The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Trailer
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted from the 1920s story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who is born in his eighties and ages backwards: A man, like any of us, who is unable to stop time. We follow his story set in New Orleans from the end of World War I in 1918, into the 21st century, following his journey that is as unusual as any man’s life can be. Directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett with Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton, Jason Flemyng, Elias Koteas and Julia Ormond, Benjamin Button,is a grand tale of a not so ordinary man and the people and places he discovers along the way, the loves he finds, the joys of life and the sadness of death, and what lasts beyond time.
Seeing Red
November 3, 2008 by admin
Filed under Web Exclusives
Local 600 shooters gather at the Guild to test-drive the Red One system and separate hype from fact with the talked-about new digital capturing device.
The Red camera has been the subject of a great deal of discussion since before the company unveiled its first prototype two years ago and shipped the initial run just over a year ago. There are now quite a few rental houses and individuals with real-world experience using the camera, some of whom shared their thoughts with attendees at a recent Red One training seminar at the Guild’s Sunset Boulevard headquarters. Members who showed up for the all-day Sunday event also got to spend considerable hands-on time with the Red One, learning the camera’s unique characteristics first-hand.
Local 600 President Steven Poster explains why such hands-on educational affairs are important to the Guild. “We need to train our members on all kinds of systems weather they are mainstream or not,” he says. “The Red is seemingly a simple solution to making movies. In some respects that is true. But if you take the whole system including the capturing and conversion of the data it can become a very complicated process especially if you are trying to work at the highest resolution.”
“By seeing new equipment and hearing from people who’ve deployed Red gear in the field,” Poster adds, “Guild members in all classifications can get beyond the hype and see the true pros and cons of new imaging systems like Red. “Knowledge is power,” he says, “and it is very important to keep Local 600 members up on all the rapidly-evolving technologies. As the tools of the time-honored positions of AC and loader change, it’s important to make sure these functions do not become non-union jobs.”
Poster also noted that as cinematography continues to involve file-based recording to disc, as opposed to the film methods so many DPs made use of for their entire careers, traditional classifications like “loader” will surely change. But rather than disappear, Poster points out, the essence of the job will simply evolve. The tools and mechanics may shift but someone will still have to deal with hard drives or flash drives and file transfers, and everything else required to ensure the image data is recorded to whatever media is being used and that it gets where it needs to go for the next phase of production.
