Carpenter's films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores (usually self-composed). With the exception of "Someone's Watching Me!", "Elvis", "The Thing", "Starman", "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", and "The Ward", he has scored all of his films (though some are collaborations), most famously the themes from "Halloween" and "Assault on Precinct 13". His music is generally synthesized with accompaniment from piano and atmospherics. Carpenter is an outspoken proponent of widescreen filming, and all of his theatrical films (with the exception of "Dark Star" and "The Ward") were filmed anamorphic with a 2.35:1 or greater aspect ratio.
Techniques
John Carpenter
John Carpenter | Techniques
His films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores (usually self-composed). Minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores. Carpenter's films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores Carpenter's films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores
when did the movie the thing come out
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1982
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what is the movie about?
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It tells the story of a group of American researchers in Antarctica who encounter the eponymous "Thing", a parasitic extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates, then imitates other organisms.
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who wrote it?
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Bill Lancaster.
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who is the director?
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John Carpenter
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where is he from?
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Carthage, New York
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what film genre is he known for?
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Low-budget horror films.
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what are the methods he is known for using in his movies?
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Carpenter's films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores (usually self-composed). With the exception of "Someone's Watching Me!", "Elvis", "The Thing", "Starman", "Memoirs of an Invisible Man", and "The Ward", he has scored all of his films (though some are collaborations), most famously the themes from "Halloween" and "Assault on Precinct 13". His music is generally synthesized with accompaniment from piano and atmospherics. Carpenter is an outspoken proponent of widescreen filming, and all of his theatrical films (with the exception of "Dark Star" and "The Ward") were filmed anamorphic with a 2.35:1 or greater aspect ratio.
John Carpenter | Techniques
"The Ward" was filmed in Super 35, the first time Carpenter has ever used that system. Carpenter has stated he feels that the 35mm Panavision anamorphic format is "the best movie system there is", preferring it to both digital and 3D film.
John Carpenter | Techniques
John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. Although Carpenter has worked with various film genres, he is associated most commonly with horror, action, and science fiction films of the 1970s and 1980s. Most films of Carpenter's career were initially commercial and critical failures, with the notable exceptions of "Halloween" (1978), "The Fog" (1980), "Escape from New York" (1981), and "Starman" (1984). However, many of Carpenter's films from the 1970s and the 1980s have come to be considered as cult classics, and he has been acknowledged as an influential filmmaker. The cult classics that Carpenter has directed include "Dark Star" (1974), "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976), "The Thing" (1982), "Christine" (1983), "Big Trouble in Little China" (1986), "Prince of Darkness" (1987), "They Live" (1988), and "In the Mouth of Madness" (1995).
John Carpenter | Introduction
Carpenter's 1990s career is characterized by a number of notable failures: "Memoirs of an Invisible Man" (1992), "Village of the Damned" (1995), and "Escape from L.A." (1996) are examples of films that were critical and financial failures. Also notable from this decade are "Body Bags", a television horror anthology film that was made in collaboration with Tobe Hooper, "In the Mouth of Madness" (1995), yet another Lovecraftian homage, which did not do well either commercially or with critics but now has a cult following, and "Vampires" (1998), which featured James Woods as the leader of a band of vampire hunters in league with the Catholic Church.
John Carpenter | 1990s: Commercial decline and "Halloween H20: 20 Years Later"
, Carpenter was more involved with his music career than filmmaking, although he was involved in 2018's "Halloween" reboot.
John Carpenter | Film music and solo records
Carpenter followed up the success of "Halloween" with "The Fog" (1980), a ghostly revenge tale (co-written by Hill) inspired by horror comics such as "Tales from the Crypt" and by "The Crawling Eye", a 1958 film about monsters hiding in clouds. Completing "The Fog" was an unusually difficult process for Carpenter. After viewing a rough cut of the film, he was dissatisfied with the result. For the only time in his filmmaking career, he had to devise a way to salvage a nearly finished film that did not meet his standards. In order to make the film more coherent and frightening, Carpenter filmed additional footage that included a number of new scenes.
John Carpenter | 1980s: Continued commercial success
John Carpenter is an American film director, producer, writer and composer. He has contributed to many projects as either the producer, writer, director, actor, composer or a combination of the five.
John Carpenter filmography | Introduction
Moreover, during 2006, the United States Library of Congress deemed "Halloween" to be "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. During 2010, writer and actor Mark Gatiss interviewed Carpenter about his career and films for his BBC documentary series "A History of Horror". Carpenter appears in all three episodes of the series. He was also interviewed by Robert Rodriguez for his "The Director's Chair" series on El Rey Network.
John Carpenter | Legacy
For example, when Castle asked what Myers' motivation was for a particular scene, Carpenter replied that his motivation was to walk from one set marker to another and "not act." By Carpenter's account the only direction he gave Castle was during the murder sequence of Bob, in which he told Castle to tilt his head and examine the corpse as if it "were a butterfly collection."
Halloween (1978 film) | Filming
John Carpenter (born 1948) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film music composer. John Carpenter may also refer to:
John Carpenter (disambiguation) | Introduction
Carpenter was born on January 16, 1948 in Carthage, New York, the son of Milton Jean ("née" Carter) and Howard Ralph Carpenter, a music professor. He and his family relocated to Bowling Green, Kentucky during 1953. He was interested in films from an early age, particularly the westerns of Howard Hawks and John Ford, as well as 1950s low-budget horror films such as "The Thing from Another World" and high-budget science fiction like "Forbidden Planet", and began filming horror short films with 8 mm film even before starting high school. He attended Western Kentucky University, where his father chaired the music department, then transferred to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts during 1968, but quit to make his first feature film.
