Low Cost Lighting Solutions For Filmmakers  American video producer Richard Andrewski has solved the studio director's double  dilemma. First, how can you keep people comfortable in a studio sweating under from high-wattage floodlights all pumping out plenty of heat along with plenty of light? Second, how can you get enough cool light instead and keep it under control, wit…

Since fully entering the London rat race I have come across a number of 30-somethings that appear to feel rather bitter about being around 20-somethings, much to the bewilderment of the latter.  It is these people that will perhaps scoff at the idea that there is a big leap between being 21 and 24, crying that it is all within the same degree of naivety, but I can vouch for this leap when…

I marched thru the night, looking up to the snow kissed trees, and arrived too late for Cloud Atlas. Half an hour later a film I didn’t know, beyond reading that it was about a student dropout in Berlin, and was Black and White. I dashed back across the road for a thai curry, laden with mushrooms, which I left. I returned in time to get a seat and a small bag of popcorn, hoping this would not be…

The LFF has chosen well for its opening night. Ahead of the final presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain in New York tonight, Frost/Nixon, the tale of a president undone in a television interview, has its world premiere in London tonight. Surely you know the story? The 37th president of the United States was involved in some bad stuff called Watergate (let's ignore t…

Paul Taylor takes a tragic story and makes an up-lifting, life-affirming, non-preachy film. We Are Together (Thina Simunye) has as its backdrop one of the most urgent (and shameful) issues of our time: the spread of HIV, Africa's 1.2 million AIDS orphans and the lack of access to life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. That less than 17% of HIV sufferers have access to the drugs in a…

  HDV Filmmaking by Chad Fahs An Authoritative Guide to the Brave New World of HDV 470 pages Thomson Course Technology $49.99 High definition video is the latest technology to enable filmmakers to capture the best possible image at lowest cost. Because it shares tape transport with DV format, it is often see as the next step up, but this is not DV, it is a very differen…

    Future Shorts, the film label behind Rock'n' Roll Cinema and Secret Cinema , as well as global distributor of short films, has released its first DVD, a bit of a greatest hits called Adventures in Short Film - Volume 1. They chose well for their inaugural compilation.   As with a short story, short films can do great things with a hint of strangen…

Come on the long days! Laurence Boyce has been stuck in front of a computer for the past few weeks, watching many, many films and currently needs a tanning machine to ensure his skin resembles the colour of porridge. Thankfully, the stuff that he’s been watching for Special Edition # 38 means that Laurence Boyce has at least got to enjoy some really good films and TV shows. But, for the love of h…

It's holiday time and Special Edition has been away and topping up it's tan. Now it's come back, got its holiday photos developed and returned to a darkened room to watch the very best DVD's that have been released recently. So if the oppressive heat is making life outside uncomfortable, switch on the air conditioning and let Special Edition # 7 tell you what to pop in you DVD pla…

This documentary, made by renowned [some might say notorious] left-wing journalist John Pilger, is out on DVD on 4th February. The film uses the USA's treatment of Latin America over the second half of the 20th century as evidence that the US is fighting a war against democracy in the region known as "America's backyard." His film shows us the flipside of Bush's "War on Terror,&q…

Release your own film on DVD with this step-by-step guide that walks you through the most complex aspects of production and provides detailed information to create a DVD that will sell.   The book passes on insider information used by independent film pros, including   -Authoring high-quality DVDs comparable to major studio titles -Negotiating Distributor deals in your favour -Launching a guerill…

Welcome to Page to Screen # 1, Laurence Boyce’s newest column that takes a look at some of the best books related to cinema, TV and anything else that fits into our broad remit. From serious academic tomes to graphic novels, weighty reference material to film tie-ins there’ll be something here for everyone to feast your eyes on when not actually in the cinema. The honour of th…

