Authors — Sarah Salovaara
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Behaving Badly in Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven
I love being on set. Mine, yours, whomever’s. I like eating exorbitant amounts of food. I like idle conversation. I like the feeling you get when sleep deprivation kicks in and the dullest minutiae is suddenly hilarious. But mostly I like being around a group of people who have cast aside their better judgement to create something together. So when Nathan Silver asked if I wanted to come to the Stinking Heaven set, I gladly hopped the train to Passaic. I was excited to see how Nathan, who works from outlines and improvisation, constructs a film from the ground up. The following is a loosely timestamped diary […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 25, 2014 -
Applications Open for Dogfish Accelerator
Last year, I did a lengthly profile on Dogfish Pictures’ inaugural Accelerator program, which adapts a start up financing model to the independent film landscape. Dogfish equips each of its selected participants with seed financing and an office space where they’ll develop their product(s) over the course of nine-weeks, with added input from mentors. The program is capped off by a demo day, in which a member from each team pitches to a room full of investors, industry personnel and lowly journalists like myself. Applications are now open for the second edition of Accelerator through August 8, but this year, James Belfer and Co. are widening the field. “Content […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 24, 2014 -
Create Your Own Kinetoscope at Thomas Edison’s Black Maria Studio
Before the projector, there was the kinetoscope. Conceptualized by Thomas Edison in 1888 and developed by William Dickson, the device provided a peephole into early moving pictures. Mono No Aware, the Brooklyn-based cinema organization, has scheduled a visit to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park and its adjoining Black Maria Studio to allow participants to produce their own takes on these iconic film strips, at the very birthplace of movie production. An on-site workshop will equip attendees with 16 mm, and the resulting kinetoscopes will be screened and digitized in the same afternoon. To sign up for this Sunday’s excursion, head to […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 23, 2014 -
First Batch of 2014 TIFF Titles Announced
In a press conference this morning, Cameron Bailey and Co. released the Special Presentation and Gala selections for the upcoming edition of the Toronto International Film Festival. Lots to parse through as the slate boasts world premieres from Christian Petzold, Mia Hansen-Løve, Noah Baumbach, David Gordon Green, Hal Hartley, Liv Ullman, Barry Levinson and several others. There are a few of the requisite Hollywood entries (Jason Reitman, Chris Evans’ directorial debut, two Reese Witherspoon vehicles, for starters), alongside Cannes entries Wild Tales, Force Majeure and Whiplash, but the festival looks to be off to an auspicious start. Let the Venice speculation begin. SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS 99 Homes. Ramin Bahrani, USA, […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 22, 2014 -
Behind-the-Scenes of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’s Digital Restoration
In conjunction with the release of The Essential Jacques Demy box set, Criterion has offered up a supplemental look inside the 2013 digital restoration of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Above, Agnès Varda, the couple’s children, Mathieu and Rosalie, and technical specialists discuss the intricacies of upgrading the film’s sound, color, and image for the modern viewer. It’s depressingly easy to see why so many films fall by the wayside as prints run obsolete, and digital projection cements its spot as the industry standard. The attention to detail is, as Criterion notes, painstaking, to say nothing of the expense.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 22, 2014 -
Lauren Wolkstein Talks Stony Brook Southampton and Killer Films’ 20/20/20 Filmmaking Intensive
Stony Brook Southampton’s 20/20/20 intensive filmmaking course offers participating students an opportunity to learn the practical and technical tricks of the trade from Killer Films’ Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. Over the course of 20 weeks, the graduate-level program pairs lecture-style master classes from Killer and visiting filmmakers like Todd Haynes with development and production workshops so that each writer-director walks away with her own completed short at the end of a 20-day boot camp. Lauren Wolkstein, one of our 2013 25 New Faces of Film, reprises her role this summer as a 20/20/20 mentor for the workshop phase, and spoke […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 21, 2014 -
Tall Enough and The Short Films of Barry Jenkins
In an article by Esther Robinson in our upcoming Summer issue, Barry Jenkins speaks to the delicate work-work balance incurred by many a filmmaker — that is to say, what he does to financially support his filmmaking career, and how that job tends to detract from passion projects. Jenkins is fortunate enough that his particular day job, as ringleader of the production company Strike Anywhere, allows him to regularly create content, even if of the branded and not feature-length variety. Over at Fandor, resident video essayist Kevin Lee takes a look at Strike Anywhere’s catalogue, and the work Jenkins has produced in the six […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 16, 2014 -
Short Film: James Franco’s Herbert White Starring Michael Shannon
James Franco, it seems, spent the majority of his Tisch career translating the lives and work of tormented American poets. There was C.K. Williams with the Tar omnibus, Hart Crane with The Broken Tower and Frank Bidart with the just released Herbert White. Franco and Michael Shannon played lovers in the largely misguided Broken Tower, and here, Shannon, fulfilling his menacing hulk of a persona, prefers dead girls. Franco discusses his adaptation of the Bidart poem with Matt Rager, his co-writer on As I Lay Dying and The Sound In The Fury (Faulkner, being yet another poet of sorts), over at Vice. For those who are largely uninterested in the musings […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 14, 2014 -
Distribution Strategies for the Regional Festival Circuit
A little while back, I looked at a small portion of The Film Collaborative’s most recent book, Selling Your Film Outside the US, which considered an unusual case of DIY distribution in Europe. Now, over at their blog, Sheri Candler and Orly Ravid are running a series on distribution preparation for filmmakers worldwide. As submissions for Sundance are already open, the latest entry centers on festivals, and why you should already have a distribution strategy on the back burner before your acceptance, or, rejection. If you don’t get into one of the top-tier festivals (Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, etc.), teeming with reluctant buyers, the chances that your film will […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 11, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Starred Up
David Mackenzie’s Starred Up is more or less an exemplary entry in the prison drama genre. Narratively speaking, there isn’t anything wildly original at work, as the hotheaded protagonist Eric Love (Jack O’Connell) is starred up from juvie to the same higher security prison as his estranged father (Ben Mendelsohn). There, he is quick to make enemies amongst both the incarcerated and the administration, with the one exception being a puppy-eyed counselor (Rupert Friend), who claims to see something in Eric worth healing. What sets Starred Up apart are the performances (the charismatic O’Connell has received much notice, but Mendelsohn yet again proves he can do […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 9, 2014
