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Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, known together professionally as Neveldine/Taylor, are American filmmakers. Their written and directed productions are known for being dark, edgy and over the top, while maintaining a small budget (which also causes the worldwide gross of their movies to exceed their budgets, thus making all of their films financially profitable). Both Neveldine and Taylor have written and directed several films together that include Crank, and its sequel, Crank: High Voltage. They have also written and directed Gamer, starring Gerard Butler.

Films

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor first made their feature film debut with Crank, a 2006 film starring Jason Statham. The duo later wrote and produced the 2008 thriller Pathology. In 2009, Neveldine and Taylor wrote and directed Crank: High Voltage, a sequel to Crank, and Gamer, a science fiction action thriller starring Gerard Butler. The duo were originally slated to direct the upcoming film adaptation of DC Comics's Jonah Hex, but stepped down due to creative differences. They are still credited as screenwriters for the film.^[1]

Cinematography

Neveldine and Taylor frequently serve as camera operators for their films, and are known for having their films shot entirely in High-definition video. As camera operators, the duo are known for their "roller dolly" technique, which involves the camera shooting the film while on a skateboard. Taylor commented on this technique while filming Crank: "The Rollercam footage was really the most dramatic and technically challenging of the movie. Mark absolutely could not be tethered or restricted by any cables when blading at speeds up to 30mph..." ^[2]

For Crank: High Voltage, the duo used consumer-grade camcorders, such as the Canon HF10 and the Canon XH-A1. Neveldine commented on the use of these cameras: "We can put these cameras in places that people haven’t and we can put 10 of them in places where people haven't...And one of the things it allows us to do is we're doing this moving bullet time camera rig where we take 8 HF-10s and we put it on a light weight piece of speed rail and I can roller blade and skate around Jason Statham as he’s blasting down the street with a weapon and capture just rad images."^[3] During the filming of Crank High Voltage, Neveldine and Taylor shot over 279 hours of footage during its 31 days of production.^[4]

Neveldine and Taylor's third directorial effort, Gamer was the second feature film (following Che) to be shot with special hand-held Red One digital cameras.^{[5 ]}

Critical response

New York Press film critic Armond White hailed Crank 2: High Voltage as "an action sequel that ramps-up the culture of over-stimulation. Its bizarre, disorienting satire of action movie ruthlessness was also auto-critique, avant-garde enough to deserve showing at the Whitney Museum."

Filmography

References

External links

• Mark Neveldine at the Internet Movie Database
• Brian Taylor at the Internet Movie Database