In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. And as your mind and body grow accustomed to a certain amount of sleep each night six hours, seven, maybe the recommended eight so can you train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined waking dreams which are successful works of fiction.

When you want to do something creative first thing you need to do is you start separating yourself from the crowd and start spending as much time as you can with yourself. Following are the Stephen King's 20 Laws For Writers.

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Akira Kurosawa - The Master Of Movements to Tell His Stories Visually

Akira Kurosawa and Alfred Hitchcock are the masters of cinema. They had their definitive filmmaking style. In my previous post we learned about the Alfred Hitchcock's filmmaking style. So lets analyse what makes Akira Kurosawa the master of cinema.
Akira Kurosawa was a completely hands-on director, passionately involved in every aspect of the filmmaking process. He used to co-writes his scripts, oversees the design, rehearses the actors, sets up all the shots and then does the editing. He has actively participated in every stage of filmmaking from the initial concept to the editing and scoring of the final product.

Akira Kurosawa always used to say that the screenplay was the foundation of a successful film and a mediocre director can sometimes make a good film out of a good script or even an excellent director can never make a good film out of a bad script. But what makes Akira Kurosawa The Master of cinema is his extraordinary ability of composing movements.

Just found out another video essay by Tony Zhou about the Akira Kurosawa's character and camera movements. Check out how Akira Kurosawa painted each and every frame with perfection.

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Low Budget Visual Effects,Miniateurs And Forced Perspective

Low budget visual effects.. really? Yes low budget visual effects are very much possible and it is used in not only low budget movies but also big budget movies. Today lets get into low budget visual effects which you can use in your short film with limited resources. But first Lets understand the phrases Miniatures And Forced Perspective.

A miniature effect is a special effect created for motion pictures and television programs using scale models. Scale models are often combined with high speed photography. Where a miniature appears in the foreground of a shot, this is often very close to the camera lens — for example when matte painted backgrounds are used. Since the exposure is set to the object being filmed so the actors appear well lit, the miniature must be over-lit in order to balance the exposure and eliminate any depth of field differences that would otherwise be visible. This foreground miniature usage is referred to as forced perspective.

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Priceless 1.3 Million Digitized Pages of Film History For Free

Film are made for more than a century, Films has evolved, Films had discoveries and inventions, Films had experiments,... Today we know about filmmaking which is sophisticated but that wasn't like that from the beginning. Some legends came couple of generations back and studied and improved films and all its aspects. Thats what we call film history. Film history is a buried priceless treasure. There is lot to learn from it. But as time passed by that crucial information got vanished till now.... but now its open for everybody. Loot as much knowledge as you can. Its upto you.

Film history is one of the most important part of your learning curve. Not only film history, sound and Tv history is a must to learn. And now the information worth himalaya is free for everybody, thanks to Media History Digital Library, who has launched a search platform called Lantern which contains 1.3 million pages of digitized texts from publications of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.

The Lantern search engine is the collections feature extensive runs of several important trade papers and fan magazines including

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Learn From The Career of Paul Thomas Anderson in Five Shots

I was browsing through websites and i stumble upon a video from Kevin B. Lee's Video: Steadicam progress – the career of Paul Thomas Anderson in five shots. I just loved it and I feel its a great value to the people who are interested in filmmaking. Paul Thomas Anderson has made some great films like There Will Be Blood,The Master, Boogie Nights, Magnolia,.... and you find one resemblance in all his films is efficient use of steadicam.

Following is the video of the career of Paul Thomas Anderson and his use of steadicam. Not only does the video focus on specific shots in his films, but it also goes into the psychology of what the shots do (or are trying to do) for the scene in the context of the movies. There is no better way of learning than learning from the masters.

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Quentin Tarantino's Better Than Film School Philosophy At BAFTA

Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite director. Though he is known for non-linear story lines, satirical subject matter, and an anesthetization of violence and movies like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Volume 1&2, I love his Inglorious Bastards.

