Gabe Klinger is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for his documentary on directing legends James Benning and Richard Linklater. Below he talks about the experience of working on the project. My first encounter with Richard Linklater was through his Dazed… Read more
Richard Dutcher is one of the most important and accomplished directors that nobody’s heard of. Like many independent filmmakers, Dutcher is a multihyphenate: writer, director, actor, producer, editor. In the process he’s created eight feature films that span genres and… Read more
Drew Whitmire.
Independent films get made, often miraculously, and we cover those films here at Filmmaker. But what about all those other projects that never, despite the best of intentions, make it through production, much less hit theaters? In this new series,… Read more
Bengali Harlem
In the eighth part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Vivek Bald, filmmaker, Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media at MIT and a member of the MIT Open… Read more
Sometimes a piece of everyday equipment can be used for an unusual purpose. While shooting a recent music video for the band Run 8 Rider, director Sean Meehan noticed a stair climber at the location and wondered if it couldn’t be used to create some kind of crane shot. An additional twist is that the shot would consist of three sequences shot at different times in the shooting day and be spliced together. Sean explains how the shot was made: We walked in, I saw this stair climber and my first thought was “That’d be really cool to use for …
by Michael Murie on Apr 19, 2013
In the Fall of 2011, filmmaker Ryan Koo — featured along with then-partner Zachary Lieberman on our 2008 “25 New Faces” — announced his debut feature, Man-child. Embarking on an ambitious Kickstarter campaign, Koo leveraged not only the community he had been building via his excellent website, No Film School, but also his project’s selection for the IFP and Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Emerging Visions program. The campaign was a success, raising $125,100, and, as he’s moved his story of youth basketball forward, Koo has been, essentially, open-sourcing his progress, giving advice on not only social-media fundraising but screenplay …
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2013
Before becoming a filmmaker I spent 15 years designing software. Started out as a Mac OS programmer and then moved to Microsoft Windows. My endeavors included all things visual—from icon design and screen layout, to the more abstract design patterns found in system architecture and coding. What I discovered along the way was that the most elegant solutions—the products that worked best, most reliably, and resonated strongly with their user base—were always the most simple and minimalist in design. And there was always room for improvement via testing, focus groups, and refactoring (a techie word for the iterative process of …
by A.D. Calvo on Apr 15, 2013
Robert Nagle studied mechanical engineering and racecar design before becoming a professional race driver. But when he found out that some of the other drivers were working in the film industry, it piqued his interest. Said Nagle, “What I found was that it fulfilled a creative side of me that I didn’t really realize was there.” He left the racing world and hasn’t looked back, doing stunt driving for a number of films, including The Dark Knight Rises and Drive. One piece of equipment he’s been driving lately is the Biscuit Rig Jr., a driveable platform developed by Allan Padelford …
by Michael Murie on Apr 10, 2013
Kanen Flowers describes himself as a “former technology guy” who got into filmmaking around 2001 with the goal of writing and directing his own material. In 2007, he started work on Jack Forgotten, a project that he says is still in postproduction. Other projects have met with greater success; he started the That Post Show podcast, and a show called That Media Show, and has produced a variety of shorts and web-based content through his production company, Scruffy.tv. At the moment he’s working on Hero Punk, a full-length feature which was shot using the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Hero Punk is …
by Michael Murie on Apr 1, 2013
On small budget productions, coming up with locations can be a challenge – especially if you need something a bit unusual. An upcoming music video for the band Run 8 Rider required that a single location represent three different time periods to tell its story. Using a borrowed house as the location, director Sean Meehan turned to production designer Riley Fearon to supervise the transformation of the location. In this interview Riley talks about the challenges of working on a small budget, how he approaches production design, and how he came to the field. Filmmaker: For this project what have …
by Michael Murie on Mar 18, 2013