Halloween time calls for a deep dive into one of the masters of the season himself.Writer, director, and composer John Carpenter just received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame this past April. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the French Directors' Guild called him "a creative genius of raw, fantastic, and spectacular emotions" (via AV Club). He's perfected horror and tension, and is famous for using simple techniques to create big scares.Today, we want to dig into 10 moments from his filmography that continue to haunt us (and hear from the filmmakers themselves about how they pulled it off).Let's enter his dark world!Michael Myers' First Murder (Halloween, 1978) - YouTube www.youtube.com Halloween was revolutionary in its use of the Steadicam, only the second production to ever film with it. The film opens with a single tracking shot through young Michael Myers' eyes as he grabs a knife, climbs the stairs, and murders his sister. When he's unmasked outside, we see he's just a child.It's a heck of an opening.Carpenter explained his inspiration (via Consequence of Sound). "I've always admired long tracking shots in the opening of movies. Touch of Evil immediately comes to mind, and there's one in the original Scarface. An acquaintance of mine had made a short film that was all one take, and it was really an engrossing way of moving the camera through an environment."DP Dean Cundey described the challenge. "This was a new technology that we, by the seat of our pants, learned...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Thursday, 9 October