  Final Cut's latest offering on DVD is another fine garnering of some of the best shorts going, filmed, animated or even snapped with a stills camera and given a frantic screen life, as with Jo Barnes' Midst of Paradise. Don't be put off by the grotesque image from Cleanse that adorns the front cover. Just wait until you see the full story! Ouch! A deep facial will neve…

I did not get sent a review disc, but saw this one in Morrisons on Sunday in a two for one offer on Disney films. There weren't many classics, but picked up Ratatouille which I could watch a fair few more times yet, and Wall*E. It's not just that I like to be able to watch it on TV but I have a vague idea that if I had grandkids one day it'd be great to be able to show them the box.. 'what, you h…

A Holy Grail quest that recalls the Indiana Jones trilogy - but without the humour, or Harrison Ford... If you're reading this, you're probably the last person left in Britain who hasn't seen this much-anticipated adaptation of Dan Brown's Church-offending 2003 novel. Despite the furore over the book's subject matter, however, the film itself is often too ful…

Fundamentalist atheism is as old as religion, and possibly time. Back in a less liberal era, the 16th century, the playwright Christopher Marlowe got into trouble for trashing religion as a translator of the classical author Ovid ("God is a name, no substance, feared in vain"), as well as in his own stuff ("I count religion but a childish toy "). US comedian Bill M…

Shame there weren't as many celebrity mags back in Joan's day, as she would've provided them with endless fodder: casting couch connoisseur, a sideline in prostitution, four marriages, Mommie Dearest... and a few films.   Shame there weren't as many celebrity mags back in Joan's day, as she would've provided them with endless fodder: casting couch…

Is the end of February already. It only feels like five minutes ago when the tinsel was all around and the Xmas decorations were up. Actually, it was, but that’s because Laurence Boyce has been dead busy watching a new batch of DVDs for you to all enjoy. Let Special Edition # 37 take you on its usual journey through some of the best shiny discs for you to enjoy from brand new feature films to the…

The London Film Festival opens tonight with a screening of Never Let Me Go, an adaptation of the 2005 Kazuo Ishiguro novel, starring Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield. The screenplay was written by Alex Garland, and the movie directed by Mark (One Hour Photo) Romanek. The story takes place in an alternate England, where medical research has solved most illnesses, and the averag…

It’s a British Summer, which means two things: football and Big Brother on a never ending loop. So, unless you’re a football fan or enjoy watching freak shows, then there’s not much to watch at this moment in time. So in Special Edition # 5 let Laurence Boyce point you in the right direction of some of the very best DVD’s available to buy, rent or borrow at the moment. W…

When David Lynch calls a film "simultaneously horrific, erotic and funny," and master surrealist Luis Buñuel says that it is "exceptional," you know it's probably not an easy watch. Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, along with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, helped to finance a new print of the film, that's how much they love it. First released in De…

In this fine appraisal of his oeuvre, Heylin looks at the director's failure to capitalise on the promise of Citizen Kane. In this fine appraisal of his oeuvre, Heylin looks at the director's failure to capitalise on the promise of Citizen Kane. Welles' own uncompromising attitude didn't help his later projects, such as The Magnificent Ambersons and A Touch of Evil, but neith…

  Making and Marketing Hobbyist DVDs The explosion in pro camcorder sales says there are a lot of people out there with video shooting kit that will produce professional results, many of them focused on traditional markets like film and television, but when it is not shooting that carefully constructed documentary, or between film assignments, how can your camcorder earn its keep…

Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited will close the London Film Festival tonight, with a sold-out screening in the West End.  The film follows three brothers - reunited for the first time in the year since their father's death - who take a train journey across northern India, in the hope of renewing their relationships, finding someone they lost and, in true gap-year style, findin…

Break out the party hats and balloons as Special Edition # 10 means that the column that fearlessly tracks down the best DVDs available hits double figures. This time around Laurence Boyce discovers that the tide of classic French Cinema being released on DVD remains unabated, that Doctor Who did look slightly cheesy in the 80s, that people aren't waiting until Halloween to release horror mov…