If you had asked me in the early days of Filmmaker which director would go on to be the one creating a micro-budget, self-sustaining business model, I’m not sure I would have answered “Ed Burns.” His The Brothers McMullen was realized for pennies and broke through the mainstream with Fox Searchlight at its back, and from that point on, Burns seemed to be set for the mainstream studio world. He acted in Saving Private Ryan, married supermodel Christy Turlington, and embarked on a follow-up feature starring Cameron Diaz. But here we are, nearly two decades later, and Burns is not …

The major telecommunications companies, led by AT&T and Verizon, are consolidating their control over the Internet. These companies are working closely with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to further control the telecom market. Together, the giant telephone and cable companies are reducing the number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), privatizing the nation’s telecom infrastructure (i.e., the Public Switched Telephone Network or PSTN), pushing new “data caps” limitations to raise rates and moving aggressively to end net neutrality. And they are succeeding. In the face of this campaign to reduce industry competition and customer choice, efforts are underway throughout the …

As one of the three journalists contacted by documentary film programmer Thom Powers last Spring about Caveh Zahedi’s The Sheik and I, I wanted to weigh in on the controversy that erupted this week following Zahedi’s accusation that Powers has “blacklisted” his picture, which opens today from Factory 25. After watching Zahedi’s YouTube video and then reading Powers’ response, I decided to talk to both men to explore the situation in more detail. Then, in the midst of writing this, I noticed Eric Kohn’s post at Indiewire this morning, which exhaustively discusses the film, the timeline of Powers and Zahedi’s …

Indefatigable in their desire to find larger and larger audiences for their film, Adam Bhala Lough (Bomb the System, Weapons) and and his co-director Ethan Higbee have been self-distributing The Upsetter: The Life & Music of Lee “Scratch” Perry for what feels like an eternity. The film had its world premiere at SXSW in 2008 and bounced around the festival circuit for the next year and a half, picking up Benicio Del Toro as an executive producer and narrator along the way, while winning generally positive notices in most of its stops. When Lough (one of 2003′s “25 New Faces of Independent …

Today is St. Nicholas’ Day, and very fittingly David Lowery’s debut feature, St. Nick, is available to watch for free on the NoBudge website. In advance of the world premiere of Lowery’s second film, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, at Sundance in January, it’s also a great time to revisit this film — or watch it for the first time. You can watch St. Nick here from today until December 13.  

Are we in the midst of a new round of media consolidation? Is the report that Comcast made a pitch for Disney the first of a wave of further industry restructuring? Rupert Murdoch’s reorganization of the News Corp. and reports that he has been exploring the acquisition of the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune raise concern that such a round is underway. On December 3rd, Murdoch announced that he was splitting the News Corp. into two companies. News Corp. will house its publishing business, including HarperCollins, Dow Jones Newswires, the London Times and The Wall Street Journal. The new …

The credits roll, there is applause, and not too many people walked out. The festival premiere of your debut film is over. You relax, a year’s worth of stress magically departing your body. Sure, there will be tough times ahead; distribution is difficult. But, for the moment, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. But don’t relax too much, warn a trio of festival heads. Your next big job as a director looms sooner than you think. The audience Q&A you’ll lead in just a minute or two is surprisingly important when it comes to your film’s future life. …

Online video’s come a long way in the seven-and-a-half years since the launch of YouTube, but it’s no secret that the landscape’s still constantly changing for filmmakers, both independents and studios. The big question, still, is how to best monetize online viewing, as a few recent developments have illustrated. Karin Chien has a great piece in the current issue of Filmmaker (available for subscribers here) about how some YouTube stars have built up massive audiences that have, in turn, supported them financially and empowered them to deal with Hollywood on favorable terms. But we all know that going viral can …

“This is the future and the future is now,” declares director Larry Clark on the website for his new film, the Rome Grand Prize-winning Marfa Girl. And when Clark says “now,” he means now — the film will stream today, at 6:00 PM Eastern time, for 24 hours, and that may be the only time you’ll ever get a chance to see it. From the site: I will put the film on my first and only website, larryclark.com, which is the only place one will ever be able to see the film…. It will stream for $5.99 for access to …

Every movie deserves a great poster. It’s the visual signature that establishes the world, the stakes and tone of the movie, but is also the familiar and identifiable touchstone that (potential) fans will see as it pops up online, at festivals and while browsing their VOD menu. I want to start by noting that for better or for worse, I kinda get off on “leaping without looking”. Maybe that’s a flaw but I don’t have much patience for formal training. So take this breakdown with the knowledge that there may be better ways to do things, or techniques I’m flat-out …