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Articles by Benjamin Shearn
Adobe presenta innovaciones y herramientas de IA para editores y cineastas
Varios nominados a los premios de la Academia han sido editados con herramientas de Creative Cloud Hoy, a las puertas de Sundance Film Festival 2025 (donde casi el 85% de todas las películas utilizan productos de Adobe Creative Cloud) Adobe ha anunciado importantes innovaciones diseñadas para empoderar a los cineastas en todos los niveles, ya sean aspirantes a estudiantes, cineastas independientes, documentalistas o veteranos de la industria.
The Evolution of Spike Jonze Through Every Single One of His Music Videos
In assessing such a prolific music videography, Spike Jonze’s background in BMX and skateboard culture can’t be underemphasized. A telling segment in "Video Days", one of his earliest and most widely revered skate videos, intercuts footage of skateboarder Mark Gonzales with scenes from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This hybrid of the gritty and the fantastical encapsulates his contradictory style, a contrast that threads throughout Jonze’s entire oeuvre.
Video Essay: Paul Verhoeven, A Celebration [NSFW]
Total Recall was my first exposure to what was, at that time, a seemingly rare and unattainable dimension of human experience: the R-rated movie. And I was forever changed. I remember feeling convinced that it had established a portal into my adolescent mind and psychically extracted all the perverse blood lust and strange sexual fantasies. And then, brilliantly, set it all on Mars.
video essay Archives | Talkhouse
Skip to content Mark Rappaport, whose work is currently the subject of an Anthology Film Archives series, on the joys of making video essays about classic movies. Filmmaker Benjamin Shearn continues his "Driftless Significance" series of video essays with a euphoric encapsulation of the Dutch master's work. In the second part of his Driftless Significance video essay series, Benjamin Shearn looks at horror's departure from its classical roots.
Video Essay: Modern Horror
Skip to content There’s always a lot of clamoring (these days, in particular) over contemporary horror’s rich metaphorical prowess; “The Babadook is GRIEF!” and so on. But straightforward symbolism isn’t what separates horror of the modern era from the Gothic era. For me, only the half-scholar/half-mystic mind of Alan Moore can really define that separation with the right balance of erudition and psychedelic foresight.
Video Essay: On the Importance of Exploding Heads [NSFW]
I don’t have many vivid adolescent memories. One that pierces through the fog, however, is the first time I saw Scanners, aged 12, with two friends, and our overwhelmed reaction to the infamous head explosion. We exploded along with it, then stopped the tape, rewound, rewatched, then again, stepping through it, frame by wobbly VHS frame. It played then like a monument to giddy cinematic blood lust, satiating a young horror fiend’s craving for guts and goo.
Catharsis in Disaster: A Spiritual Defense of Cats
All of the true masterpieces in cinema are miracles. So are the disasters. A film’s quality is always attributed to directors, but I find this dismissive of a kind of circumstantial magic. An enduringly great movie is more often the case of a filmmaker at a very specific solstice in their career working with a very specific set of collaborators. And, more crucially, the film is produced at a time when industry and socio-political happenstance fall luckily in its favor.
‘Ladyworld’ Review: Fresh Talents Prove Themselves in a Twist on ‘Lord of the Flies’
Teenage girls, trapped and left to fend for themselves, establish a small, precarious society in Amanda Kramer’s film. Image Kramer uses tableaus to convey the group’s shifting dynamics. Find Tickets When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. The opening credits of the arresting psychological thriller “Ladyworld” play out over the rumbling of an earthquake as it strikes an isolated mansion.
Ladyworld | Film Threat
The title Ladyworld refers to a painting of a woman—her beautiful front turned away from us, revealing her back, covered in lacerations and maggots. “Personally, I don’t appreciate the metaphor,” one of the characters proclaims, seemingly echoing writer/director Amanda Kramer’s sentiments.
