Author: Greg DeLiso

The Fog of War, one of the only movies that uses jump cuts well.

Jump cuts have always been fascinating to me.  The entire idea of editing is fascinating, obviously.  It’s this whole thing of, ‘How can we make this look fluid?’  ‘How will these compositions work together?’  There is even editing happening in a long sequence without cuts, because the composition is changing.  Just think of the opening of Touch of Evil or Boogie Nights—there’s no actual editing, but the camera’s movement is editing as it goes along—it’s moving from one idea to another, and the varying compositions must fit together in a logical way.  Think about that great shot in Raging Bull where we follow Jake out to the ring.  There are no cuts, but the transition from intimate medium shot to huge, wide, crane shot is an editing choice within the same shot.

If you can intuit these principles naturally, you really have a leg up as a filmmaker.  Kubrick, Tarantino, Scorsese, Aronofsky, Lee, Zemeckis, Spielberg, the Coens—whether you like their movies or not, these guys all have a handle on how to construct a scene.  They have a handle on the principles.
Continue reading On the Proper and Improper Use of Jump Cuts

Beyond the Mat (1999), one of the greatest documentaries of all time.

Documentaries have always been fascinating to me.  They were born out of newsreels, short news segments that used to play before features in the theaters way back when.   From the newsreels came smaller, more intimate human interest stories (Kubrick even made a few in his early days).  An early example of this sort of thing, Nanook of the North, is often cited as one of the first documentaries—although, if you ask me, it’s nothing more than a piece of history. The production is stagey, and, as to be expected given the time period it came out, it’s dreadfully boring.

Around the 1960s, when cinema finally started to open up, a few people started to realize that vérité filmmaking could be used to create a documentary—the Maysles Brothers’ Salesman was an important landmark. It was distant yet intimate, objective yet close, and endlessly revealing.  Although dated now, their early filmography marks the first departure into interesting and effective documentary filmmaking.
Continue reading On Documentaries: How and Why They Work, When They Work

Adaptation (2002)

Writing is hard.

It should be easy, because you just sit down and describe the stuff in your head, but what about when there isn’t anything in your head?  They call that ‘Writer’s Block’—which Jerry Seinfeld says is bullshit. “Writer’s Block is a phony, made up, BS excuse for not doing your work,” he says.

And he’s absolutely right.

If you’re serious about being an artist, and making a living as a filmmaker, then you gotta write.  It’s work in the same way that being a teacher or a construction worker or a nurse or an office person is.  It’s work, so do it.
Continue reading Fuck Writer’s Block