Still the only lab focusing entirely on what happens after rough cut —- from locking picture to devising a distribution strategy — the IFP Narrative Lab concluded its ninth edition last month. When I created the Lab with the IFP almost a decade ago, the idea was simple. A successful career in film is partly based around making mistakes — and then not making those same mistakes again. But first-time filmmakers don’t have prior experience to draw upon, and in today’s hyper-competitive, content-swamped environment, failure is a luxury many of them can’t afford —— especially when that failure is made […]
In the final part of our interview with brothers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, they talk about the importance of music and audio, costume design, and how they found a distributor. After writing the script for The Ward, which was directed by John Carpenter, the brothers decided they really wanted to direct their next script themselves. They spent almost a year trying to raise money, but ultimately decided to shoot Dark Feed with a Canon 7D and the resources they had available. Dark Feed was successfully completed and sold to a distributor, and they are now working on their second low-budget feature, […]
In part two of our interview with brothers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, the writers and directors of Dark Feed, they talk about the lessons learned during the production and post-production of a low-budget movie. Filmmaker: How large was the crew for the Dark Feed shoot, and how many days of shooting were there? Michael: There was Shawn and I, and we had two sound people – one to hold the boom and one to work the recorder – and a d.p. to also run camera. We had people come in and do other jobs like set building, but on a […]
Adobe Creative Cloud, the latest update to the Adobe application suite of programs, was released last week. This release marks a major change for Adobe away from a “purchase” model to a subscription model; if you want the latest versions of their applications you must now pay a monthly fee to use the software. You can license an individual application for $20 a month, or the whole suite for $50 a month. Clearly, even if you think you only need After Effects and Premiere Pro, you might as well spring for the whole set, and if you have a previous […]
Alongside a Jony Ive-helmed refresh of its iOS mobile software, a long-awaited update of Apple’s Mac Pro line was finally announced at today’s WWDC. Replacing the large cheesegrater floor model is a computer one-eighth the size that resembles the classic Braun KF 20 coffeemaker. From the Verge: The new Mac Pro will be one-eighth the size of the old 40-pound Mac Pro. The new desktop, which stands 9.9-inches tall and 6.6-inches wide, will ship this fall. When it does, it’ll feature a blacked-out aluminum exterior and be small enough that it can sit on most desks. Inside, it will make […]
Today the 2013 IFP Narrative Labs got under way, and the participants in this year’s program have just been announced. All are the films selected are debut features first-time directors and have budgets under $1 million, and the teams behind each project are provided with an immersive mentorship experience that helps them navigate from post-production through to the festival circuit and distribution. Among the films selected for the 2013 Labs include two by former alumni of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces”: Gary Huggins, director of Kick Me, appeared on the list in 2006, and Paul Harrill (Something, Anything) featured in in 2001. Other notable participants include Aron […]
While editing The Unbearable Lightness of Being in France, Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch came across a reference to Italian writer Curzio Malaparte’s description of horses being suddenly flash frozen in Lake Ladoga during the siege of Leningrad. He became intrigued by the startling image, and tracked down Malaparte’s 1944 novel Kaputt, the book the image came from. Over time Murch, best known for his work on films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, read all of the obscure Italian writer’s translated writings, then brushed up on his Italian to read untranslated work. He eventually […]
Over the past few months it’s been hard to miss the green icons showing up on Twitter and other social media in support of the FX Protest, an event that happened at this year’s Oscar ceremony to protest ongoing problems in the VFX industry. While movies continue to make great use of visual effects, the companies that create these effects are being financially stressed and are going out of business. To find out more about what’s been going on in the VFX industry, we spoke to Michael Scott, a VFX compositor who has been working in the industry for the […]
My name is David Lassiter, I’m the writer and director of a short film called The Opportunist, and over the next few weeks, my team and I will be documenting our adventures on the road to Critics Week at Cannes where our film will have its world premiere. We are big fans of Filmmaker so we’re super excited to share our experiences. To begin! It’s only been two weeks since the Critics’ Week line-up was announced and already it feels like we’ve lived a lifetime. First things first: the film’s not even finished! We submitted a work in progress to Critics’ […]
This morning the 10 projects selected for the 2013 IFP Documentary Labs were announced. All are works by first-time directors and have budgets of less than $1 million, and filmmakers are provided with an immersive mentorship experience to guide them through post-production and looking ahead to the festival circuit and beyond. The films selected include Sara Dosa’s doc on mushroom hunters, Roots and Webs, produced by Court 13’s Josh Penn, and David Thorpe’s Do I Sound Gay, which has How to Survive a Plague‘s Howard Gertler on board as producer. Spike Lee is the executive producer on Darius Clark Monroe’s Evolution of a […]