John Carpenter | Early life
Presumably, Carpenter imagines he's building up spinetingling anticipation, but his techniques are so transparent and laborious that the result is attenuation rather than tension." Lou Cedrone of "The Baltimore Evening Sun" referred to it as "tediously familiar" and whose only notable element is "Jamie Lee Curtis, whose performance as the intended fourth victim, is well above the rest of the film." Tom Allen of "The Village Voice" praised the film in his November 1978 review, noting it as sociologically irrelevant but ceding its Hitchcock-like technique as effective and "the most honest way to make a good schlock film". Allen pointed out the stylistic similarities to "Psycho" and George A.
Halloween (1978 film) | Contemporaneous
It was typical of John during those lean days. He made the very best of whatever talent and facilities he had around him." Carpenter drew storyboards for key sequences, including the "ice cream truck" sequence, the death of the white warlord, Napoleon Wilson struggling to get the keys of the guard after the siege starts, and the failed escape by prisoner Wells.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 film) | Pre-production
In a beginning film course at USC Cinema during 1969, Carpenter wrote and directed an 8-minute short film, "Captain Voyeur". The film was rediscovered in the USC archives in 2011 and proved interesting because it revealed elements that would appear in his later film, "Halloween" (1978). The next year he collaborated with producer John Longenecker as co-writer, film editor, and music composer for "The Resurrection of Broncho Billy" (1970), which won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. The short film was enlarged to 35 mm, sixty prints were made, and the film was released theatrically by Universal Studios for two years in the United States and Canada.
John Carpenter | 1960s: Student films and Academy Award
Historian Nicholas Rogers notes that film critics contend that Carpenter's direction and camera work made "Halloween" a "resounding success." Roger Ebert remarks, "It's easy to create violence on the screen, but it's hard to do it well. Carpenter is uncannily skilled, for example, at the use of foregrounds in his compositions, and everyone who likes thrillers knows that foregrounds are crucial . ... " The opening title, featuring a jack-o'-lantern placed against a black backdrop, sets the mood for the entire film. The camera slowly moves toward the jack-o'-lantern's left eye as the main title theme plays. After the camera fully closes in, the jack-o'-lantern's light dims and goes out.
Halloween (1978 film) | Aesthetic elements
In a 2002 review (for the DVD release of the film), Slant Magazine reviewer Ed Gonzalez gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and stated that "Carpenter's use of 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen is beyond legendary and his compositions evoke a town that may as well be the last remaining one on the face of the earth." Chris Justice at Classic-Horror.com commented "The music is also classic Carpenter, and although the composer actually scrapped his original score and rewrote it to better match the film's vibe, viewers benefit greatly from his acute sense of rhythm, composition, and tone. His stark notes add another layer of complexity to a film that too often is forgotten.
The Fog | Critical response
Despite production problems and mostly negative critical reception, "The Fog" was another commercial success for Carpenter. The film was made on a budget of $1,000,000, but it grossed over $21,000,000 in the United States alone. Carpenter has said that "The Fog" is not his favorite film, although he considers it a "minor horror classic".
John Carpenter | 1980s: Continued commercial success
Johnny Carpenter (Jasper Carpenter; June 25, 1914 – February 27, 2003) was an American film actor, screenwriter and producer. He was known mostly for his work in Westerns and for his association with filmmaker Ed Wood. He used the stage names John, Johnny, Josh, and John Forbes.
Johnny Carpenter | Introduction
is a cleverly executed stunt, but it is also an effective alibi for a technically proficient filmmaker who really has nothing to say. Another John Carpenter is born, which is by no means a bad thing."
Le Dernier Combat | Release and reception
Carpenter received praise for his ability to make low-budget films. Carpenter's next film was "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976), a low-budget thriller influenced by the films of Howard Hawks, particularly "Rio Bravo". As with "Dark Star", Carpenter was responsible for many aspects of the film's creation. He not only wrote, directed, and scored it, but also edited the film using the pseudonym "John T. Chance" (the name of John Wayne's character in "Rio Bravo"). Carpenter has said that he considers "Assault on Precinct 13" to have been his first real film because it was the first film that he filmed on a schedule.
John Carpenter | 1970s: From student films to theatrical releases
Carpenter was an early adopter of synthesizers, since his film debut "Dark Star", when he used an EMS VCS3 synth. His soundtracks went on to influence electronic artists who followed, but Carpenter himself admitted he had no particular interest in synthesizers other than that they provided a means to "sound big with just a keyboard". For many years he worked in partnership with musician Alan Howarth, who would realize his vision by working on the more technical aspects of recording, allowing Carpenter to focus on writing the music. The renewed interest in John Carpenter's music thanks to the Death Waltz reissues and "Lost Themes" albums caused him to, for the first time ever, tour as a musician.
John Carpenter | Film music and solo records
For a recent interview, Carpenter stated that it was his father's work, as a music teacher, which first sparked an interest in him to make music. This interest was to play a major role in his later career: he composed the music to most of his films, and the soundtrack to many of those became "cult" items for record collectors. A 21st-Century revival of his music is due in no small amount to the Death Waltz record company, which reissued several of his soundtracks, including "Escape from New York", "Halloween II", "", "Assault on Precinct 13", "They Live", "Prince of Darkness", and "The Fog".
