Breaking the Fourth Wall

Leigh Singer has put together a great supercut of shots from films that break the fourth wall. The term comes from the imaginary “wall” at the front of the stage in a traditional three-walled box set in a proscenium theatre, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. Nowadays it refers to the a character looking into the camera an speaking to us in the audience. It can also be called spikingthe lens. Continue reading

Reverse Motion

For the first Shot Ideas post I thought I’d go back to one of the oldest ideas in the book. The first thing any kid with an editing system will do is start messing around with speed and timing. Reversing footage is simple as it gets, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be a powerful tool to get real emotion and narrative. Sure you can regurgitate food or sucks things off the ground, but I think there is a more to this technique
than meets the eye.
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It’s alive!

My name is Zach Lipovsky, I’m a director based in Los Angeles and Vancouver. I’m constantly on the hunt for new and cool ideas to inspire me, and I’ve spent years collecting anything that makes me go “Wow, cool… I want to do that.”

I started using the amazing software called Evernote to curate my massive collection. If you don’t know what Evernote is, stop reading…. go download it, it will change your life. Ok, back now? I’ll continue. As my collection grew to thousands of notes my tag called “Shot Ideas” quickly became the my most popular. Continue reading