Authors — Sarah Salovaara
-
When Independent Film Anticipates An Audience
The arrival of summer blockbuster season and another Transformers installment means it’s time for critics to take to their think pieces and argue why Hollywood’s lowbrow, cash cow economy harms the more artful realm of independent film. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody, meanwhile, had the good, iconoclastic sense to pen an article entitled “The Real Threat To Independent Film,” whereby he concludes that the field’s dismantler does not lie within Hollywood, but in independent film itself. “The most audacious low-budget American independent filmmaking,” writes Brody, “is threatened much more significantly by misplaced critical praise for art-house mediocrities than by Hollywood.” […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 8, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: David Fincher’s Gone Girl
David Fincher’s second consecutive stab at a blockbuster book adaptation, Gone Girl, seems likely to pop up on the festival circuit (i.e., Toronto) before its October 3 release. In the interim, we have a newer, longer trailer, that relays the brooding tone of his previous procedurals The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Se7en, with Ben Affleck’s antihero, Nick Dunne, front and center. Having only made it through the first few chapters of Gillian Flynn’s bestseller, it will be interesting to see how Flynn (who penned the script) and Fincher incorporate the dueling first-person perspectives of Nick and his missing wife Amy (Rosamund Pike), beyond what appears […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 7, 2014 -
Richard Linklater’s Five Keys to Filmmaking
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood arrives in theaters next Friday, and the press blitzkrieg is well underway. In addition to a recent, incisive profile in The New Yorker, a relatively compact piece popped up in Fast Company that offers insight into Linkater’s process. Less practical than theoretical, the article addresses five bastions of great storytelling, according to the consummate independent filmmaker. I’ve excerpted my favorite points below. Find Your Form First “There are a lot of stories in the world, and I spend all my time thinking about how to tell them. That, to me, is the cinematic element. That’s the hard part: the right narrative form […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 4, 2014 -
Watch: The Shadows of Roger Deakins
Roger Deakins is widely regarded as one of the industry’s top cinematographers, bringing his characteristic earthen hues to films as divergent as Skyfall and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He is of course best known for his frequent collaborations with the Coen Brothers (Bruno Delbonnel nicely filled his shoes in Inside Llewyn Davis), and this Plot Point Productions montage, “Roger Deakins: Shadows in the Valley,” makes note of Barton Fink, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and a little bit of what’s in between. Watch above.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 2, 2014 -
Crowdfunding and Audience Myths on Reinvent Hollywood
In late May, Ted Hope kicked off the Reinvent Hollywood series, which employs the opinions and experiences of several familiar faces in independent film to address the industry’s pitfalls. From what I’ve seen in the three Google Hangouts thus far, Hope and his conspirators do a great job of summarizing and highlighting areas for improvement, but speak in more general terms when it comes to solutions. The latest 90-minute roundtable (and recap), which centered on audiences, aims to dismantle some of the more widely held beliefs that have resulted from the proliferation of crowdfunding. Says Sheri Candler of the muddled impetus […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 1, 2014 -
PowerPoint Transmedia: Choose Your Own Documentary
The Storyscapes section of the Tribeca Film Festival this year was a bit like an oversized playground. Housed in multiple stories of a lofty Tribeca building, the transmedia installations were interspersed with Bombay toting waiters and bars. The majority of the exhibitions I took part in involved Oculus Rift: if you angled your head just so, the “camera” would pan accordingly to reveal another person, object, space, et cetera, much like a video game. One selection that I was sad to miss was Choose Your Own Documentary, which was slotted four times during Storyscapes, since it was not just a transmedia documentary but also a live, interactive show. 1566 variations of Chose Your Own […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 30, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Tsai Ming-liang’s Stray Dogs
Venice Grand Jury Prize winner and all around critical favorite Stray Dogs will be making its way into American theaters sometime this year, courtesy of Cinema Guild. Here’s an early look at the film, via a Unifrance trailer, which centers on a homeless family in Taipei. There’s little plot to tell of, as director Tsai Ming-liang prefers to relate his characters’ circumstance through series of unbroken, often excruciating takes: a scene in which the father, ashamed at his inability to provide, role plays caregiver and destroyer with a head of cabbage is particularly striking. As a Cinema-Scope review noted, Ming-liang’s austerity can […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 26, 2014 -
Watch: Projection Mapping and Creating the “Beam of Light” Illusion from Metropolis
Shanks FX’s latest instructional video centers on the in-camera effect of projection mapping. Beginning with the “beam of light ” effect, created by cinematographer and VFX artist Eugen Schüfftan (Metropolis, Eyes Without a Face), Joey Shanks demonstrates how with a camera, a one way mirror, a projector and a computer at the controls, you can create the illusion of a three-dimensional conic light. Shanks also explains how to render a light tunnel on an one-dimensional black board. Good low-budget techniques to keep in your backpocket for sci-fi, dream sequences and the like.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 25, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Ira Sachs’ Love Is Strange
Despite being an out gay couple, Ben and George (John Lithgow and Alfred Molina) nevertheless find themselves shouldering nasty ramifications after they decide to tie the knot in Ira Sachs’ Love Is Strange. Premiering to near universal raves at Sundance, Love Is Strange charts the fallout from this seemingly basic right, with Ben and George jobless and couchsurfing amongst a close-knit group of friends, including Marisa Tomei and Cheyenne Jackson. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film on August 22.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 23, 2014 -
Test Footage from the ARRI AMIRA
Last September, ARRI introduced the AMIRA, a relatively inexpensive cousin (at $40,000+) to the manufacturer’s near industry standard, ALEXA. Though the resolution is 2K, the AMIRA shares the same sensor as the ALEXA, so its footage maintains some filmic consistency. Designed for documentary and television work, Cinema 5D notes in their review that the AMIRA may be best suited to small crews with mostly handheld cinematography. And, as suspected, it’s far heavier and larger than its competitors in Canon’s C100/C300/C500 series, or any DSLR. The images nevertheless speak for themselves.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 23, 2014