John Carpenter | Film music and solo records
Many of Carpenter's films have been re-released on DVD as special editions with numerous bonus features. Examples of such are: the collector's editions of "Halloween", "Escape from New York", "Christine", "The Thing", "Assault on Precinct 13", "Big Trouble In Little China", and "The Fog". Some were re-issued with a new anamorphic widescreen transfer. In the UK, several of Carpenter's films have been released as DVD with audio commentary by Carpenter and his actors ("They Live", with actor/wrestler Roddy Piper, "Starman" with actor Jeff Bridges, and "Prince of Darkness" with actor Peter Jason). Carpenter has been the subject of the documentary film "John Carpenter: The Man and His Movies", and American Cinematheque's 2002 retrospective of his films.
John Carpenter | Legacy
The film was the first time Carpenter worked with Debra Hill, who played prominently in the making of some of Carpenter's most important films. Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The two main actors were Austin Stoker, who had appeared previously in science fiction, disaster, and blaxploitation films, and Darwin Joston, who had worked primarily for television and had once been Carpenter's next-door neighbor.
John Carpenter | 1970s: From student films to theatrical releases
He uses the rotoscopic technique which involves projecting film frames on to paper and then tracing them by hand. After this, the paper images are animated by separately shooting each sheet as a single frame.
Jeff Scher | Film Methodology
Not to think too much, in a way, and feel it more." He also avoids using temp music while cutting his films.
Cinematic style of Christopher Nolan | Method
Robert also appeared in two other John Carpenter movies; namely "Someone's Watching Me!" (1978) and "Starman" (1984). His other film credits include "Three Days of the Condor" (1975), "Just You and Me, Kid" (1979), "Zoot Suit" (1981), "The Gladiator" (1986) and "Impulse" (1990).
Robert Phalen | Introduction
He returned to the "Halloween" franchise as both composer and executive producer for the horror sequel "Halloween" (2018). Carpenter composed or co-composed most of his films' music. He won a Saturn Award for Best Music for the film "Vampires" (1998). Carpenter has released three studio albums, titled "Lost Themes" (2015), "Lost Themes II" (2016), and "" (2017).
John Carpenter | Introduction
Carpenter is most widely known for his early work in horror and genre cinema and for his collaborations with directors James Cameron, McG, and Robert Luketic. His first major project as Director of Photography was the 1988 horror-comedy "". His work on the 1997 film "Titanic" earned him an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, an ASC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases, a nomination for a BAFTA Award, as well as numerous other accolades.
Russell Carpenter | Career
Tight framing is another technique used, where an entire scene can be created with a close-up. Tight framing can be terrifying as they induce anxiety by not allowing the viewer to see what's directly around the protagonist. The suspense of not knowing builds on the unknown and tension of the audience.
Horror film | Different techniques employed by horror films on the audience
Alfred Hitchcock used all of these techniques, but would sometimes allow the audience in on a pending threat then draw out the moment for dramatic effect.
Mystery film | Introduction
Carpenter's first major film as director, "Dark Star" (1974), was a science fiction comedy that he co-wrote with Dan O'Bannon (who later went on to write "Alien", borrowing freely from much of "Dark Star"). The film reportedly cost only $60,000 and was difficult to make as both Carpenter and O'Bannon completed the film by multitasking, with Carpenter doing the musical score as well as the writing, producing, and directing, while O'Bannon acted in the film and did the special effects (which caught the attention of George Lucas who hired him to work with the special effects for the film "Star Wars").
John Carpenter | 1970s: From student films to theatrical releases
Due to the wide aperture he could even film in low light situations.
Hell and Back Again | Film technique
Robert Brownjohn's work on two James Bond title sequences, "From Russia with Love" and "Goldfinger", is probably his most widely known achievement. In these he used the technique of projecting moving footage onto the bodies of models and filming the results. The idea of filming projections is one gleaned from the Bauhaus and was used by László Maholy-Nagy in his early constructivist films of the 1920s. The combination of this artistic technique with the style and glamour of the 1960s typify Brownjohn's work. The use of wit and risqué humour, for example the deliberate lining up of a projected shot of a golf putt so that the ball appears to roll down gold painted model Margaret Nolan's cleavage, are also classic Brownjohn devices.
Robert Brownjohn | Movie title sequences
Carpenter was then in a legal dispute with "They Live" production company Alive Films regarding his contract. He had had several projects fall through: a film with Cher called "Pincushion", "Exorcist III", and a version of "Dracula". He was reluctant to make "Memoirs" at first. “When you have lots of money and lots of time, it's really grueling. I enjoy being an independent, and it’s not possible to be one in this situation. But then I thought. ‘Why not?’ I hadn’t done a movie for a long time.” The actor had to convince Warner Bros. that Carpenter, who they still saw as a horror director, could work well for the picture.
Memoirs of an Invisible Man (film) | John Carpenter
Carpenter would also make a featured appearance in Wood's 1959 film, "Night of the Ghouls". By the 1960s, western film work had dried up and Carpenter's output decreased, with his last film role being in 1961's "Tomboy and the Champ".
Johnny Carpenter | Film career
Carpenter tried to keep the audience guessing as to who Michael Myers really is—he is gone, and everywhere at the same time; he is more than human; he may be supernatural, and no one knows how he got that way. To Carpenter, keeping the audience guessing was better than explaining away the character with "he's cursed by some..." For Josh Hartnett, who portrayed John Tate in "Halloween H20", "it's that abstract, it's easier for me to be afraid of it. You know, someone who just kind of appears and, you know [mimics stabbing noise from "Psycho"] instead of an actual human who you think you can talk to.
Michael Myers (Halloween) | Characterization
He has been a major critical leader and intellectual supporter of the New American Cinema avant-garde movement. Four main techniques that Sitney identified for structural film are: fixed camera position; flicker effect; re-photography off the screen; and loop printing. These techniques were implemented by experimental filmmakers in the 1960s to create cinema "in which the shape of the whole film is pre-determined and simplified".