The Evolution of Spike Jonze Through Every Single One of His Music Videos
Jonze’s 60+ music videos span three decades and showcase the dynamic development of both the medium and its maker. In assessing such a prolific music videography, Spike Jonze’s background in BMX and skateboard culture can’t be underemphasized. A telling segment in "Video Days", one of his earliest and most widely revered skate videos, intercuts footage of skateboarder Mark Gonzales with scenes from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
The Raspberry Pi 4 Has A Faulty USB-C Port
The only setback to the newest version is that it may not power up... whoops! Two weeks ago, the Raspberry Pi 4 was announced and marked a significant upgrade for the credit-card sized, single board computer. Pi 4 boasted faster processing, 4GB of RAM and quadruple the ports which included a USB-C port for power. All great news for fans of the hobbyist device… except for the fact that the USB-C doesn’t quite work.
Raspberry Pi, The Credit-Card Sized Computer, Quadruples Its Power in Version 4
This little guy packs an even bigger punch, now supporting 4K with 4GB Of RAM The tiniest, cheapest computer on the consumer market has just taken a quantum leap in functionality. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced the fourth version of its tiny computer, now available for as little as $35.
The Captivating Genius Of Saul Bass's Movie Posters [VIDEO]
Watch an exploration of the philosophy and work ethic behind one of cinema's most legendary designers. Film fan culture at large has finally caught up with the importance of graphic design. Now there seems to be as much scrutiny on title sequences and poster design as on actual content. And rightly so. An evocative design concept can elevate a film or series into something iconic, many times beyond the shelf life of the actual material.
The Most Absurd, Insane, and Unreasonable Notes From the Post Production Trenches
Professional editors tell us the absolute worst notes they've ever received. We all generally know what jobs in post-production entail, but so much of it involves the enigmatic process of "decoding." One must read between the lines to understand what's truly being asked, taking into account the myriad opaque forces motivating these often outrageous and unreasonable requests.
What Does Magic Sound Like? Exploring the Sound Design of 'Harry Potter'
A breakdown of cinematic sound wizardry. If there were some sort of cliché police, they'd assign a dedicated task force to the phrase: "Sound is crucial to the movie-going experience." Nevertheless, the sentiment endures for a reason: A creative sound design’s contribution to the power of cinema can never be overstated.
How to Get Hired As A "Go-To Editor" [Video]
Tips and tactics from a 20-year editing veteran. The best career advice I ever received was simply to “be prepared.” There’s no special technical expertise or secret handshake clique that magically gets you hired. Better to cultivate your craft and business acumen so that when opportunity knocks, you’re home. This is why an industry-savvy editor like Sven Pape (Ghosts of the Abyss, HitRecord) and his considerate YouTube channel This Guy Edits is a true diamond in the rough cut.
Watch: The History and Science of Timecode
The timeline of timecode is more epic thank you think. Filmmaking in the digital age has simplified once arcane tasks into plug-and-play automation. Certain functions are so ingrained in film technology they are often taken for granted. Timecode is the perfect example. That rectangle of ticking numbers is just the tip of a century-long evolutionary iceberg which parallels the technological narrative of cinema itself. In this dense, pacey, encyclopedic video lesson, John P.
Watch: Color Grading Your Short Film in DaVinci Resolve
Quick tips and golden rules for color freshmen. In low-budget filmmaking, there are two major hurdles in attaining the ever-elusive status of “high production value.” Namely, sound and color. If your sound lacks clarity and particularly if your color lacks depth, then your film lacks luster and falls short of that “professional” sheen. SonduckFilm recently posted a solidly economic primer on color grading short films using DaVinci Resolve.
The Sound Designers of 'A Quiet Place' Discuss the Power of Silence
In film, everything speaks...even silence. An anechoic chamber is a space specifically designed to absorb and isolate all sound and electromagnetic waves. That means zero reverberant noise, zero echo, and the closest you can get to total silence. Or, in sound designer parlance, “digital zero.” In this BAFTA Guru interview with A Quiet Place sound designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn, the Oscar-nominated duo wax philosophical on the anechoic experience and its influence on their work.
SimonSays, Transcriptive, SpeedScriber: A Look At Transcript Integration Tools for Premiere Pro
Why doesn’t definitive transcription integration like Avid’s ScriptSync exist for Premiere Pro? Admitting that this question keeps me up at night feels a bit dramatic and yet, sadly, that is what problems without solutions do to editors. So truthfully, bedtime has suffered delays while I’ve test-tubed Premiere plug-ins and third-party services to amalgamate Avid’s revelatory function.
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