Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
Paramount is sending a free DVD of Selma to every high school in America, public and private, Time reports.
Tribeca Film Festival have announced their top audience award and jury award winners. See our reviews of many of them here.
Watch Michael Fassbender, Tom Hanks, Judi Dench, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Tom Hiddleston, and more discuss acting:
Roger Deakins will be presented with the Pierre Angénieux Excellence in Cinematography Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
At Cinefix read a breakdown of the visual effects in Ex Machina:
The majority of the shots in the film are around 200 frames long, with one clocking in at 1600 frames. It was a huge challenge to track them as the precision needed to be maintained throughout. It really was a herculean effort by all involved.
Additionally, the film was shot using Xtal Express anamorphic lenses which, whilst beautiful, provided a number of challenges to the tracking artists. The lens distortion was often not even, and changes in focus could radically change the lens geometry. Alex Maciera led the tracking team and I think it’s no exaggeration to say that body tracking Ava was the hardest task on the show.
Watch Steve McQueen, Aaron Sorkin, J.J. Abrams, and more discuss collaboration:
NY Times‘ A.O. Scott on serving up truth with imagination in cinema:
A few months ago, at the height of Oscar season, journalists indulged in what has become an annual orgy of fact checking. Feature films like the best-picture nominees “Selma” and “American Sniper” were subjected to special scrutiny because they were based on true stories. Departures from the record were parsed and debated, then everybody moved on.