P. Adams Sitney | Life
The following is a list of unproduced John Carpenter projects in roughly chronological order. During a career that has spanned over 40 years, John Carpenter has worked on projects which never progressed beyond the pre-production stage under his direction. Some of the films were produced after he left production.
John Carpenter's unrealized projects | Introduction
He still used many elements from the "primitive" style of movie-making that predated classical Hollywood's continuity system, such as frontal staging, exaggerated gestures, minimal camera movement, and an absence of point of view shots. Some claim, too, that he "invented" the close-up shot for filming.
Film grammar | Introduction
Debra Hill (November 10, 1950 – March 7, 2005) was an American film producer and screenwriter, best known for producing various works of John Carpenter. She also co-wrote four of his films: "Halloween", "The Fog", "Escape from New York" and "Escape from L.A." They also wrote and produced "Halloween II" together, which Carpenter did not direct.
Debra Hill | Introduction
On the other side of the Atlantic, it was perhaps Bernard Herrmann's string score for Hitchcock's "Psycho" that changed the sound of horror music. The stabbing rhythms of the famous shower scene have been imitated many times since. The 1970s saw a new wave of slasher films, which tended to have more contemporary-sounding scores, often using electronic instruments. Horror director John Carpenter was well known for scoring his own films, such as "Halloween" (1978). For The Exorcist, William Friedkin rejected a score by Lalo Schiffrin and used the temp track featuring assorted pieces of music including part of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.
Horror film score | 1960s onwards
Local families dressed their children in Halloween costumes for trick-or-treat scenes. Carpenter worked with the cast to create the desired effect of terror and suspense. According to Curtis, Carpenter created a "fear meter" because the film was shot out-of-sequence and she was not sure what her character's level of terror should be in certain scenes. "Here's about a 7, here's about a 6, and the scene we're going to shoot tonight is about a 9", remembered Curtis. She had different facial expressions and scream volumes for each level on the meter. Carpenter's direction for Castle in his role as Myers was minimal.
Halloween (1978 film) | Filming
Oh, the Horror! had a lukewarm reaction to film (which they described as being "like "Ghost" if Swayze were psychotic") and concluded "I can somewhat recommend it, if only because some moments are absurdly brilliant".
The Carpenter (film) | Reception
Nolan has described his filmmaking process as a combination of intuition and geometry. "I draw a lot of diagrams when I work. I do a lot of thinking about etchings by Escher, for instance. That frees me, finding a mathematical model or a scientific model. I'll draw pictures and diagrams that illustrate the movement or the rhythm that I'm after." Caltech physicist and Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne compared Nolan's intuition to forward-thinking scientists, saying the filmmaker intuitively grasped things non-scientists rarely understand. Regarding his own decision-making of whether to start work on a project, Nolan has proclaimed a belief in the sincerity of his passion for something within the particular project in question as a basis for his selective thought.
Cinematic style of Christopher Nolan | Method
He reportedly complained that Carpenter "ruined [my] carefully paced film." Regardless, many of the graphic scenes contained elements not seen before in film. Roger Ebert claims, "This movie has the first close-up I can remember of a hypodermic needle being inserted into an eyeball." The film is often categorized as a splatter film rather than a slasher film due to the elevated level of gore.
Halloween II (1981 film) | Direction
He would not always use these kinds of camera movements ("The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg" has none), but his most famous films all have them.
John J. Mescall | Introduction
According to scholar Nicholas Rogers, Carpenter's "frequent use of the unmounted first-person camera to represent the killer's point of view ... invited [viewers] to adopt the murderer's assaultive gaze and to hear his heavy breathing and plodding footsteps as he stalked his prey." Film analysts have noted its delayed or withheld representations of violence, characterized as the "false startle" or "the old tap-on-the-shoulder routine" in which the stalkers, murderers, or monsters "lunge into our field of vision or creep up on a person." Critic Susan Stark described the film's opening sequence in her 1978 review:
Halloween (1978 film) | Aesthetic elements
The Carpenter is a 1988 horror film directed by David Wellington, and written by Doug Taylor.
The Carpenter (film) | Introduction
Tim Grierson of "Screen International" wrote, "Tight as a drum and plenty of fun, John Carpenter's first film in nine years is hardly a groundbreaker, but when the execution is this expert, why complain?" "Film Journal International" wrote, "Genre veteran John Carpenter's sleekly professional ghost story is well-acted and directed but sadly derivative. Horror fans have seen it all before."" The Guardian"'s Phelim O'Neill also considered the film to be unoriginal, but nevertheless "a well-made film, with some finely crafted shocks" Jeannette Catsoulis of "The New York Times" wrote that the film "continues the painful decline of a director who seems more nostalgic for past glories than excited about new ideas".
The Ward (film) | Reception
The film employs modern horror techniques such as speed ramping and frame-skipping which build which build the tension in the style of a modern horror.
The Alchemist Cookbook | Cinematic Style
Black gave a list of techniques he uses when writing films in an interview with "The Guardian". He has used kidnapping as a plot device in several films: "Lethal Weapon", "The Last Boy Scout", "The Long Kiss Goodnight", "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", "Iron Man 3" and "The Nice Guys".
Shane Black | Style
Carpenter met his future wife, actress Adrienne Barbeau, on the set of his 1978 television film "Someone's Watching Me!". Carpenter was married to Barbeau from January 1, 1979, to 1984. During their marriage, Barbeau starred in "The Fog", and also appeared in "Escape from New York". The couple had one son, John Howard Jr. (born May 7, 1984), nicknamed "Cody" to avoid confusion with his father. Carpenter has been married to producer Sandy King since 1990. King produced Carpenter's later films "In the Mouth of Madness", "Village of the Damned", "Vampires", and "Ghosts of Mars". She earlier had been the script supervisor for his films "Starman", "Big Trouble in Little China", "Prince of Darkness", and "They Live".