Though Quentin Tarantino never attended any film school he is one of the most invited guest lecturer at all the top film schools. The reason he is invited is not only because he is a filmmaker genius filmmaker but also he never had formal film knowledge and what he earned, earned by himself alone. He did what most of the film aspirants don't do, he took the first step and made a short film which took him 3 years to complete. Listen to the pure genius.

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Dolly Zoom / Vertigo Effect, What Is It And How & When To Use It?

You have watched films and you have probably seen the dolly zoom. It’s when the foreground element stays the same size while the background elements grow or shrink that is what the dolly zoom is.It has many different names such as the The Reverse Tracking Shoot, Zolly, the Stretch Shoot, Forward zoom Reverse Tracking, Trombone Shot, Contra-Zoom, Telescoping, Smash Zoom or Smash Shot, Hitchcock shot, Push/pull, The Long Pull, Trans-trav (in Romanian and Russian) from trans-focal length operation and travelling movement, … or The Vertigo Effect.

So when was dolly zoom used first and who invented it? The Dolly Zoom is a camera shot made famous in Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO (1958). It was invented by his cinematographer Irmin Roberts to visually convey the feeling and effects of fear of heights by zooming in with the lens while simultaneously dollying the camera backwards…or vice versa. Since 1958 it has been used many of times in motion pictures… only as a trick shot. Filmmakers always use dolly zoom only because it looks visually awesome. But every shot or camera movement has some meaning which filmmakers often forget. First lets watch the original dolly zoom or Vertigo effect from the master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.

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How Film Shot Length Decreased In Last Century

As we discussed how films have evolved in the last century statistically in my last post, I dug more into it and found out some interesting facts about the decrease in the average shot length in the last 100 years. As technology improved, so does the filmmaking and there have been numerous changes in the art and craft. One most important improvement i feel is decreased average shot length.

In the early days of films, theater and plays were more dominant. Later many theater people moved on to the moving pictures along with their theater Technics. Hence earliest movies had long shot length, sometimes a single shot scenes where were pretty long just like they used to do on theater stage.. One more thing which led to long shot length was lack of proper editing technology. As technology started evolving average shot length started decreasing. Interestingly average shot length of movies in 1900 was above 40 seconds per shot, dropped to 10 seconds per shot in 1920.

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How Films Have Evolved In The Last Century Statistically

As technology has advanced, films have also changed and started improving day by day in all possible ways. The 2005 version of King Kong looks different from the 1933 King Kong version. The new King Kong appears in vivid color, and with the help of CGI he’s a convincingly lifelike beast. The original soundtrack is tinny and shrill; in the newer one, the great ape’s snorts and growls are deep and realistic.

Films have changed in always all ways, says James Cutting, a psychologist at Cornell University who’s been studying the evolution of cinema. Cutting presented some of his findings at MOVIES IN YOUR BRAIN – THE SCIENCE OF CINEMATIC PERCEPTION sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Cutting says “All these things are working to hold our attention better.”

According to Cutting, here are a few of the most important ways in which films have changed in the past century.

Shorter shots
As Cutting researched and found out that he average shot length of films has decreased from about 12 seconds in 1930 to about 2.5 seconds today. He showed statistics from the British film scholar Barry Salt, who’s calculated the average shot duration in more than 15,000 movies made between 1910 and 2010. That’s a lot of hard work and research. In his 2010 study Attention and the Evolution of Hollywood Film , Cutting found that 150 movies made between 1935 and 2010 have an average of 1,132 shots per film except the King Kong remake, which has the most 3,099 shots into 187 minutes film.`

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Learn David Fincher's Striking Dark Lighting Visual Style

David Fincher is a hotshot producer and director who has not only made Oscar nominated films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Social Network but made them with a unique visual style and that is his dark visual style, dark in tone and especially dark in visual aesthetics. He followed his dark visual style in his next films The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl. David Fincher is very good with color tones and the darkness.

I was going through Vashi Nedomansky's blog who is a professional film/video editor and I stumbled upon this topic which he has described in great detail...

