Advice for Producers, Crowdfunding, the Wu-Tang Clan, Dirty Old New York and More: Sunday Links

Here are some of the articles I’ve read this week that I recommend for your Sunday afternoon reading. “Whose Brooklyn Is It Anyway?” wonders A.O. Scott at the New York Times as he considers Spike Lee’s recent comments on the borough’s gentrification: Every city is simultaneously a seedbed of novelty and a hothouse of nostalgia, and modern New York presents a daily dialectic of progress and loss. As Colson Whitehead notes in “The Colossus of New York,” you become a New Yorker — or perhaps a true resident of any place, whether you were born there or not — when…  Read more

Novelist and Screenwriter James Salter Ponders Flight 370

In addition to being a novelist (All That Is) and screenwriter (Downhill Racer, The Appointment), James Salter is also a pilot. Over at The New Yorker he, like the rest of the world, is pondering the fate of Flight 370. In particular, he imagines the moment at which sleeping passengers may away during their overseas flight to realize that something is astray…. But the Malaysian airliner was not lost. It was on course on a long, late-night flight to Beijing. I am identifying now with the passengers. An hour after takeoff, some are already asleep. The plane is flying smoothly…  Read more

Filmmaker is Seeking a Managing Editor

Filmmaker is seeking a Managing Editor. This full-time, New York-based position oversees the production of Filmmaker‘s print issue and provides administrative and managerial support to the operations of our daily website. Our ideal candidate will have strong writing skills, superior administrative and copyediting abilities as well as a sincere interest in the world of independent film. Nick Dawson, who has been our fantastic Managing Editor for the last two years, is leaving to pursue an exciting new opportunity, which I will let him tell you about shortly. (Congrats, Nick!) If you think you or someone you know would be interested,…  Read more

Filmmaker’s Top Ten Posts of January, 2014

Here are our most-read posts of January, 2014. 1. Why Your Film Needs a Good Gaffer: How Lighting Changes a Face. This hypnotic video featuring a pretty model whose face morphs from seductive to menacing to funny based on the lights that hit it went viral. It’s a great watch that prompted a lengthy dialogue about the relationship between D.P and gaffer on our Facebook page. 2. The Women of Sundance 2014. There has been a lot written about the underrepresentation of women directors, but I think filmmaker Danielle Lurie knocked it out of the park with this 5,000-word piece…  Read more

Iggy Pop, Jim Jarmusch, Sleep and Script Development

Originally discovered by E.V. Grieve and reposted by Gothamist, this short video of Iggy Pop touring the East Village in 1993 contains an interesting nugget of script development wisdom. I was watching the video this morning purely nostalgically — checking out my neighborhood 20 years ago — when I came across, at around the 10-minute mark, a short bit about the shooting of Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. Pop says his segment with Tom Waits — a one-day, 16-hour shoot — was his best shooting experience ever. When the interviewer asks if the shoot was improvised, Pop says there was…  Read more

Filmmaker‘s Top 20 Posts of 2013

This list of 2013 top posts is broken in two — the first contains the top ten posts here at Filmmaker published during this calendar year. The second are the top ten older posts, the ones that keep on bubbling to the top of our Google Analytics. (A true 2013 top ten would be a mixture of these two lists.) So, to close out the year, here is what you read most at our site. 10. 13 Steps to Directing Famous Actors on a Microbudget Film. Director and Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish has two articles on this year’s list. In…  Read more

Filmmaker‘s Top 10 Posts of December, 2013

Our top ten posts of 2013 will follow, but, before we get to that, here are Filmmaker‘s top posts of December, 2013. 10. Film vs. Digital: The Canon 5D and 7E. Sarah Salovaara’s post of a video A-B’ing two Canon still cameras as a way of comparing film and digital was next on the list. 9. Christine Vachon in Wroclaw. Another November post is in the #9 slot — a synopsis by Ashley Green of producer Christine Vachon’s talk about the producing business at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. 8. How Many Films Does the Average Low-Budget Filmmaker…  Read more

Happy Holidays to All!

Wishing all of our readers a very happy holiday season!

Announcing the Filmmaker 2013 Holiday Sale

Filmmaker‘s popular once-a-year holiday sale is now live, with 40% discounts on subscriptions to our print, digital and iPad editions, as well as bonus gifts — some of our favorite books and DVDS of the year — given away to randomly selected new and returning subscribers. Our regular subscription, which includes the quarterly print and digital editions plus our iPad edition — is discounted from $18 to $10. If you’d just like to buy our flip-book style digital edition, which includes all back issues to 2007 and allows for PDF downloading, that’s only $6 during the sale. And, if you’d…  Read more

Filmmaker‘s Top 10 Posts of November, 2013

Here, via Google Analytics, are Filmmaker‘s top ten posts of November, 2013. 1. Number one, by a long shot, is a post that both fascinated and struck fear in filmmakers everywhere: Kaleem Aftab’s “Introducing 8K: The Final Frontier?” Reporting from the Tokyo International Film Festival, where Japanese broadcaster NHK commissioned filmmakers to make shorts in 8K, Aftab sat down with the channel’s engineers to hear plans for introducing the high-resolution images to sporting events as well as cinema. 2. Reporting from Poland’s American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Ashley Clark wrote our second highest-trafficked post of the month, an account of…  Read more