John Carpenter | Personal life
Carpenter said that Lancaster's experience writing ensemble pieces did not emphasize single characters. Since "Halloween," several horror films had replicated many of the scare elements of that film, something Carpenter wanted to move away from for "The Thing." He removed scenes from Lancaster's script that had been filmed, such as a body suddenly falling into view at the Norwegian camp, which he felt were too clichéd. Approximately three minutes of scenes were filmed from Lancaster's script that elaborated on the characters' backgrounds. A scene with MacReady absentmindedly inflating a blow-up doll while watching the Norwegian tapes was filmed but was not used in the finished film.
The Thing (1982 film) | Post-production
Margheriti's specialty in films was low budget efforts that fell into genres such as action and science fiction. To make films in short amounts of time, Margheriti applied techniques such as shooting with several cameras simultaneously, allowing him to record master shots, close-ups, and more. This often led him to light films very carefully, and allowed him to create several films per year.
Antonio Margheriti | Style
To accommodate the sudden budgetary concerns, he wrote his own screenplay, taking elements from the Jakoby and Mazur scripts, the book, and some of his own ideas, alongside writer and frequent collaborator Michael De Luca. For this film, Carpenter wanted to get away from the stereotype of gothic vampires as he said in an interview, "My vampires are savage creatures. There isn't a second of brooding loneliness in their existence. They're too busy ripping and tearing humans apart."
Vampires (1998 film) | Production
Lowry used his process to restore and preserve more than five hundred classic films, including "Singin' in the Rain", "", "Casablanca", "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", "Bambi", "Sunset Boulevard", and the James Bond film franchise.
John D. Lowry | Introduction
Tregenza's work often employs the use of long takes to create mise en scene. His cinematic inspirations include the works of Michelangelo Antonioni, Kenji Mizoguchi, & Jean-Luc Godard. He believes that cinema, in the words of Godard, is "reality walking hand in hand with fiction."
Rob Tregenza | Cinematic technique
G. A. Smith initiated the technique of reverse motion and also improved the quality of self-motivating images. This he did by repeating the action a second time while filming it with an inverted camera and then joining the tail of the second negative to that of the first. The first films using this were "Tipsy, Topsy, Turvy" and "The Awkward Sign Painter", the latter which showed a sign painter lettering a sign, and then the painting on the sign vanishing under the painter's brush. The earliest surviving example of this technique is Smith's "The House That Jack Built", made before September 1901.
Cinematography | Other special techniques
George Stevens, Jr. notes that while many directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot: "I don't even know the editor of my films most of the time," Huston said. Actor Michael Caine also observed the same technique: "Most directors don't know what they want so they shoot everything they can think of — they use the camera like a machine gun. John uses it like a sniper." Danny Huston confirmed as much he recalled what Huston said to him as the then-youngster was fooling around with a Kodak Super 8: "and I was shooting all these various things.
John Huston | Directing techniques
Hegedus and Pennebaker's films are done in the Direct Cinema style. "Voice-of-God" narration is avoided, as are formal "Talking Head" interviews. A mobile hand-held camera and diegetic sound are also characteristic. Usually Direct Cinema films show us the "back stage", be it of the Rolling Stones as in "Gimme Shelter", or JFK in "Primary", or Bob Dylan. The stylistic concerns of Hegedus and Pennebaker place them in the legacy of Direct Cinema along with Robert Dew, Richard Leacock, and the Maysles brothers.
Chris Hegedus | Process and style
Daniel Wyman is an American musician, educator, and composer for film & television. He currently serves as an Emeritus Professor at San Jose State University, and perhaps is best known for his collaborations with director John Carpenter on films such as "Halloween" and "The Fog", where he worked as an orchestrator and synth programmer.
Dan Wyman | Introduction
Nicholas Andre Carpenter is an American film director. He worked as a set production assistant on TV and on films such as "Thank You for Smoking" (2005) before going on to direct the 2009 horror anthology "The Telling".
Nicholas Carpenter | Introduction
Carpenter's mastery of wide-screen and almost uncanny talent at crafting suspense and action sequences make "Assault" such a nerve-racking experience that you may have to reupholster your easy chair after watching it at home. In 1988, Alan Jones of "Starburst" said "Assault" is "arguably still the best film [Carpenter] ever made." In 2000 John Kenneth Muir placed the film at No. 3 on his rated list of John Carpenter's filmography, behind "The Thing" and "Halloween". In October 2007, Noel Murray and Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club also ranked "Assault" at No. 3 of John Carpenter's best films ("The Essentials"), saying, "The first John Carpenter film that really "feels" like a John Carpenter film, this homage to Howard Hawks Westerns suggests a path that Carpenter's career might've taken if "Halloween" hadn't become such a hit.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 film) | Legacy and remake
John Campbell McTiernan Jr. (born January 8, 1951) is an American filmmaker. He is best known for his action films, especially "Predator" (1987), "Die Hard" (1988), and "The Hunt for Red October" (1990). His later well-known films include the action-comedy-fantasy film "Last Action Hero" (1993), the action film sequel "Die Hard with a Vengeance" (1995), the heist-film remake "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1999), and "The 13th Warrior" (1999). His last completed feature film was the mystery-thriller "Basic", released in 2003. He pleaded guilty to perjury and lying to an FBI investigator in regard to his hiring of the private investigator Anthony Pellicano in late 2000 to illegally wiretap the phone calls of two people, one of whom was Charles Roven, a co-producer of his dystopian science-fiction action film remake "Rollerball" (2002).
