Craft
Sound design is doing more than you think, especially when it is quiet
What you hear in a scene is almost entirely constructed. The choices about what to leave out are the loudest ones.
After the Trailer — What the two-minute cut left out
Craft
Editing is the department you notice only when it fails
A cut is a decision about attention. Most of what people call pacing is somebody choosing when to look away.
Now showing
Everything →
Craft
Lighting tells you where to look and how to feel about it
Cinematography is often discussed as composition. Most of its effect is contrast, direction and colour.
On Screen
A scene is doing at least three things at once
Good scenes advance plot, change a relationship and reveal character simultaneously. Weak ones do one.
On Screen
Performance is mostly reaction, and the camera knows it
The best-remembered moments in film are frequently of somebody listening rather than speaking.
Streaming
Release strategy shapes what films get made
Whether something opens wide, platforms slowly or goes straight to streaming is decided before shooting, and it changes the film.
Streaming
The algorithm decides what you are offered, not what is good
Streaming recommendation optimises for completion and retention. Understanding that changes how you use it.
Series
A season has a shape, and most of them break in the middle
Television structure is a different craft from film structure, and the recurring failure is the same one.
Industry
Below-the-line labour is where a production actually is
The people whose names run past at speed are the majority of the workforce and the majority of the budget.
Industry
Budgets are reported, not disclosed, and the numbers move
Almost every production budget you read is an estimate filtered through marketing. Knowing what is missing helps.
Archive
Film restoration is interpretation, not just cleaning
Every restoration makes choices about what the film looked like. Those choices are contested and rarely explained.
Craft
All craft →Craft
Editing is the department you notice only when it fails
A cut is a decision about attention. Most of what people call pacing is somebody choosing when to look away.
Craft
Sound design is doing more than you think, especially when it is quiet
What you hear in a scene is almost entirely constructed. The choices about what to leave out are the loudest ones.
Craft
Lighting tells you where to look and how to feel about it
Cinematography is often discussed as composition. Most of its effect is contrast, direction and colour.
Craft
Most visual effects work is invisible, and that is the job
The shots that get discussed are rarely the shots that consumed the schedule. Removing things takes longer than adding them.
Craft
Production design is exposition you never have to listen to
A room can tell you who lives in it, how long they have been there and what they are pretending. That is a department, not a…
On Screen
All on screen →On Screen
A scene is doing at least three things at once
Good scenes advance plot, change a relationship and reveal character simultaneously. Weak ones do one.
On Screen
Performance is mostly reaction, and the camera knows it
The best-remembered moments in film are frequently of somebody listening rather than speaking.
On Screen
Three-act structure is a description, not a recipe
Almost every story can be described in three acts after the fact. That is a property of the description, not evidence of a rule.
On Screen
Genre is a contract, and breaking it has to be paid for
Genre sets what an audience is promised. Subverting that promise works only when the film gives something back in exchange.
On Screen
Point of view is a decision the camera makes on your behalf
Whose knowledge you share determines almost everything about how a story feels. It is a structural choice, and it is rarely…
Streaming
All streaming →Streaming
Release strategy shapes what films get made
Whether something opens wide, platforms slowly or goes straight to streaming is decided before shooting, and it changes the film.
Streaming
The algorithm decides what you are offered, not what is good
Streaming recommendation optimises for completion and retention. Understanding that changes how you use it.
Streaming
Churn is the number that decides what a streaming service commissions
Subscriber cancellation rate governs strategy more than viewing figures do. It explains release patterns, genre mix and why some…
Streaming
The advertising tier changed what a service wants you to watch
Once a platform sells advertising, viewing time becomes inventory. That converts long, repeatable, interruption-tolerant content…
Streaming
Licensed libraries do more work than originals get credit for
The shows people actually watch on a service are frequently ones it did not make. Licensing is where a large share of the money and…
Industry
All industry →Industry
Below-the-line labour is where a production actually is
The people whose names run past at speed are the majority of the workforce and the majority of the budget.
Industry
Budgets are reported, not disclosed, and the numbers move
Almost every production budget you read is an estimate filtered through marketing. Knowing what is missing helps.
Industry
A script spends most of its life in development and most of it dies there
The gap between a project existing and a project shooting is measured in years. Understanding what happens in that gap explains…
Industry
A green light is a financing decision wearing a creative costume
The moment a film becomes real is a risk calculation made by people balancing a slate. The script is one input among several, and…
Industry
Independent films are financed by selling countries that do not exist yet
A large share of films outside the studio system are paid for by pre-selling distribution rights territory by territory, on the…
Series
All series →Series
A season has a shape, and most of them break in the middle
Television structure is a different craft from film structure, and the recurring failure is the same one.
Series
A writers room is a production schedule pretending to be a conversation
Television writing is organised to deliver scripts on dates that cameras depend on. Everything about how the room works follows…
Series
The showrunner exists because television is a production problem
The role combines head writer, executive producer and factory manager. It exists because somebody has to make hundreds of decisions…
Series
The pilot did a job that straight-to-series orders now have to do elsewhere
Ordering a single episode to test an idea was expensive and wasteful. Skipping it removed a rehearsal that some series turn out to…
Series
Episodes used to be a fixed length, and that constraint was doing work
Variable runtimes look like creative freedom. In practice they remove a discipline that forced television to be shaped rather than…
Archive
All archive →Archive
Film restoration is interpretation, not just cleaning
Every restoration makes choices about what the film looked like. Those choices are contested and rarely explained.
Archive
Repertory programming is curation, and it is under pressure
Somebody chooses what old films are shown, in what order and beside what. That choice is the whole value.
Archive
Orphan films are the ones nobody has the legal standing to save
A large body of film survives physically and cannot be restored or shown because no one knows who owns it. Copyright outlives the…
Archive
Preservation is a refrigeration problem before it is a scanning problem
Digitising a film does not preserve it. Keeping the original element cold, dry and stable is what buys the decades in which better…
Archive
A great deal of early cinema simply does not exist any more
Loss on this scale was not an accident of neglect alone. Film was destroyed deliberately, for storage costs, silver recovery and…