Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“This is a Generic Brand Video”: Satire or How-To?
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, writer Kendra Eash published a poem, “This is a Generic Brand Video,” satirizing (or maybe just noticing?) the pleasant, fuzzy, vaguely neoliberal language of brand videos. Language like this: In today’s high speed environment, Stop motion footage of a city at night With cars turning quickly Makes you think about doing things efficiently And time passing. Lest you think we’re a faceless entity, Look at all these attractive people. Here’s some of them talking and laughing And close-ups of hands passing canned goods to each other In a setting that evokes community service. Now, the folks […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Laundry Day
In my “How to Find a Producer” article in our Fall, 2013 edition, I interviewed New Orleans filmmaker Randy Mack about his efforts to develop local producers, a challenge that arose when he embarked on his third feature, Laundry Day. More recently, Mack speculated here on the perfect independent film discovery app. Now there’s a trailer for Laundry Day, posted above. From the film’s website: A fight in a 24-hour bar-laundromat among four New Orleans barflies —a musician, a bartender, a street performer, & a drug dealer — is revisited from each perspective, revealing an intricate web of service industry […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2014 -
Approaching Independent Film Distribution Like Booking a Band
One problem lower-budget independent filmmakers face when figuring out both financing and distribution is a paucity of data. VOD numbers aren’t publicly reported and once you get into non-theatrical distribution, those numbers usually don’t appear in any box-office reporting. As many, including us here at Filmmaker, have said, we need to share our data, whether that’s in public forums or among private collectives. One filmmaker who is doing the former is Paul Osborne over at Hope for Film. In an excellent post, he breaks down the revenue for the small-scale theatrical run for his feature, Favor, and compares it to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Regarding Susan Sontag
Premiering at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival is Regarding Sontag, Nancy Kates’ documentary about one of the 20th century’s most compelling and important critics and public intellectuals. From the website: REGARDING SUSAN SONTAG is an intimate and nuanced investigation into the life of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century. Passionate and gracefully outspoken throughout her career, Susan Sontag became one of the most important literary, political and feminist icons of her generation. The documentary explores Sontag’s life through evocative experimental images, archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 9, 2014 -
Tilda Swinton’s Best Interview Ever
Last fall Jamie Stuart was conducting interviews for his NYFF51. He ran into the publicist handling Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and asked if he could get a sit down with Tilda Swinton. The answer: yes, but time was tight. The result is the following short interview in which Stuart asked Swinton to just… well, you’ll see. At the end, she did indeed say it was her best interview ever. Cage by way of Glazer? Only Lovers Left Alive opens this Friday from Sony Pictures Classics. Camera: Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera, 2.5k RAW, ProRes 422 post conversion Lens: Canon […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 7, 2014 -
R.I.P., Richard Brick, 1945 – 2014
Richard Brick — producer, Columbia University film professor and the first ever Commissioner of New York City’s Office of Film, Television and Broadcasting — died yesterday at his New York home of cancer. A longtime member of the independent film community, Brick began his career in the early 1970s, when he worked in various capacities, including as director and sound recordist, on documentary shorts. He production managed a number of documentaries, television productions and feature films, including Silkwood, Places in the Heart and Sweet and Lowdown. In the ’80s and ’90s he became an active producer, with such producing and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 3, 2014 -
FCC Closed Captioning Rules Threaten to Remove Movie Titles from Digital Storefronts
Beginning today, scores of movies are threatened with removal from digital download and streaming sites, including iTunes, due to new FCC closed captioning regulations. The rules, mandated in a January, 2012 revision of 2010’s Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, require newly acquired movie and other content shown on the internet to be closed captioned if this content was shown on television with closed captioning after September 30, 2012. The rule also affects library titles that are currently or will be shown on television with captions as well as new acquisitions that will be captioned on television in the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 31, 2014 -
Advice for Producers, Crowdfunding, the Wu-Tang Clan, Dirty Old New York and More: Sunday Links
Here are some of the articles I’ve read this week that I recommend for your Sunday afternoon reading. “Whose Brooklyn Is It Anyway?” wonders A.O. Scott at the New York Times as he considers Spike Lee’s recent comments on the borough’s gentrification: Every city is simultaneously a seedbed of novelty and a hothouse of nostalgia, and modern New York presents a daily dialectic of progress and loss. As Colson Whitehead notes in “The Colossus of New York,” you become a New Yorker — or perhaps a true resident of any place, whether you were born there or not — when […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2014 -
Should You Stream Your Festival Premiere on VHX?
Good podcast conversation today at TFI Live with Jason Guerrasio speaking with producer Marilyn Ness (E-TEAM) and Indiegogo’s John T. Trigonis about the nascent trend of live streaming features for crowdfunding backers. They discuss the live stream of Steve James’ Life Itself alongside its Sundance premiere. For $25, 1,900 Indiegogo backers took James and his team up on their offer. Trigonis talks about the effort from the Indiegogo point of view, and Ness discusses why she and her team couldn’t do such a release. The conversation expands to include discussion of the types of films that would and would not […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2014 -
Azazel Jacobs on His New HBO Series with Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells, Doll and Em
Type the words “never hire” into Google and it autocompletes an admonition anyone entering business has certainly heard. Indeed, working with your friends — not in the collaborative way we as filmmakers work together but rather with friends as your employees, having them roll your calls, drive you on errands and maybe even pick up your dry cleaning — is usually a recipe for professional and personal disaster. But while the combination of friendship and the employer/employee relationship can produce profoundly icky moments, that ickiness can also be the stuff of great humor and nuanced drama, as is the case […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2014