John McTiernan | Introduction
After viewing Carpenter's film "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976) at the Milan Film Festival, independent film producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad sought out Carpenter to direct a film for them about a psychotic killer that stalked babysitters. In an interview with "Fangoria" magazine, Yablans stated: "I was thinking what would make sense in the horror genre, and what I wanted to do was make a picture that had the same impact as "The Exorcist"." Carpenter agreed to direct the film contingent on his having full creative control, and was paid $10,000 for his work, which included writing, directing, and scoring the film.
Halloween (1978 film) | Concept
Carpenter denies writing sexually active teens to be victims in favor of a virginal "final girl" survivor, though subsequent filmmakers copied what appeared to be a "sex-equals-death" mantra. When shown an early cut of "Halloween" without a musical score, all major American studios declined to distribute it, one executive even remarking that it was not scary. Carpenter added music himself, and the film was distributed locally in four Kansas City theaters through Akkad's Compass International Pictures in October 1978. Word-of-mouth made the movie a sleeper hit that was selected to screen at the November 1978 Chicago Film Festival, where the country's major critics acclaimed it.
Slasher film | 1978
According to his website, he worked on the incomplete "Armor II" for years. Steakley wrote the screenplay for the 1997 film, "Scary Texas Movie"; he also played a nameless bit part in that film. Steakley also played a nameless bit part in the 2000 film "Playing Dead". In 1998, John Carpenter directed a screen adaptation of "Vampire$" (retitled "Vampires"), which starred James Woods as the leader of a Catholic Church-sanctioned team of vampire hunters.
John Steakley | Career
Hooper also uses uncommon framing techniques to emphasise story; in "John Adams", he wanted to imply American independence seemed unlikely during the Revolutionary War, so he used "a very rough camera style—almost all hand held, wide lenses close to the actors, lots of movement, many cameras shooting at once so there was often not a settled master "point of view", and lots of unmatching dutch tilts so the horizon lines of the frame were often being thrown off." The America-set scenes were contrasted by the scenes set in France, in which more traditional filming techniques were employed to evoke a feel of entrenched values.
Tom Hooper | Directing style
In February 2016, Carpenter announced a sequel to "Lost Themes" titled "Lost Themes II", which was released on April 15, 2016. He then released his third studio album, titled "", on October 20, 2017. Carpenter acted as executive producer, co-composer, and creative consultant on a new film in the "Halloween" film series, titled "Halloween", and released in October 2018. The film acts as a direct sequel to Carpenter's original film, ignoring the continuity of all other previous films. It was his first direct involvement with the franchise since 1982's "".
John Carpenter | 2010s: "The Ward", focus on music and return to "Halloween"
Even so, the success of Ridley Scott's 1979 science fiction horror film "Alien" helped revitalize the project, at which point Carpenter became loosely attached following his success with his influential slasher film "Halloween" (1978). Carpenter was reluctant to join the project, for he thought Hawks's adaptation would be difficult to surpass, although he considered the film's monster to be unnotable. Cohen suggested that he read the original novella. Carpenter found the "creepiness" of the imitations conducted by the creature, and the questions it raised, interesting. He drew parallels between the novella and Agatha Christie's mystery novel "And Then There Were None" (1939), and noted that the story of "Who Goes There?" was "timely" for him, meaning he could make it "true to [his] day" as Hawks had in his time.
The Thing (1982 film) | Development
Titan's aim in the industry was to push projects through multiple forms of media. In conjunction with the game, a film version of "Psychopath" was also in the works. Carpenter was to direct the film and the game's cutscenes and character design. Since then, there has not been any further developments on the video game nor the film. During 2007, Rob Zombie produced and directed "Halloween", a re-imagining of Carpenter's 1978 film that resulted in a sequel two years later.
John Carpenter | 2000s: Semi-retirement
"Preservation" was written by Director Christopher Denham. From writing to editing, the film took about 2 years to create and finish. Before and during writing "Preservation", director Christopher Denham studied and analyzed John Carpenter's film "Halloween." What caught his attention was the patience in the filmmaking, revealing information to the audience slowly, and leaving the audience wanting to see more. Director Christopher Denham challenged himself by writing a script with not so much blood and gore, but rather with psychological suspense that is "truly" what is scary in reality. The film was partly inspired by a hunting and camping trip that the director took in Texas with his friends.
Preservation (film) | Writing
Carpenter had just made "Dark Star", but no one wanted to hire him as a director, so he assumed he would make it in Hollywood as a screenwriter. The filmmaker went on to do other films with the intention of making "Escape" later. After the success of "Halloween", Avco-Embassy signed producer Debra Hill and him to a two-picture deal. The first film from this contract was "The Fog". Initially, the second film he was going to make to finish the contract was "The Philadelphia Experiment", but because of script-writing problems, Carpenter rejected it in favor of this project. However, Carpenter felt something was missing and recalls, "This was basically a straight action film.
Escape from New York | Pre-production
Another unorthodox method used in the film was the low-angle shots facing upwards, thus allowing ceilings to be shown in the background of several scenes. Every set was built with a ceiling which broke with studio convention, and many were constructed of fabric that concealed microphones. Welles felt that the camera should show what the eye sees, and that it was a bad theatrical convention to pretend that there was no ceiling—"a big lie in order to get all those terrible lights up there," he said. He became fascinated with the look of low angles, which made even dull interiors look interesting.
