Authors — Scott Macaulay
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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 -
Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia as a Cinematic Candle
I’ve seen it over a dozen times, and Nostalghia‘s late, nine-minute shot of a homesick Russian poet carrying a candle across a pool in an Italian spa in tribute to his mad, suicided friend, still devastates. I always read the scene in Tarkovsky’s penultimate film as the poet’s final ritual, a symbolic act carrying its own final, life-or-death meaning. But the struggle to keep the flame lit while poised between wind and water is obviously a metaphor for life itself, which is how actor Oleg Yankovsky described it in a quote included in the text for a fascinating video based […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 24, 2014 -
A 558-Day Timeline? Maxing out the New Mac Pro and Final Cut Pro X
The folks at FCP.co have detailed a series of tests designed to push their new Mac Pro hardware and Final Cut Pro X software to their breaking point. In one, they layer over 1,000 tracks in 4K. In another, they create a 500,000-pixel wide timeline. And in the final, they create and scroll through a 558-day timeline. Here, from FCP.co, are their conclusions: We pushed FCPX and the Mac Pro to silly limits, of course nobody will make a year long or a 500,000 pixel wide timeline, but it’s good to know the combination will go that far. It seems […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2014 -
Novelist and Screenwriter James Salter Ponders Flight 370
In addition to being a novelist (All That Is) and screenwriter (Downhill Racer, The Appointment), James Salter is also a pilot. Over at The New Yorker he, like the rest of the world, is pondering the fate of Flight 370. In particular, he imagines the moment at which sleeping passengers may away during their overseas flight to realize that something is astray…. But the Malaysian airliner was not lost. It was on course on a long, late-night flight to Beijing. I am identifying now with the passengers. An hour after takeoff, some are already asleep. The plane is flying smoothly […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 19, 2014