David Fincher is well known for his striking visual style and the immersive worlds he creates. I've been lucky enough to work in his offices and speak with Academy Award winning editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter who cut The Social Network and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Their attention to detail and level of absolute perfection is second to none. Nothing that ends up on the screen is accidental or arbitrary…every frame is dissected and decided upon. In my view…Fincher’s visuals have leaned towards a more natural, realistic yet absolutely visceral feel over his last 3 projects.

So what makes this darkness so important to David Fincher? Well lets go back to 1972 film 'The Godfather' which is known as one of the visually dark on purpose film. Gordon Hugh Willis, Jr. the cinematographer of the film decided to go from light to dark, dark to light, small to big and big to small. Francis Ford Coppola was worried about making a film visually dark, putting soft overhead soft lights but he gave free hand to Gordon Willis and the result was a milestone in visual storytelling and Gordon Willis was named as "The Prince of Darkness". Watch the opening of the Godfather with overhead lights of the characters and most of the background dark.

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What Exactly Does The Film Editor Do In Films?

Ok so lets examine what exactly does the film editor do in film making process? I bet you know the answer. Film editor cuts the bad parts of the film, sits in a dark room with fancy computers and make sequences of the already shot footage and make a story. Its one of the easiest part of the filmmaking Isn't that what you know about the film editor?

Well lets see. As you know filmmaking is divided into three phases. Pre-Production, production and Post production. Pre-production is the 60% work done, Production is 10% and Post Production is 30%. Film editor is the only person who handles the last 30%. So what does that 30% consists?

Ok Film editor's job is not to cut but when to cut. Film editing is his decision of when to cut. His job is not only working on fancy computers and hi-tech softwares.Today film editor and his assistants have become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. For an example, in past years, film editors dealt only with just that—film. Sound, music, and visual effects editors dealt with the practicalities of other aspects of the editing process, usually under the direction of the film editor and director. However, in today's digital systems have increasingly put these responsibilities on the film editor.

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[Must Read] I Dream For Living : Steven Spielberg At Academy of Achievement

Steven Spielberg Speech is like a ocean of film making wisdom and this speech is not prepared. Steven Spielberg talked what ran through his mind and that's just awesome. Everybody loves Steven Spielberg films. I haven't met a single person who doest like his films. He has worked on every genre of film making from comedy, drama, fantasy to Si-Fi. He has won two Academy , Best Director awards for Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, nine films he directed were nominated for Oscars.
Following is the speech given by Steven Spielberg at Academy of Achievement and it is a must watch for every aspiring film maker. Listen carefully what he has said in the speech.

I dream for a living and years later I realised that's exactly what I do for living.
..My audience is my partner.
...When you have a dream, it doesn't often come out screaming to your face, sometimes dream almost whispers..
...Hardest things to listen is your instincts, your personal intuitions.... always whispers, never shouts ... very hard to hear...

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Wannabe Screenwriter?Must Watch David S Goyer's Screenwriters Lecture

Let me introduce to David S Goyer if you do not know him yet. David S Goyer is a screenwriter, film director, novelist and also a comic book writer. He is best known for his screenwriting for films like Blade, Blade II, Blade: Trinity, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and Man Of Steel. He is Christopher Nolan's favorite writers and they have worked together on some blockbuster projects. So how did this guy managed to work on such high profile projects? He must be having some film family background? Well he was a average joe like you and me and yet he managed to reach the top of his success as a writer.

So how exactly David S Goyer did that? Well he has described the journey of his screenwriting career from top to bottom with the pearls of wisdom at the BAFTA Screenwriters Lecture. This is a must watch for every wannabe screenwriter as well as established screenwriter. He has talked in brief about how only good writing skills are not enough for becoming a successful screenwriter, how he called an agent for consecutive 45 days, how he got signed by the same agent for a Jean-Claude Van Damme film when he was student at University of Southern California,... there is so much to learn from David S Goyer. This lecture is like a treasure. Every screenwriter must watch.