Citizen Kane | Cinematography
The film was shot in eighteen days. "I had some control over it," said Carpenter. "I was able to shoot only what I wanted, I wouldn't cover it... I just gave them what I wanted and it got okayed." Carpenter worked with Adrienne Barbeau, whom he married in 1979, for the first time when making "Someones Watching Me!". Barbeau later starred in "The Fog" (1980) and had a supporting role in "Escape from New York" (1981). The television station Leigh Michaels gets a job at is named KJHC. The last three letters are a secret wink to the writer and director's full name: John Howard Carpenter.
Someone's Watching Me! | Shooting
On October 25, 2010, he was featured on the Biography Channel's "The Inside Story: Halloween" documentary about director John Carpenter's 1978 film, "Halloween".
John Kenneth Muir | Media appearances
DVD Talk gave "The Carpenter" three stars out of five, opening its review with "Even by the admittedly low standards of the slasher film, "The Carpenter" is goofy. Not just in premise, mind you, but in execution as well. Goofy, however, can also be fun which is absolutely the case with this low budget horror film". Despite deeming the finale weak, DVD Verdict also enjoyed the film, writing that it was "filled with quirky characters, and this—at least for me—is why "The Carpenter" works. As a horror film, it's pretty silly (as is the wont of horror films) but it proceeds with a logic dictated by its characters that makes it far more interesting and entertaining than the usual slasher pic".
The Carpenter (film) | Reception
Over the years, the film has received acclaim from critics, emphasizing John Carpenter's resourceful abilities as director, writer, editor, and music composer, and Douglas Knapp's stylish cinematography, as well as exceptional acting from Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, and Tony Burton. Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" wrote, "["Assault"] is a much more complex film than Mr. Carpenter's '"Halloween",' though it's not really about anything more complicated than a scare down the spine. A lot of its eerie power comes from the kind of unexplained, almost supernatural events one expects to find in a horror movie but not in a melodrama of this sort … If the movie is really about anything at all, it's about methods of urban warfare and defense.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 film) | Later reception
John Henry Carpenter (June 24, 1928 – September 4, 1998) was an American video equipment salesman, most widely known as the friend and accused murderer of actor Bob Crane in 1978.
John Henry Carpenter | Introduction
Howe earned the nickname "Low-Key Howe" because of his penchant for dramatic lighting and deep shadows, a technique that came to be associated with film noir. Later in his career, as film-stocks became faster and more sensitive, Howe continued to experiment with his photography and lighting techniques, such as shooting one scene in "The Molly Maguires" solely by candlelight. Howe also was known for his use of unusual lenses, film stocks, and shooting techniques. For the 1927 film, "The Rough Riders", Howe created an early version of a crab dolly, a form of camera dolly with four independent wheels and a movable arm to which the camera is attached.
James Wong Howe | Technical innovations
Carpenter insisted on two weeks of rehearsals before filming as he wanted to see how scenes would play out. This was unusual at the time because of the expense involved. Filming then moved to the Universal lot, where the outside heat was over . The internal sets were climate-controlled to to facilitate their work. The team considered building the sets inside an existing refrigerated structure, but were unable to find one large enough. Instead they collected as many portable air conditioners as they could, closed off the stage, and used humidifiers and misters to add moisture to the air. After watching a roughly assembled cut of filming to date, Carpenter was unhappy that the film seemed to feature too many scenes of men standing around talking.
The Thing (1982 film) | Filming
This is a list of films directed by John Carpenter that grossed more than $10 million at the US box office according to Box Office Mojo. Carpenter's films have grossed domestically a total of more than $282 million, with an average of $18 million per film.
John Carpenter filmography | Highest-grossing films
Commenting on the role and on appearing in another of Carpenter's films, she said "That's what I love about John. He's letting me explore different aspects of myself. I'm spoiled rotten now. My next director is going to be almost a letdown".
The Fog | Casting
Carpenter wrote the film in the mid-1970s in reaction to the Watergate scandal. After the success of "Halloween" (1978), he had enough influence to begin production and filmed it mainly in St. Louis, Missouri, on an estimated budget of $6 million. Debra Hill and Larry J. Franco served as the producers. The film was co-written by Nick Castle, who had collaborated with Carpenter by portraying Michael Myers in "Halloween".
Escape from New York | Introduction
The 43-minute film "" (1987) was directed by Todd Haynes and was withdrawn from circulation in 1990, after Haynes lost a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Richard. The film's title is derived from The Carpenters' 1971 hit song, "Superstar." Over the years, it has developed into a cult film and is included in "Entertainment Weekly"'s 2003 list of top 50 cult movies. Carpenter helped in the productions of the documentaries "" (1997) and "" (2007).
Richard Carpenter (musician) | Documentaries
John Carpenter composed the music to the first three films. For "Halloween", Carpenter chose to use a piano melody played in a 5/4 time rhythm instead of a symphonic soundtrack. Critic James Berardinelli calls the score "relatively simple and unsophisticated", but admits that ""Halloween"'s music is one of its strongest assets." Carpenter stated in an interview, "I can play just about any keyboard, but I can't read or write a note." In the end credits, Carpenter bills himself as the "Bowling Green Orchestra" for performing the film's score, but he did receive assistance from composer Dan Wyman, a music professor at San Jose State University.
Halloween (franchise) | Music
The following is typical of the reaction when such films of his works are seen by viewers: This ... motion picture is a film of drawings, but not of static drawings ... it seems to have been made by cameras moving seamlessly over hundreds of drawings. The overall effect is almost that it has been filmed live ... yet it is ... drawings.
