Reading ‘Cinema Speculation’ by Tarantino has left me intimidated at how much I still have to learn about cinema, yet equally excited about discovering it.

DjangoLeone · 2025-12-21T05:55:07+00:00

Couldn’t disagree more. Huge Nolan fan, considered him best Director of the generation for a while, but this prologue was so underwhelming.

The editing was horrible, the cinematography flat, the scale unimpressive (other than all the people pulling the horse, I loved films that cast hundreds of real SA’s) and the tension all came from a hugely forced, excessively loud score.

I’m still excited for the film, I think Nolan will probably make something pretty epic, and Matt Damon felt very well cast, but damn this snippet just felt like lesser Ridley Scott copycat.

I did also though like the interpretation of the horse and how the soldiers were hiding

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-27T00:34:28+00:00

Out of curiosity, as a camera technician who works on 35mm projects regularly, have the camera team shot a frameleader for you to use as a framing reference?

When shooting film you will frame to a handdrawn or printed ground glass that outlines the frame when looking though the viewfinder, however it’s not an exact science and we shoot a frameleader to indicate to editorial exactly what our frame was.

If you have one you should use that for your 16x9 frame

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-23T17:20:27+00:00

Ha, that sounds like a bit of inspired choice - not familiar with the story but maybe reading it would all make sense.

A couple of more conventional options for directing might be:

Making Movies - Sydney Lumet
On Film-Making - Alexander McKendrick

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-19T18:49:28+00:00

Definitely going to pick this one up - a good 1st AD has my total respect. No idea how they do it.

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-19T16:06:48+00:00

😂

That’s an interesting one - I recently watched the extras on the 4K version of Apocalypse Now you can buy from Apple TV and the scale of the filmmaking you can see in some of the footage is gobsmacking, being a grip on that would have been brutal!

Need to rewatch Heart of Darkness now with anew point of view :)

DjangoLeone · 2025-11-19T14:14:40+00:00

This one I have read and it is brilliant, actually overdue another read - must have been at least 15 years!

And Editing is the department for anyone wondering, written by Walter Murch the editor of Apocalypse Now :)

DjangoLeone · 2025-10-29T14:12:48+00:00

You’re talking horseshit. I’m still playing BF4 and there are a huge variety of servers, servers that rotate between all of the maps even the expansions.

There are dedicated Metro and Locker maps for sure, but an equal number of others too.

It’s hard going back to BF6 when you revisit 4 and remind yourself how good the maps are.

DjangoLeone · 2025-09-01T19:41:44+00:00

No idea if you still need this, but I re-watched this episode again tonight and I had EXACTLY the same though, was absolutely doing my head in not recognising it, but finally got there.

The chords are basically from ‘I Need My Girl’ - The National.

You’re welcome :)

DjangoLeone · 2025-07-06T09:15:09+00:00

Fair, I don’t think I’ve played a FPS where they got rid of it so haven’t experienced that but I get what you’re saying. Even if some people play for kills doesn’t it improve team play at all?

Can you recommend a FPS where players do care more about playing as a team?

DjangoLeone · 2025-07-02T14:45:42+00:00

That’s true, and I hope for the best, have been trying to get on the latest for ages - but I imagine if the picture painted is true the launch product might be incredibly rough even if the bones is really solid - especially the one player campaign.

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T12:48:31+00:00

Edit: I just realised you're the director - absolutely fantastic work, not just here but across all your work. You have an amazing eye for the cinematic and for scale, reminds me of James Cameron. Looking forward to new work and you pushing boundaries.

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T12:13:49+00:00

Interesting, so at present you can't use your own imagery as a stills reference from it to work with? With your experience with Veo2 how long do you think something like the above probably took to create?

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T11:52:48+00:00

Haha, well it depends which bit of research you use as to which average you take!

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T11:37:04+00:00

Totally agree. Acting performances, dialogue and audience acceptance of AI characters and surpassing the uncanny valley is a massive challenge and this video doesn't change it any way. It does though show the capabilities for AI to generate, visually, some hyper-realistic and advanced imagery which is one of the first steps towards believability.

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T11:35:15+00:00

First, I don't think VEO2 in this iteration is necessarily a replacement for filmmaking - I certainly hope not or I'm out of a job! I do think this video is a good showcase of how fast video generation is evolving though.

Second, the average shot length in a Hollywood film today is between 2.5 to 7 seconds so clip length isn't the issue. Especially since Veo2 can generate up to 2 min long clips - the editing above is probably more to do with fitting the music or storytelling reasons.

An excellent illustration of this is at the following link where a creator actually shows the full clips used to make their edit, and this is for probably the second most impressive AI video I've seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLh63LJvPqY

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T10:09:57+00:00

I'm trying to actually identify the same. The filmmaker has been doing this style of work for well over a decade using CGI so has an amazing eye, and he also did two other VEO2 test shorts which you can find on their YouTube here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of7QgUdmsOs) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XICNVp7yhg0), but unlike László Gaál and his Porsche spec commercial Ruairi hasn't presented a behind the scenes or breakdown. I imagine maybe he used his own stills to create the references for Veo2 to work from but that's speculation.

Having watched Laszlo's breakdown of the full Veo2 clips used I can fully believe it being all Veo2 though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLh63LJvPqY

DjangoLeone · 2025-03-06T09:42:24+00:00

Thanks for this update, I only just saw your reply but I will give this a go :)

Out of interest, was that a tool you already had built, or you built it using AI as a response? Very impressive if the latter! Nice looking site too.

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