Authors — Filmmaker Staff
-
Watch: Amy Schumer Introduces Tilda Swinton at the Gotham Independent Film Awards
“Why am I even allowed to say her name,” wondered comic Amy Schumer when starting a tribute to the actress at last night’s Gotham Independent Film Awards. The story she has to tell begins with a part Schumer wrote for her forthcoming film Trainwreck — that of her boss, simply described in the script as “a goddess, like Tilda Swinton waiting at a baggage claim.” Schumer then tells of the first time she saw Swinton (Vanilla Sky, of all things) and pays tribute to Swinton’s singular screen presence, noting that the only thing cooler than watching her act is hanging […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 2, 2014 -
Slamdance Announces its 2015 Narrative and Documentary Slates
The initial lineups for the 21st edition of the Slamdance Film Festival are here via Variety‘s Dave McNary. This year’s edition sports 13 world premieres, two North American premieres and three US premieres; their statuses are noted below. For trailers and links to more information as available, turn to Fandor’s David Hudson. NARRATIVE FEATURES PROGRAM Across the Sea. Directors & Screenwriters: Nisan Dağ, Esra Saydam. (Turkey/USA). North American Premiere. Young, beautiful and pregnant, Damla has to confront her first love in a Turkish summer town before she can fully embrace her new life in New York. Cast: Damla Sönmez, Jacob Fishel, Ahmet Rıfat Şungar, Hakan […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 1, 2014 -
The 30th Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominations
The nominations are out for the annual Film Independent Spirit Awards bestowed by Film Independent. As the logo above suggests, the Film Independent Spirit Awards will be celebrating their 30th anniversary with this edition. Leading the nominations count is Birdman with six nominations, followed by five apiece for Selma, Boyhood and Nightcrawler. Note the special awards for Inherent Vice and Foxcatcher, both of whose budgets exceed the $20 million cap for regular award eligibility. The awards are announced February 21, and their official site can be found here. BEST FEATURE (Award given to the producer. Executive producers are not awarded.) […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 25, 2014 -
Watch: 22 Useful Tricks for After Effects
This new video by Sergei Prokhnevskiy follows up on his initial “20 Useful Tricks in After Effects You May Not Know About” tutorial from a few weeks back. This time he tackles another 22 aspects of the video effects software, keystroke commands and all: how to find missing effects, footage or fonts, flexible masking options and so on. Nothing fancy here, just clear audio explanations illustrated on-screen.
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 18, 2014 -
Watch: Sony PXW-FS7 Test Footage at 180 FPS
Footage from Sony’s PXW-FS7 new camera is starting to make its way online. Michael Murie ran down its tech specs in September, and now we have this intriguing test from DP Ed David, who put together this short video of footage captured at 180 fps. As he told No Film School, David enjoyed the “incredibly ergonomic, small, and intuitive” camera but had some trouble figuring out waveforms and with the non-intuitive zebra feature.
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 17, 2014 -
2014 Cinema Eye Honors Nominees Announced
The nominees have been announced for the eighth annual Cinema Eye Honors (of which Filmmaker is an industry sponsor), which recognize outstanding achievements in documentary filmmaking. A quick breakdown: CITIZENFOUR (the cover story subject of our latest issue) leads the pack with six nominations, closely followed by Life Itself and 20,000 Days on Earth with five apiece. Below, find the bulk of the nominations. For more information, visit the Cinema Eye Honors website, which also contains more trivia and facts about the nominees in each category. The Cinema Eye Honors winners will be announced on Wednesday, January 7 at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 12, 2014 -
Listen: Donnie Darko DP Steven Poster on his Career
Best known as Richard Kelly’s go-to cinematographer for Donnie Darko, Southland Tales and The Box, cinematographer Steven Poster will conduct a masterclass on Saturday at the Made in NY Media Center, run by Filmmaker‘s parent organization IFP. The day begins with a Donnie Darko screening and includes lunch. Curious to know more about Poster’s career beforehand? This half-hour podcast is pretty comprehensive, covering the childhood moment Poster decided he wanted to spend his life working with photography, his learning experiences at his career’s start as part of the second unit on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, of course, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 12, 2014 -
Watch: An Exclusive Clip from Malick Protege A.J. Edwards’ Debut The Better Angels
Here’s a clip from A.J. Edwards’ feature debut, The Better Angels, which opens November 7th. Edwards has been part of the Terrence Malick team since 2005, when he was an editorial intern on The New World and camera operator for the making of, and critics haven’t been slow to pick up on his mentor’s voice inflecting his feature debut. The Better Angels focuses on Abraham Lincoln’s childhood years, and in this clip you can see Malick’s influence in about five seconds: the Steadicam camera tracks relentlessly through the forest as young Abe arrives at his new log cabin home in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 29, 2014 -
Load & Play
Portrait of Jason Milestone Films — November 11 One-man show, fueled by one scotch bottle, in Shirley Clarke’s living room, one tough night only: Portrait of Jason is a spontaneous monologue delivered by hustler/aspirant cabaret artist Jason Holliday. Prompted and interrogated by a sometimes-exasperated crew, Jason is sharp on race and sex and self-deluding about himself. If his bravado is a necessary survival skill for survival as a queer black man in mid-20th-century America, there’s still a queasy charge in experiencing repeated whiplash as a viewer pinging back and forth between empathy and revulsion. This second volume in Milestone’s restorations […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2014 -
Dispatches from Toronto & Camden
Toronto Film Festival 2014 By Scott Macaulay Early in Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s resolutely unsentimental Still Alice, the eponymous Columbia University linguistics professor (Julianne Moore) visits a neurologist to discuss the memory issues she’s been having. “I’m going to tell you a name and address, and I want you to remember it,” he says. “John Black, 42 Washington Street, Hoboken.” After a few basic cognitive tests, he asks Moore to repeat the address. She stumbles, apologizes; she just got distracted. The doctor smiles and nods. Moore is brilliant in this scene, as she is throughout the film capturing, Kübler-Ross- […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2014