Franklin McMahon | Technique
An example of the second method of production is his 2000 work, "The Top Grossing Film of All Time, 1 x 1", which is a static image showing all of the frames of the movie "Titanic" reduced to the average color most representative of each frame. Salavon employed a similar method in his 2003 series "Emblem", reducing films such as Stanley Kubrick's to a set of concentric rings of color representing each frame of the film. A third part of Salavon's work involves the recomposition of statistical data into visual images. For example, in the 2001 works "Shoes, Domestic Production, 1960-1998", Salavon organized and transformed a data set concerning the show industry into "psychedelic constellations" bursting with color.
Jason Salavon | Work
Carpenter edited the film using the pseudonym John T. Chance, the name of John Wayne's character in "Rio Bravo"; his frequent collaborator Debra Hill served as assistant editor. According to Carpenter, the editing process was a bare-bones process. One mistake Carpenter was not proud of was one shot "cut out of frame", which means the cut is made within the frame so a viewer can see it. "Assault" was shot on Panavision, which takes up the entire negative, and edited on Moviola, which cannot show the whole image, so if a cut was made improperly (i.e., frame line not lined up properly), then one would cut a half of a sprocket into the film and "cut out of frame," as happened to Carpenter.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 film) | Post-production
Janis's musical style uses a number of styles developed in the film industry, such as "celtic" flute and recorder playing and an unusually high frequency of stirring cymbal rolls.
Tim Janis | Career
Carpenter originally wrote the screenplay for "Escape from New York" in 1976, in the aftermath of Nixon's Watergate scandal. Carpenter said, "The whole feeling of the nation was one of real cynicism about the president." He wrote the screenplay, but no studio wanted to make it because, according to Carpenter, "[i]t was too violent, too scary, [and] too weird". He had been inspired by the film "Death Wish", which was very popular at the time. He did not agree with this film's philosophy, but liked how it conveyed "the sense of New York as a kind of jungle, and I wanted to make a science-fiction film along these lines".
Escape from New York | Development and writing
Howarth's collaborations with John Carpenter include: "Escape from New York", "Halloween II", "", "Christine", "Big Trouble in Little China", "Prince of Darkness" and "They Live". His music has been featured in films like "The Osterman Weekend", "The Lost Empire", "Retribution", "", "", "", "The Dentist" and "The Dentist 2", "Boo", "Evilution", "Basement Jack", "Hansel and Gretel", "Zombie Night", and "Brutal". His award-winning sound designs have appeared in "", "", "", "", "", and "", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Poltergeist", "Back to the Future Part II", "Back to the Future Part III", "The Little Mermaid" and "Total Recall". His team received Academy Award awards for Best Sound Effects for "The Hunt for Red October" and "Bram Stoker's Dracula" directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Alan Howarth (composer) | Films
The director of photography for "Preservation" is female cinematographer Nicola Marsh. The movie was shot on the Red Epic with anamorphic lenses. Director Christoper Denham and cinematographer Nicola Marsh were inspired to create a look based on the depth of field and empty frame space of movies such as "Halloween" and "Southern Comfort." Components to cinematography such as these create a feeling of isolation around the characters. Empty frame space creates a feeling of unease, not knowing what is going to pop into the frame next, when, and if anything will at all. Cinematographer Nicola Marsh worked with diligently with Director Christopher Denham to create this feel of a "Jack In the Box", leaving the audience on a cliff hanger scene to scene.
Preservation (film) | Cinematography and directing
John M. "Jack" Carpenter was an American nuclear engineer known as the originator of the technique for utilizing accelerator-induced intense pulses of neutrons for research and developing the first spallation slow neutron source based on a proton synchrotron, the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS). He died on 10 March 2020.
John M. Carpenter | Introduction
In a study by Jacob Shelton, the many ways that audience members are manipulated through horror films was investigated in detail. Negative space is one such method that can play a part in inducing a reaction, causing one's eyes to remotely rest on anything in the frame – a wall, or the empty black void in the shadows. In an ideal horror film, there is a perfect balance of negative and positive space. Another method is a subversion of classic horror tropes – the jump scare. In classic horror films, the jump scare is right after an individual closes the bathroom mirror with their reflection shown or other such situations.
Horror film | Different techniques employed by horror films on the audience
In "The Prestige", the series of magic tricks and themes of duality and deception mirror the structural narrative of the film. His writing style incorporates a number of storytelling techniques such as flashbacks, shifting points of view, and unreliable narrators. Scenes are often interrupted by the unconventional editing style of cutting away quickly from the money shot (or nearly cutting off characters' dialogue) and crosscutting several scenes of parallel action to build to a climax.
Cinematic style of Christopher Nolan | Style
Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a beautifully made thriller" that "works because director Carpenter knows how to shock while making us smile. He repeatedly sets up anticipation of a shock and delays the shock for varying lengths of time. The tension is considerable. More than once during the movie I looked around just to make sure that no one weird was sitting behind me." Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" was negative, writing "Since there is precious little character or plot development to pass the time between stalking sequences, one tends to wish the killer would get on with it.
Halloween (1978 film) | Contemporaneous
As also stated in the 2009 documentary "Clarkworld" (written and directed by Clark's former production designer Deren Abram after Clark's tragic death in 2007), Carpenter directly asked Clark about his thoughts on developing the anonymous slasher in "Black Christmas":
Halloween (1978 film) | Concept
Ford had many distinctive stylistic trademarks and a suite of thematic preoccupations and visual and aural motifs recurs throughout his work as a director. Film journalist Ephraim Katz summarised some of the keynote features of Ford's work in his Collins "Film Encyclopedia" entry: In contrast to his contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, Ford never used storyboards, composing his pictures entirely in his head, without any written or graphic outline of the shots he would use. Script development could be intense but, once approved, his screenplays were rarely rewritten; he was also one of the first filmmakers to encourage his writers and actors to prepare a full back story for their characters.
John Ford | General style