Pixar’s latest film, Up, is an incredibly touching and exciting story, told in an amazing and unique way. I saw it tonight and was blown away. Every movie that Pixar makes is more amazing than the last. Wall-E was an incredible film but Up takes Wall-E and adds more heartfelt and traditional characters. It’s a hilarious movie with beautiful animation (especially in 3D), lovable characters, and a truly unique story.
I think that Pixar’s movies – Up being their best so far – are the pinnacle of filmmaking. The computer animation medium offers complete creative control over everything – they can create anything on screen short of a perfectly realistic human. The environment set up at Pixar enocourages and continues to produce truly original and creative ideas. And best of all, all of their movies are G or PG. They can be enjoyed by anybody – a 3 year old, or a 50 year old – no matter who, Pixar tells great stories.
I can’t tell you exactly why “Up” is so good. The movie just comes together collectively to be an amazing experience. It doesn’t make you want to change the world, and it doesn’t try to. These movies are entertainment, but they are the most entertaining things being created in the film industry today.
Some people I know like to call a film like Up a “cartoon.” Sure, it is. But reducing it to that word is derogatory. A caroon is something that children watch and that is made for them, something simple and not very sophisticated. Up is enjoyed by children, but it is not just a kids movie. It is a universal film and it is AMAZING. So go and see it now. If you can, see it in 3D. But even if not, it’s the movie that’s important and you won’t regret it.
You can’t argue with 98% on RT. Even Psycho didn’t get that high. That’s right, it’s better than Hitchcock. (Yes, I am fully aware that I just said something really crazy. I will only say that they are two completely different films, and comparing them to each other is unfair to both. But Up really is that amazing.)
I had sooo much fun over the last few weeks doing the Tribeca Film Fellows program! Since my last post, I’ve been to a ton of screenings of great movies including “Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench”, “Fixer”, ”Off and Running”, and the youth short film collection “Our City, My Story” which the film fellows shot the intro for.
But probably the best part of it all was developing my film pitch with a Tribeca film mentor, and although I didn’t win one of the prizes, my mentor Sean McPhillips was incredibly helpful in helping me to formulate an idea for a movie that I am now starting to make. Through the program, we met twice to discuss how to craft my movie idea into something worth making – and I feel like the idea I have now is really great.
So over the next few weeks I’m going to be making the movie, currently called “Connect”, and hopefully filming this weekend! I’ll post more on it later.
This past week has been pretty awesome for me. At the beginning of last week I started the main part of the Tribeca Film Fellows program. We’ve been going on field trips and tours all over the city, learning all about the film business and filmmaking in general. Starting last Monday, and the 19 other film fellows met the Vice Presidents of Development, Marketing, and Press at Miramax. Then, on Tuesday we went to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, and then we got to shoot on 35mm film at Panavision.
The next day we got to see the footage we had shot, and saw it color corrected in a super-duper-expensive film development studio, and met David Koepp – the writer of Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones 4, Ghost Town (with Ricky Gervais), and tons of other movies. On Thursday, we went to the Mayor’s Office of New York and learned all about how to acquire filming permits in New York City, then met Jane Rosenthal, who co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival with Robert DeNiro. On Saturday, we saw a sound mixer put together the sound effects and music for a TV trailer, complete with all the big bangs and booms you don’t know you know so well.
So, after all of that, I’m sure you can imagine that it was sort of a let-down yesterday when we all just had a quiet dinner and got some cool goody bags containing some NYC-related DVDs, and some books about filmmaking. Oh, and we also met some random actress named Natalie Portman and each got a personal copy of some piece-of-crap $1300 software called Final Cut Studio. Here’s hoping that the rest of the program will be more exciting than last night was…
I guess it’s pretty sad when my Uncle Bob posts about a movie I did almost a week before I actually get around to posting it on my own blog myself. But here it is anyway. It’s sort of a pseudo-cartoon I did using keyframing in Final Cut Express. It’s not supposed to be a masterpiece or anything but I think it’s fun enough. (Be sure to click on HQ in the YouTube box to view in high quality!)
I “designed” the spaceships myself with some textures I got online. Pretty much everything else I found online – all the backgrounds are from me google-imaging the 100 different variations of “new york city skyline”, and I downloaded all of the explosions for free from Detonation Films – they have a collection of free and paid sparks, bangs, and explosions that you can superimpose onto videos with Final Cut – which is what I did. Both pieces of music are from the soundtrack for the movie 28 Days Later. (Amazing movie by the way)
Reviews!
Note: During intereviews sound quality was low and quotes in [brackets] are my best estimation at what was said.
“Why do you always have to make movies about killing people [and really awesome things]?” – Deri Reed
“I like how you could see the aliens in the window of the space ship, that was [a fine example of filmmaking at it's best].” – Ira Saltz
“The sound effects are awesome and make this work [one of the truly genius masterpieces of our time]” – Uncle Bob
Here are two (copyright violation free!) videos of my niece and nephew Lulu and Vance, bouncing off the walls while I tried to film a movie with them. Everything was done in Final Cut Express.
I made my first movie with Final Cut Express! Yay! It’s about our family’s Christmas dinner and is just under 3 minutes. I tried uploading it in full HD quality to YouTube but APPARENTLY my video breaks copyright because it has the song “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” in it. I would think that would be a good thing for the studio, as it promotes the song and reminds people of how awesome it is, who would then go on to buy it.
But whatever. I uploaded it myself in non-HD Quicktime until I figure out a better way to do it. Just click the image below to view/download the file.
Well, I’ve thought of a name for the spy movie that I made with Vance and Lulu. Mission Improbable: The Evil Spy. And here’s the poster that I made for it because I was bored. Obviously, a take-off of Mission Impossible. “Improbable” because you probably don’t expect little kids to be spies and save the world. I think the poster turned out pretty well.
Austen Saltz is a 16-year-old high school student and geek. He lives in New York City with his parents and is interested in filmmaking and technology.
Netsua is his personal blog and website, where he writes about a variety of topics that interest him. The word "Netsua" is in fact Austen's name spelled backwards. It literally translates from gibberish to "Greatness on the level of Austen."
In addition to Netsua, Austen also writes for the mac application blog MacApper.
