"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." Orson Welles
01 November 2010
UNDERSTANDING THE CITY (Analysing the Space and Place in the Cinematography)
FILMIC CITY AS URBAN AND ARCHITECTURAL RESOURCE
How design practice inscribes space as place in the cinema.
Interrogating both design practice and its creative effects in a variety of filmic contexts. By highlighting the performative role of sets and locations in filmic expression, this article will provide a forum for debate about how design practice inscribes space as place in the cinema.
CelluloidSkyline tells the tale of two cities, both called "New York." One is a real city, an urban agglomeration of millions. The other is a mythic city, a dream city, born of that most pervasive of dream media, the movies.
Today we tell our fables with celluloid.
"Fascinating . . . Ambitious . . . A magnificent book, a searching and intelligent account of how the city shaped the movies . . . [Sanders's] knowledge of movies and filmmaking is profound, and his approach to the movies through his professional discipline is unique and revelatory."
--Charles Matthews, New London Day
"Mr. Sanders's book [is] an invaluable tour guide to several cities, each going under the name New York."
--Tom Shone, New York Observer
Sanders has been researching and writing CelluloidSkyline for more than a decade. His extensive research into the design and production of American films has led him to archives and private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Paris,London, and Berlin, where he has located scores of rare and unusual images for the book, including production stills, location stills, art department sketches and models, frame enlargements, and views of standing sets, miniatures, scenic backings, process plates, optical and computer generated special effects, and other images that reveal how the "mythic city" of movie New York was created in the Hollywood studio and on the streets of the city itself.
Visit the website for more information on the book and a collection of wonderful
This extremely well-written book captures the magnificent romance of New York City's skyline, the world's greatest.
Profusely illustrated, it depicts the city cinematically and is a must addition to any New Yorker's library.
The author, James Sanders, an architect who was co-writer with Ric Burns of the seven-part PBS series "New York: A Documentary Film," correctly maintains that "the movie city, the mythic city, is ultimately far more than a mirror." "It is a place unto itself, an extraordinary cultural construct spanning hundreds of individual films. Perhaps it is precisely because real New York possesses this `other' city as some kind of adjunct or underside or dream version of itself, that it holds a true claim to urban greatness, one shared by only a few places in history: London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Troy, Babylon, Ur. Once they were called the `storied' or `fabled' cities. Today we tell our fables with celluloid."
2. CELLULOID SKYLINE THE EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK AT THE GRAND CENTRAL STATION
“Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies,” an ambitious exhibition of films, photographs and sets that begins today in Vanderbilt Hall, adjacent to the main concourse. The project was put together by James Sanders, based on his 2001 book of the same title, which shrewdly observes that two New Yorks — the real city and the screen fantasy — feed each other in a never-ending circle.
“Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies,” an exhibition of background paintings, film clips, production stills and archival photographs.
Architect and author James Sanders to discuss his exhibition, Celluloid Skyline at Grand Central Station, New York. It's the story of how New York City was constructed in the movies, through the imagination of Hollywood-based filmmakers. Sanders tells us how the exhibition design came together, upon the discovery of giant scenic backings from classic movies like North by Northwestand The Clock.
To watch the interview with James Sanders click on the link below:
To walk through the main concourse at Grand Central Terminal is to step onto a real-life movie set. Cary Grant passes through it while escaping his would-be killers in "North by Northwest".Jim Carrey grabs Kate Winslet'shand and dashes across it in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", watching people vanish one by one as his memory is erased. Most tellingly, it is the site of a pivotal moment in "The Fisher King" when Robin Williams, as a pure-hearted, emotionally unbalanced man, spots the quite plain woman of his dreams heading for her train. Suddenly everyone in the room breaks into a waltz, as this grimy, everyday place becomes a scene of glittering romance.
4. THE POWER OF IMAGE IN FILM (REFLECTION, LIGHTING, MOTION, SHADE)
This powerfully conveyed shot of Hudsucker’s successor, Sidney Mussburger (Paul Newman), silhouetted in the high boardroom windows. Not only Mussburger — the cynical, grasping executive who has instigated Norville’s rise — but Wall Street’s towers themselves are reflected in the mirror-smooth boardroom table, so as to appear to float weightlessly, utterly disengaged from everything else. There is far more to the skyscraper then the airy, detached realm at its top, as we discover when Norville pulls an idea out of his pocket — a crude pencil sketch of something that turns out to be the hula hoop — and, indulged by Mussburger, is allowed to carry the idea through to execution.
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker and visual artist.Over a lengthy career, Lynch has employed a distinctive, unorthodox (and now known as "Lynchian") approach to narrative filmmaking that has become instantly recognizable to many audiences and critics worldwide. Lynch's films are known for nightmarish and dreamlike images and meticulous sound design. Probably best known for "The Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks".
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