Mad Max: Fury Road – Press Play Video Blog

Watch: The Film Frame Is a Kingdom, The Director Its Ruler

https://vimeo.com/150195073

When you create a film, you are simultaneously creating a frame for it, a set of boundaries in which events will unfold. When you do that, you are creating a world–and by extension, you appoint yourself its emperor. The decisions you make about what takes place within a given frame, or how the frame is shaped, or what lies within and outside the frame, cannot help but reflect on the world parallel to the frame, the world in which viewers sit in a theater and watch the film. In this sense, framing, and its exploration, become political. These are the sorts of prescient ideas floating through Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s recent beautiful video essay for Fandor. Taking us through such films as George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ Xavier Dolan’s ‘Mommy,’ and Ruben Ostlund’s ‘Force Majeure, Galibert-Laîné shows us what it means to frame something in a film, on a political level as well as, I think, an emotional level. Who says, after all, that emotions and politics aren’t symbiotic?

Watch: Mad Max Meets Star Wars in ‘Road Wars’

There are only so many stories, after all–and these days, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is a part of all of them. How this particular mash-up hasn’t happened yet is beyond me, but the clever, tidily done work by Krishna Baleshenoi should make you either want to see ‘Fury Road’ or see ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ or see both–perhaps at the same time.

Watch: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’… Animated!

So, the most recent in the flood of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road‘ tributes is an animated piece by Vimeo user whoispablo. The work is deft, and smart, and driven here, and the earth tones used, rather than dampening the action, make it more gritty, with more of a newsreel feel. George Miller should feel proud that his series has touched such a cultural nerve–what that nerve is, specifically, remains to be seen.

Watch: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’: It’s All in the Framing

We’ve looked, elsewhere, at how the use of point-of view shots made the original Mad Max movies compelling–here, in Vashi Nedomansky’s recent piece, we discover a secret of the success of George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road‘: the editing. Or, more specifically, the framing. Each shot is center-framed, meaning that the eye’s intended focal point will always be in the center of the frame. Nedomansky has helpfully added crosshairs to make us see this a bit more clearly, along with a voice-over from John Seale, the film’s director of photography.