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Better Than Film School : Learn Filmmaking From Alfred Hitchcock

If you know little bit about cinema then The Master Of Cinema Alfred Hitchcock is not a stranger to you. Alfred Hitchcock was a multiple nominee and winner of a number of prestigious awards, including two Golden Globes, eight Laurel Awards, and five lifetime achievement awards including the first BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, as well as being five times nominated for Academy Award as Best Director though he never won it. His film Rebecca (nominated for 11 Oscars) won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940—particularly notable as another Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent, was also nominated that same year.

Following is an interview of Alfred Hitchcock in which he explains the Cutting, Montage, Creating tension, Camera Angles and many other things in great length with the examples. This video is a goldmine for writers, cinematographers and editors.Watch the following video.

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Download Now : Oscar Nominated Screenplays 2015 For Free

Oscar nomination have already been announced and many of you must have watched the nominated movies. What if you get original Oscar nominated screenplays to read? Well I have found the original oscar nominated screenplays for you to download and study.Isn't that awesome...

Please understand that producers have made these Oscar nominated screenplays for education purpose only. Please download them for studying only and please hurry as you never know when producers will take them down from the web. Please keep in mind that these are legal download links for Oscar nominated screenplays and any abuse of them can lead you to the notice from producers. Some people try to sell these screenplays which is illegal. Once again please download for only educational purposes only.

So here is the list of original Oscar nominated screenplays 2015

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Can Static Frames Take You To The Oscar Doorsteps? Watch Ida

Ok, now Oscar fever is on and you must have seen most of the nominated films. But have you seen Ida a Polish drama, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski which has two nominations in Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography categories. I bet you haven't yet but you must watch this film if you are a real film enthusiast or a film student. In recent years, Best Cinematography has been dominated largely by VFX films and this year also there is a nomination for The Grand Budapest Hotel. But Ida is an exception.

So what makes Ida different? Well first watch the trailer of Ida if you have not seen yet.

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How Christopher Nolan Shot His No-Budget Film,'Following' Must Read

Christopher Nolan is your favourite director,isn't he? After all he has made big budget movies like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, Transcendence and Interstellar. He is shooting some multimillion dollar films next year. So how he started shooting such a big budget movies from the start of his career? Well He hasn't.

Christopher Nolan did an exclusive interview with VICE and shared his shooting tricks he used in his first no budget film 'Following.' I know most of the guys think Memento was first film directed by Christopher Nolan but even before that he started his career with Following which was a real no budget movie. This interview is a real gem for every amature and professional filmmaker, cinematographer, actor and writer.

In this interview Christopher Nolan has shared some very easy and interesting shooting tips and tricks to make a movie with very limited resources and makes this interview a goldmine for amature and professional filmmakers.

Instead of fighting against the limitations of the production, Christopher Nolan allowed them to dictate everything from the film's structure, to its handheld shooting style, to the 16mm film it was shot on.. Can't control the look of locations? Shoot black-and-white stock. Can't afford much lighting equipment then set the scene during the day and place the characters next to windows or in natural sunlight as much as possible. Can't afford to shoot multiple takes? Rehearse -- a lot.... means A LOT. Watch the following video which itself is a great learning experience for both amature and professional filmmakers.

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Avid's Free Pro Tools First Coming Soon (Limited Version)

You always wanted to get into the film scoring and mixing, but don't have the budget to buy the equipments, then there a great news for you. Avid's powerful audio workstation is coming soon for free... Yes free Pro Tools First will be out of the Avid's bag pretty soon. As its a free version and has limited features.

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Listen to the 'Better Than Film School' Philosophy By Director John Sturges

If you are a real film enthusiast then I am sure you must have seen at least one movie of John Sturges. He has delivered some of the best movies of his time. But John Sturges is best known for Bad Day at Black Rock, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Magnificent Seven, Ice Station Zebra and the legendary The Great Escape.

When legends like John Sturges speak about the filmmaking, its like a river full of knowledge flowing in front of you, now its upto you how much you can absorb. Not a single film school in the world can teach you what John Sturges has said with his huge experience. Its just not for film direction but also for actors, writers, cinematographers and photographers. Watch these following videos.


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