Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Lena Olin-Starring A Critically Endangered Species Wraps Production
Oscar and Golden Globe-nominee Lena Olin (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Enemies, A Love Story) has wrapped production of A Critically Endangered Species, an independent drama directed by award-winning poet T. Zachary Cotler and novelist/producer Magdalena Zyzak. The film was produced by Mike Ryan of Greyshack Films and Morgan Jon Fox, a director and producer who placed in the 2009 edition of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces. Olin stars as a famous novelist who, after deciding to commit suicide, calls on young male writers to submit their work to her so that she can name one her literary executor. Starring alongside […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2015 -
IFP Announces 10 Web Series Projects for Inaugural Screen Forward Labs
IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced today ten projects for its inaugural Screen Forward Labs, which are dedicated to serialized, story-driven web content. Encompassing a series of intensive workshops modeled after the organization’s Narrative and Documentary Labs, the Screen Forward Labs provide mentorship and year-round support for those looking to develop, market and finance their original online work. The Screen Forward Labs are led by Amy Dotson, IFP Head of Programming, and Holly Kang, IFP Screen Forward Labs Producer. Commented Joana Vicente, Executive Director of IFP and the Made in New York Media Center, “We are excited to introduce the first […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 9, 2015 -
Look Into the Cut: Jessica Brillhart on Editing VR
From classical Hollywood continuity editing to Eisensteinian montage, from the quick jump cuts of the French New Wave to the even more accelerated and spatially destabilized editing of the Hollywood blockbuster, filmmakers from the dawn of cinema have had to embrace, even if only on a subconscious level, some theory of editing. What, then, of today’s nascent medium of Virtual Reality (VR)? Some are calling VR the next phase of cinema, but many VR works are more akin to video games, where cuts are hidden within approaching horizon lines. Or where, inelegantly, an edit is simply a transition from one […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2015 -
Editor’s Letter
It’s fall, and time for new things, so let’s get right into it. I like this issue. I know, I like every issue, but this issue has an especially good vibe to it. We’ll see what you think. In some ways it’s classic Filmmaker, and, as we do every fall, there’s a special focus on postproduction. But there are new contributors throughout, and we’ve shaken up the way we’ve covered certain topics. For example, in the fall we usually do some sort of NLE roundup, cataloguing the new features in the workstation space. But — the perils of publishing a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2015 -
Parting Shot: Chantal Akerman
In early October, the film world lost a great, challenging voice when director Chantal Akerman passed away at 65. Forty years earlier the young Belgian had altered the course of film history with her second feature, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, a three-hour, 20-minute portrait of a middle-aged, widowed mother and sometime prostitute. Dielman’s daily chores are captured with a fixed camera in near real time, offering both a historical critique of domestic routine — “women’s work” — as well as the representational strategies of mainstream cinema. But Jeanne Dielman was only one of Akerman’s remarkable films. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2015 -
Come to the Sound of My Voice: Laurie Anderson Talks Heart of a Dog
I remember when you started hearing that voice everywhere. Melodious, precisely phrased yet awkward in its pauses, the electronic approximation of the human voice, whether sampled, altered, or pitch-shifted, and triggered by the pound sign, or, now, simply a “Hey, Siri,” has lured human dialogue into an uncanny valley of meaning since the 1970s. And, after Kraftwerk, certainly, but long before AutoTune, 808s & Heartbreak and the Gregory Brothers there was Laurie Anderson, whose vocoderized voice forced us to try and make sense of it all. Anderson, a performance artist and composer whose early work included a piece where she played […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2015 -
Scoped Out
When filmmaker Laura Poitras joined journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill to form the online news site The Intercept, it didn’t seem a certainty that she’d bring film to the site’s reporting on domestic spying, national security and foreign policy issues. After all, even before her Academy Award for documentary CITIZENFOUR, Poitras had shared a Pulitzer Prize and George Polk award for print reporting on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden appearing in The Guardian and The Washington Post. And, after the awards, Poitras continued covering these stories in print and online — not just for The Intercept, a site owned by […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2015 -
A Real-World Look at Magic Leap’s Augmented Reality
With backing from Google, Andreessen Horowitz, Qualcom and movie studio Legendary Entertainment — and an on-staff Chief Futurist in the form of science-fiction author Neal Stephenson — the somewhat mysterious Magic Leap is one of the most fascinating tech start-ups around. For the vision — not virtual reality but augmented reality — the company is going for, check out their startling home-page. For the current reality, check out the video above, which is a real-world demo of some galaxy clusters hovering over an ordinary workspace. For an explanation of why this simple video is more impressive than the rigged concept […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 26, 2015 -
Diary of a Teenage Girl, Carol, Spotlight Top 25th Annual IFP Gotham Award Nominations
For its 25th anniversary year, the IFP Gotham Independent Film Awards served up an eclectic mix of nominees from films all over the budgetary and aesthetic map. The best picture nominees include two films budgeted well under $1 million — with one of them shot on an iPhone — and are split between titles consisting of star-driven casts and casts comprised of total newcomers. The Best Feature nominees announced today are Todd Haynes’s Carol; Marielle Heller’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What; Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight; and Sean Baker’s Tangerine. Heller’s film, in addition, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 22, 2015 -
Short Film: Dustin Guy Defa’s Review
Any filmmaker who has been around the block knows something about reactions to films — when you’re first praised for the cinematography, something has gone wrong. And when a critic spends more time on plot description than on analysis or commentary, well, then, he or she is just aiming to hit their word count. I thought of these two truisms while watching Review, the latest short from Filmmaker 25 New Face Dustin Guy Defa. Watch it above.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2015
