Authors — Sarah Salovaara
-
IFP Guest Curates “One Million Square Feet of Culture” in Miami
Alongside Miami’s Art Basel — the international art show that runs through Saturday — IFP has teamed with One Million Square Feet of Culture to guest curate a series of technology-centric events. Installed at the Wynwood Cigar Factory across (more precisely) 3,045 square feet are three programs: Emotional Arcade, The 78 Project, and BlabDroids. Designed by Brent Hoff and Alex Reben, modified EEG headsets are the tricks of the trade in the Emotional Arcade, where unchecked emotions are a game-winning currency. Alex Steyermark and Lavinia Jones Wright view The 78 Project as an opportunity to record today’s music with yesterday’s technology. Using […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 4, 2013 -
How Many Films Does The Average Low-Budget Filmmaker Make?
Independent filmmaking is the land of the never-ending benchmark. If you’re not heaving a sigh after finally completing your film, you’re praying it’s accepted into a festival, that someone buys it, that it finds its audience, that you reap a modicum of returns, before daring to do it all over again. Or maybe, not. With the assistance of BFI, British producer Stephen Follows managed to fashion a list of all UK films budgeted at under £500k since 2008, and over £500k since 2003, for a data comparison on the career trajectories of filmmakers behind 2,737 films. His findings, while vaguely depressing, are […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 3, 2013 -
American Hustle Tops New York Film Critics Circle Awards
If last night’s Gothams marked the first stop in the ensuing months-long award season, today’s New York Film Critics Circle Awards kicked off the circuit’s highbrow counterpart. At best, the two distinct forms of awards bodies function like a venn diagram, with critics bolstering fringe contenders for the televised shows, while marching to the beat of their own drum in equal measure. The NYFCC, however, has often tended to the inoffensive, lauding popular names and titles that will be all too familiar come March. This go around, they chose to throw their weight behind David O. Russell’s latest Hollywood fare, American […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 3, 2013 -
Starlight Runner CEO Jeff Gomez on the Importance of Transmedia
As a continuation of Filmmaker‘s coverage on upcoming courses at the MINY Media Center by IFP, Starlight Runner CEO Jeff Gomez opted to share a few of his thoughts on why transmedia is no mere trend. “At the turn of the century,” notes Gomez, “our entire communications system went into hyperdrive, and has only been picking up speed. At the same time, our three network, three newspaper, three neighborhood movie theater world has been blown to a million pieces.” How one capitalizes on the wealth of new media is exactly what Gomez aims to instruct in his masterclass, “Creating Blockbuster […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 2, 2013 -
Landon Van Soest Crowdfunding for Artificial Retina Documentary Light Darkness Light
Landon Van Soest, a founder of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, is nearing the end of a Crimso campaign to fund his latest documentary Light Darkness Light, an intimate portrait of a candidate for artificial retina implants. Plotting the move from blindness to sight both narratively and visually, Light Darkness Light promises to be a revelatory examination of science and human nature. Filmmaker spoke with Van Soest about his technical plans, and how this documentary could serve legions of would-be patients in the future. Light Darkness Light‘s campaign ends in two days, on Thanksgiving, so please consider donating sooner rather than later. Filmmaker: Before we get to the film, I wanted to ask about the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 26, 2013 -
12 Years a Slave Tops 2014 Independent Spirit Awards Nominations
This afternoon, Film Independent announced their nominees for the 2014 Independent Spirit Awards in Los Angeles, California. Designed as an opportunity to recognize the niche films that are muscled out of the circuit by Hollywood headliners, the show has in recent years become increasingly Academy friendly. Though 12 Years a Slave unsurprisingly leads the pack with seven nominations, it’s nice to see a handful of wild cards getting their due. A couple of notable deviations: the ISA’s first award for Best Editing — perhaps my favorite category, with essential nominations for Upstream Color and Museum Hours — and six, instead […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 26, 2013 -
MIT Open Documentary Lab Launches _docubase
As a consumer of new media – to say nothing of its makers – how does one go about keeping abreast of the emerging form’s constant developments? MIT Open Documentary Lab hopes to keep interested parties up to speed with _docubase, a new project that was launched yesterday at IDFA. A curated platform, _docubase will maintain an open dialogue on the “new documentary,” the fledging form that draws from interactive and community-created fact-based storytelling. “No longer must we look back at those unconstrained moments of creativity from a nostalgia-tinged distance,” reads the _docubase manifesto, referring to the unchecked and experimental early years […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 25, 2013 -
Cinema Eye Honors Announces Heterodox Award Nominees
In partnership with Filmmaker, Cinema Eye Honors announces the nominees for this year’s Heterodox Award, its fourth annual recognition of a narrative film that successfully and imaginatively weaves documentary strategies, content, and/or modes of production into its fabric. The five nominees are Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess; Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow; James Franco and Travis Mathews’ Interior. Leather Bar.; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds and Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux. These selected films are intended to demonstrate the formal possibilities of non-fiction filmmaking, in addition to probing the ever-tenuous boundary between reality and its embellished analogue. “The 2014 Cinema Eye Honors Heterodox nominees prove once again that […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 25, 2013 -
Detroit Unleaded Director Rola Nashef on the Road to Distribution
“We were getting great feedback, and we thought, ‘Okay, it’s just a couple weeks now until we sell the film! It’s going to sell any second!’” Rola Nashef’s reflection on the waiting period that followed the world premiere of Detroit Unleaded at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival is likely an all too familiar affair. For her feature debut, Nashef and her team thought they had hit the jackpot: acceptance to a prestigious festival, attended by buyers aplenty, and rapturous responses from sold-out audiences. However, the realities of selling the film, a romantic comedy with an Arab-American ensemble cast, set […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 22, 2013 -
Push Notifications for the People (and Super Fans): App.net’s Broadcast
If you own a smartphone, chances are you’re familiar with push notifications. Popularized by Apple’s iOS 3.0 edition in 2009, push technology utilizes open IP connections to forward notifications from third-party apps to your mobile interface. Formerly reserved for large-scale corporations — The New York Times, etc. — San Francisco-based App.net has created a free marketing channel called Broadcast that democratizes the process of push notification. App.net CEO Dalton Caldwell likens this application to “your own promotional arsenal” for users who already enjoy an active social media presence. News that may otherwise be buried in the barrage of tweets and […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 21, 2013
