Archive for May, 2010

It never ceases to amaze me. I’m a shooter born and raised and I love what I do. Then why am I spending so many hours these days inside Apple Final Cut Pro? Isn’t it enough we capture remarkable images and tell compelling visual stories? Do we have to edit, score and sound design our own movies too? It seems to the way of the industry these days as I put the finishing touches now on The Darjeeling Limited behind-the-scenes show for Criterion. Maybe it’s for the better that we shooters are increasingly allowed this much control. On the other hand I am not really an editor by trade. I get married to too many shots. I find myself way too close to my material. I NEED the distance that only a great editor and another set of eyes can provide. Too bad the current economic reality is precluding more and more a bona fide post-production specialist.

My recent month-long workshop in Cairo yielded many surprises to say the least, but student filmmaker Karim Soliman’s video SKETCH shot in four hours in the Garbage City section of the city was particularly impressive. The skillful use of close-ups, rigorous control of the frame boundary, and strict adherence to the exclude, exclude, exclude principle produced a truly amazing piece of work. Congratulations to filmmaker Karim Soliman for creating a lasting work of art!

View ‘SKETCH’ here: