When legendary producer and studio executive Robert Evans penned his autobiography — later adapted into a documentary — he picked a telling title: The Kid Stays in the Picture. You would think that after producing films like Chinatown and Urban Cowboy, Evans could happily rest on his laurels, but his book’s title, with its defiant use of the present tense, speaks to the ambitions and anxieties affecting every filmmaker with producer DNA. These, of course, are issues of continuing relevance and professional durability — or, to use the independent film parlance of the moment, sustainability. Contrary to the imagination of […]
Filmmaker Theodore Collatos appeared recently on the site when he and Christopher Jason Bell interviewed each other about their latest pictures. He’s now at work on a new feature, Tormenting the Hen, produced with Matt Grady from Factory 25, Ben Umstead (Slamdance programmer, Screen Anarchy) and George Manatos (editor on Come Down Molly). He’s also in the midst of an Indiegogo campaign to support its co-production. Below, he reveals how — and why — he shot his new movie in six days (and how you might be able to do the same). Read on, and please consider supporting his campaign. […]
As Hollywood is rightfully called out on its underemployment of women, virtual reality companies like Mechanical Dreams Virtual Reality (MDVR) are actively courting underrepresented voices. The Seattle-based virtual reality content company housed by the University of Washington and the start-up incubator CoMotion is producing six innovative 360 films, five of them directed by women. The company’s first production, Tracy Rector’s Ch’aak’ S’aagi (Eagle Bone), one of the first VR pieces ever by a Native American filmmaker, was recently selected as one of five VR projects to screen at TIFF as part of its inaugural POP VR section at the festival. MDVR is currently raising money on […]
We’ve shown you how lighting can change a face, and now we’ll show you how a makeup artist can turn a woman into… Steve Buscemi? Over at the Huffington Post, makeup artist Katelyn Galloway impressively transforms herself into the well known independent actor in just under four sped-up minutes. Watch the transformation below and then learn more about makeup artists in our article, “Secrets of Glam Squad: Inside the World of Film Hair and Makeup Artists.”
Last Halloween (my birthday, as it happens), I loaded up my Bolex to shoot some 16mm black-and-white images of a children’s costume parade in my Brooklyn neighborhood. I was thinking of Helen Levitt’s 1948 masterpiece, In the Street. Levitt (and her co-cinematographers James Agee and Janis Loeb) used a small camera to surreptitiously record images (mostly of children) in Spanish Harlem. The film is a poetic time capsule — observational vignettes that become more than the sum of their parts. The Bolex looks pretty big these days compared to digital cameras, so I wasn’t hiding anything from anybody. As I […]
I’ve been writing, shooting and producing short films, about twenty of them, since 1999. I’ve also DP’d several shorts and a zombie feature. I enjoy assisting other filmmakers in North Carolina, where I live, and I’ve worked as AD over the last five years on both short- and long-form projects. The projects I’ve ADed have had budgets ranging from the tiny to the small, all well under $100,000. More about my work at Turnip Films. This article describes what I’ve learned as AD about how to run a shoot. Everyone I’ve worked with did their best and turned out some […]
Polaroid sent over their handheld 3-axis stabilizer for GoPro for a hands on review. In the video below I do a run through of the device along with taking it out for a spin with some test footage. At $180 it’s one of the least expensive gimbals for GoPro, and the shots are impressively smooth. Controlling the camera takes a little getting used to. It works with the HERO 3/3+/4. You can use it with or without an LCD BacPac (it includes a spacer when using it without). I caved and bought the screen because it was getting hard to operate holding a phone […]
Filmmaker Emily MacKenzie is currently on Kickstarter with her documentary Scar Story, about Paulette Leaphart, who survived breast cancer following a double mastectomy, and who will be raising awareness by walking topless from Biloxi, MS to Washington, D.C. MacKenzie, producer Sasha Solodukhina and their crew will be traveling along with her, and they are now in the final nine days of their campaign to raise production funds. Below, MacKenzie shares a letter she has written to her crew — and partly to herself — about the challenges that lie ahead. Consider donating here at Kickstarter. To my crew – I […]
Released this week, Hedge is an OS X app for streamlining the process of importing camera footage and making backups. Hedge will transfer multiple disks at the same time and verify each copy. Paul Matthijs Lombert came up with the idea for Hedge, and is CEO of the developer, The Sync Factory. He answered the following questions via email. Filmmaker: Where did the idea for Hedge come from? Matthijs Lombert: I’ve been an acoustician and mastering engineer for over ten years. I originally came up with the idea for Hedge when working on a Dutch multicam documentary. I designed the audio […]
Atomos has announced the Atomos Flame series of field monitor/recorders. These new units feature 7” 1920x 1080 resolution screens with 1,500 nits of brightness — four times the brightness of their existing screen. Atomos claims it’s the world’s brightest and widest dynamic range panel in a field monitor. But what is HDR footage? Atomos CEO and co-founder Jeromy Young explains that if you have a camera that shoots in a Log format, and that will output that over SDI or HDMI, you already have an HDR camera. The problem is that it can be difficult to see what that Log image is […]