5 Daily Tech Stories That Filmmakers (and Film Fans) Must Read: Facebook Turns 10, Netflix News and More
1. Facebook: To celebrate its double-digit birthday, Facebook released a tool
called A Look Back that creates a slideshow (set to music) out of users’ pictures to post on their Facebook wall (of course!). “The
first ten years were about bootstrapping this network. Now we have the
resources to help people across the world solve even bigger and more
important problems,” wrote Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, on — where else? — his public Facebook page.
2. Kickstarting Sci-Fi: Indie director Mark Cheng contacted his comic book idol Larry Hama on Facebook to share his G.I. Joe fan film. Hama loved the film and the two of them are now teaming up on a sci-fi film which they’re funding via Kickstarter. Read more about the project here.
3. Apple’s New Ad: 30 years after his father Ridley Scott directed one of Apple’s first
commercials (for the original Macintosh computer), Jake Scott has
directed a short film (well, ad) shot around the world in one day using
an iPhone 5S to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Mac. Check it out here.
4. ‘Frame within a Frame:’ Los Angeles-based film editor Vashi Nedomansky writes about visual effects, low budget filmmaking and editing techniques on his blog. Recently, he wrote about the innovative cinematography in Sidney J. Furie’s spy thriller “The Ipcress File,” and specifically, the “frame within a frame” technique. Check it out here.
5. Netflix: Netflix has greenlit a third season of “House of Cards,” the streaming service announced at the show’s press day in New York. Meanwhile, Netflix plans to acquire more original content and increase its expansion internationally, specifically Europe and plans to obtain approximately $400 million in long term debt in the first quarter of 2014 to fund both, according to its 10-K annual report filed Monday with the SEC, Variety reports.
