Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Fundraising $100,000 a Year for Online Video: Mike Stoklasa on Patreon
“Red Letter Media is Creating Weird Internet Videos and Films” is the tagline for the Milwaukee-based collective’s page on online fundraising platform Patreon. It’s an appeal that has impressively generated the group almost $100,000 a year in fan donations. Red Letter Media is the home of various creators, including Mike Stoklasa, whose critical vivisections of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels landed him on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2010. Offering reviews of films and video games alongside other content (like a comedic instructional feature film, How Not to Make a Movie), Red Letter monetizes itself through YouTube advertising, DVD […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2014 -
“Do We Need to Be Cured of It?” Considering Web Junkie
Web Junkie, Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia’s startling documentary about internet addiction in China opens today at New York’s Film Forum. At Sundance, where it premiered, it was considered by Brandon Harris, and Danielle Lurie interviewed the directors. Wrote Harris, in a piece that also included discussion of the doc Love Child: In Web Junkie, teenage boys, often having been deceived into going or plainly drugged and captured with their parents’ approval, suffer a military bootcamp-style existence complete with isolation chambers and other forms of moderately cruel discipline, interspersed with moments of counseling from sensitive, largely female psychologists and a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 6, 2014 -
Short Film: Lost Arts, by Peter Mattei
Inspired by Ira Sachs’ Last Address, filmmaker (Love in the Time of Money) and novelist (The Deep Whatsis) Peter Mattei made this short film, Lost Arts, in 2010. Sachs’ film — which he discusses in the current issue of Filmmaker — looks at the final addresses of a generation of New York artists who died of AIDS. With Lost Arts, Mattei has taken Sachs’ formal approach and applied it to the real estate of arthouse cinema. For those who have long lived in New York, see how many of these Duane Reades, health clubs and Apple stores evoke any hint […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 5, 2014 -
Short Film: Intuition, by Danielle Lurie
Filmmaker, 25 New Face and Film Fatales early member Danielle Lurie was in Barcelona recently, and, as she writes, made a short film there on the fly. Connecting with lead actress Montse Muñoz through Facebook, she has made a lovely film about romantic indecision, conflicting signals and the magic of serendipity. Check it out above. Read Lurie on women in today’s filmmaking at Sundance and the Film Fatales collective here at Filmmaker.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2014 -
A Spectacular Collaboration: Roger Deakins and the Coen Brothers
The collaboration between the Coen Brothers and cinematographer Roger Deakins is spotlighted in this Blag Films supercut featuring moments from films such as Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Man Who Wasn’t There, True Grit, and quite a few other simply beautiful-looking films. And if these shots seem astonishingly well composed, well, then that’s due not just to Deakins’ mastery but to the Coens’ penchant for scouting, pre-production and storyboarding everything in advance. The shots in this video, with their precise time of days, frequent use of high angles and careful arrangement of what’s in the frame are clearly […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 3, 2014 -
“If You Selfie I’ll Delete You”: Alessio Fava on Selfie Addiction
Filmmaker Alessio Fava, whose Yuri Esposito was one of the inaugural films at the Venice Biennale College Cinema, has directed this ironic, fantastical social media campaign about… selfie abuse. (I supposed whether that abuse is self-abuse or abuse towards others might depend on the shooter/subject.) This video has gone viral in Fava’s native Italy; check it out above.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 1, 2014 -
Liliana Greenfield-Sanders Talks the Wassaic Project’s 2014 Summer Film Festival
Now in its seventh year, the multidisciplinary Wassaic Project’s Summer Festival — whose 2014 edition opens today — offers an intimate screening experience where independent films by emerging filmmakers mix with art, music, dance and the great outdoors. It’s probably the only festival where films are projected in a Cattle Auction Ring, a fact doubly surprising given the festival’s location just two hours from New York on Metro North’s Harlem Line. The Wassaic Project is a non-profit that has as its mission the creation of “genuine and intimate context for art making and strengthening local community by increasing social and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 1, 2014 -
Abel Ferrara Talks His Venice and Toronto-Bound Pasolini
At 1985, Evan Louison sits down in Rome with Abel Ferrara, learning more about the director’s Pasolini, starring Willem Dafoe as the murdered Italian director. Below Ferrara talks about the film’s relationship to fiction, non-fiction, imagination and the subconscious. Read the complete interview at the link. AF: He was a part of a tradition, a movement — Rosselini, Antonioni, & Bertolucci after that. I’m sure if you’re hard pressed you could call it all the same style. These guys are working with the same DPs, & a lot of the same actors. He wasn’t the only one using guys right […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 30, 2014 -
Celebrating 4K: The Art of Amazing 4K Film Competition
4K — a spec, or perhaps an aesthetic? Plenty of us are shooting in older, lower-resolution cameras, but others are buying new units that offer double — or more — the resolution we shot just a few years ago. Our images are finer, more detailed… but how else are they different? Sharp, along with RED and THX, are for the second year presenting “The Art of Amazing 4K Film Competition,” a short competition exploring the aesthetics of 4K cinematography. From the contest’s site: We are seeking short 4K films (10 minute maximum) that capture the full potential of an amazing […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 29, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Mad Max: Fury Road
As someone old enough to remember the visceral theater experience of Road Warrior as well as the kitschy letdown of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, count me intrigued and hopeful after this first trailer for George Miller’s franchise reboot, Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s plenty that’s familiar from the series here, but replacing the dusty grain of the original films are DI-enhanced oranges and blues that give some of these shots a near-abstract quality. Still, when it comes to effects, Miller told the L.A. Times that he’s gone for the practical approach: Well, we made a big, big point to go […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 27, 2014
