Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Kubrick Sees Red: A Supercut On the Director’s Love of the Color
Blood can’t be any other color, but there are plenty of things — like spacesuits and bathroom walls — that can. In this punchy, to-the-point supercut, Rishi Kaneria draws from 2001, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, Barry Lyndon and other Kubrick films to make a case for the director’s love of the crimson.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 19, 2014 -
Encounter Groups, Ghost Stories and Rapid Prototyping at the Seventh POV Hackathon
“There are a lot of things I like about your project, but the effects on the videos are not one of them.” “How is this different from Second Life?” “Your video — it’s kind of boring.” Participating in a hackathon, like POV’s which wrapped Sunday, Nov. 9, means opening yourself up to blunt feedback. Forty-eight hours of project development and rapid prototyping, POV’s hackathons pair documentary filmmakers with mentors and programmers and task them with extending non-fiction storytelling beyond the cinema (or television) walls. This month’s event — POV’s seventh — concluded with the five selected teams presenting their projects […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 18, 2014 -
“The Lingua Franca of Non-Fiction Filmmaking Should be the Language of Cinema, Not Grant Applications”: Sundance Documentary Film Program Director Tabitha Jackson at DOC NYC
“We have to make artful films,” declared Tabitha Jackson at this morning’s DOC NYC keynote. Her thoughtful and engaging address — accompanied, half-jokingly, by what she dubbed her first attempt at Powerpoint — was filled not with statistics about audience reach or NGO partnerships but instead illustrations drawn from documentaries as well as poetry, visual art and experimental films. Indeed, this Director of the Sundance Documentary Film Program — one of the field’s most important funders — could not have been clearer about the direction she intends to bring to the program when she said, to applause, “The lingua franca […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 17, 2014 -
Up in the Air: Announcing the New York City Drone Film Festival
Within an overly crowded film festival landscape, it takes something special for a new event to stand out. Such is the case with New York’s newest festival, scheduled for February, 2015: the New York City Drone Film Festival. While the FAA’s drone filming rules are still being developed, festival founder and cinematographer Randy Scott Slavin intends to use the event to celebrate robotic aerial filmmaking and to change the public’s perception of drones. He told the New York Post’s Chris Perez, ““These flying robots are amazing and exciting technologies, but because the word drone is so controversial, its constantly being […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2014 -
Short Film: A Tale of Momentum and Inertia
Sometimes enemies can be misperceived as friends… and vice versa. From Portland animation studio HouseSpecial is this short, A Tale of Momentum and Inertia, directed by Kameron Gates showing why the “shoot first, ask questions later” approach isn’t always the best. Gates has previously contributed effects works to such films as Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, King Kong and Hellboy. The short is currently on the festival circuit, but you can watch it above.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2014 -
“It’s No Longer Enough for Artists to Simply Be Artists”: Artel Great on His Audience-Building App, Project Catalyst
There’s a lot of talk in the independent film community about building new audiences through internet technologies but far fewer actual attempts at doing so. One person who has thought deeply about today’s challenges and developed a tool in response is filmmaker Artel Great, whose Project Catalyst attempts to combat “the Hollywood-ification of our thinking” by connecting multicultural audiences to the music and films most relevant to their lives and communities. It is, he writes, “the first application software to distinctively showcase narrative short films, documentaries, and music videos all made by talented indie artists from Black, Latino/a, and Asian […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2014 -
Five Questions with Monsieur Le President Director Victoria Campbell
World premiering tonight at DOC NYC is Monsieur Le President, the sophomore feature documentary from New York-based visual artist and filmmaker Victoria Campbell. In 2010, Campbell and a friend travelled to Haiti to volunteer after that country’s devastating earthquake. There she met Gaston Jean Edy, a voodoo priest, and returned over three years to film a doc that tracks both his efforts to start a local medical clinic as well as her own complicated friendship with her subject. Below, Campbell and I talk about the complications of that relationship, filming in disaster zones and one shared favorite movie. Filmmaker: Tell […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2014 -
Five Questions for Sex and Broadcasting Director Tim K. Smith
The title Sex and Broadcasting may be a grabber, but I doubt any listener of WFMU — and, over the years, there have undoubtedly been millions — needs the hint of salaciousness to tune in to a documentary about the country’s preeminent long-running free form radio station. Indeed, the URL of the film’s website — WFMUtheMovie — might just suffice. In a landscape of Clear Channel-produced corporate playlists, WFMU’s rambunctious, highly personal and often deeply weird deejays continue to offer not just a palette for the ears but an inspiring and enduring vision of independent media. Longtime documentary editor Tim […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2014 -
Finding Inspiration and Motivation from Within: Kickstarter Sci-Fi Shakespeare Project, Ambition’s Debt
Writer/director Devin E. Haqq is currently on Kickstarter raising funds for his ambitious indie Shakespeare adaptation, Ambition’s Debt. Read his essay below on deciding to crowdfund, and consider supporting his project. Night after night, I lose sleep, wracking my brain over this mad dash to reach an unbelievable goal on Kickstarter. With everything involved in this crowdfunding campaign for my feature project, Ambition’s Debt, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, I find myself asking the same question; “What the hell was I thinking?” People say it’s a full-time job and it’s so intense, but you can never really know […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 8, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Vanessa McDonnell’s John’s of 12th Street
Conversation, heaping plates and lots of red sauce — all should be found in Vanessa McDonnell’s documentary on the people behind East Village Italian landmark John’s. The film opens next Wednesday, November 12, at Brooklyn’s Spectacle for five screenings. Here’s the description: JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET is a portrait of a century-old Italian-American restaurant in New York City, one of the last of its kind in a rapidly changing East Village. This observational documentary loosely follows the rhythm of the restaurant’s day, which swings between boredom and frenzy as the old rooms empty and fill. No one who works at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 7, 2014
