Authors — Sarah Salovaara
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Watch: Behind Interstellar’s Sound Design
Deborah Stratman’s bewitching short film Hacked Circuit, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, presents a roving, unbroken look inside the foley post-production process at an LA studio. Along those lines, this featurette with Interstellar‘s Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer, Richard King, provides perspective into the blockbuster’s unusually naturalistic and practical sound effects. To capture the essence of a dust storm, King and his team built a sand gun and fired it against a rusty car; to convey a car ripping through a cornfield, they built a rig and did it for themselves. Just as Nolan eschews green screens, he refrains from the use […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 24, 2014 -
Watch: Josephine Decker’s Flashes of Brilliance
A considerable crowd of critical praise has coalesced around the work of Josephine Decker, most notably this “A Star is Born” piece from her longtime champion Richard Brody. Kevin B. Lee at Fandor put forth a more tempered assessment of Butter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (ending their week run at the IFP Media Center today), but he also compiled this beautiful, elliptical montage of the imagery in the two films. Narrative and/or stylistic misgivings aside, it is undoubtedly clear that Decker buttresses her films with a visceral atmosphere, achieved through fine details, ethereal lighting and playful camerawork, […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 20, 2014 -
Dan Schoenbrun on Kickstarting collective:unconscious
Some Kickstarter campaigns sell themselves. collective:unconscious had me at, “Five of NYC’s most adventurous filmmakers are working together to adapt each other’s dreams.” The five filmmakers in question are Frances Bodomo, Lauren Wolkstein, Josephine Decker, Daniel Carbone and Lily Baldwin, and the project’s curator cum ringleader is Dan Schoenbrun, Film Partnerships Lead at Kickstarter, who previously supported several of the filmmakers’ other projects as Associate Director of Programming at IFP. Filmmaker spoke with Schoenbrun about the conception of the project, the series timeline and the protocol for working as a collective. Donate to the campaign here. Filmmaker: What was the genesis of […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 19, 2014 -
Factory 25 Acquires Little Feet and Boneshaker
Factory 25 will distribute Alexandre Rockwell’s Little Feet on a double bill with 25 New Face Frances Bodomo’s Boneshaker. The films will open at the IFC Center on December 12 and will be available for streaming on Fandor and Vimeo the same day. Little Feet was previously part of a Vimeo on Demand TIFF deal in which Vimeo gave the filmmakers $10,000 in exchange for 30-day exclusive distribution rights. Rockwell won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 1992 with In The Soup, and Little Feet harkens back to the film’s 16mm black and white camerawork. Said Factory 25’s Matt Grady of the paired acquisition, “Both films are very […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 18, 2014 -
The Reagans and Sex Parties: Recapping Female Sexual Fantasies in Film
“So many fantasies are fear based, so I can understand why you’d want Ronald Reagan shoving cake in your mouth,” said Amy Seimetz. She was responding to a particular fantasy from an anonymous audience member after a screening of Josephine Decker’s Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, nearing the midway point in its one week run at the IFP Media Center. Seimetz and Decker, along with Mild and Lovely d.p. Ashley Connor, Ry Russo-Young, Emily Carmichael, and Celia Rowlson-Hall were all in attendance for an interactive panel on Female Sexual Fantasies in Film. The filmmakers began with a discussion that centered on the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 17, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Two Days, One Night
Here’s the first U.S. trailer for the Dardenne’s Two Days, One Night, which arrives stateside on December 24 from Sundance Selects. An allegory for human empathy and compassion, the film follows a fragile Marion Cotillard as she goes door to door, begging her co-workers to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job. At times too glossy for its subject matter — which has little to do with its star — the film proves an interesting exercise in repetition, with a closing act that is as heart-wrenching as it is cleverly calculated.
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 14, 2014 -
Watch: Recreating Interstellar’s Black Hole
“How ever sophisticated your CGI is,” says Christopher Nolan, ” if it’s been created from no physical elements and you haven’t shot anything with the camera, it’s going to stand out.” A notable proponent of practical effects, Nolan shot his latest extravaganza Interstellar without a single green screen. In this new episode of Shanks FX, Joey Shanks recreates the film’s illusion of the black hole with a little smoke and lighting. Watch above.
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 12, 2014 -
“There are No Restrictions, Except For Pornographic Material:” Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld on High Maintenance
High Maintenance, the widely reputed, gold standard of web series, began as an experiment of sorts between Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. When interviewed for our 2013 25 New Faces issue, the pair expressed the foremost need to “get out all these weird stories that have happened over the years.” Now Vimeo’s first venture into original programming, the husband and wife team are pushing the envelope in a whole new way. With episodes nearing a 20-minute runtime and tonal highs and lows as accomplished as any feature film, High Maintenance challenges the very serial format it calls home. As of today, all three episodes from […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 11, 2014 -
“This is The Kind of Thing I Want in a Restaurant:” Vanessa McDonnell on John’s of 12th Street
If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant, you may have a sense of the sort of family dynamics the harried environment can rapidly inspire. John’s of 12th Street, a dyed-in-the-wool Italian establishment in the East Village, takes this close-knit enclave to its apotheosis. As rendered in Vanessa McDonnell’s observational documentary of the same name, the restaurant is purely populated by the sort of old school New York characters that can only be regarded as a dying breed. From opening till close, McDonnell captures as many yarns spun over the tables as chicken parms are laid into the oven. In advance of John’s of 12th Street‘s world […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 10, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Ava DuVernay’s Selma
You seldom see a female filmmaker making the quantum leap from a $200,000 Sundance title to a Brad Pitt-backed Christmastide blockbuster, so hats off to Ava DuVernay on the upcoming Selma. A retelling of the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, the film stars David Oyelowo (also of DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere) as Martin Luther King, Jr., with a substantial ensemble in Tom Wilkinson, Oprah Winfrey, Keith Stanfield, Tim Roth and Lorraine Toussaint, among others. Shot by the brilliant Bradford Young, Selma is set for a December 25 limited release and a national rollout on January 9, 2015.
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 7, 2014
