Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Prefundia Promotes Crowdfunding Preawareness
Pre-awareness — in studio parlance, it usually refers to viewers' recognition of a film property before its release. In today's crowded landscape, it's considered an important factor when greenlighting Hollywood tentpoles, and it's why you see so many remakes, reboots and franchise films. In the indie world, there's pre-awareness too. It can be created by everything from grassroots publicity before a film's release to the ability of successful crowdfunding campaigns to stoke interest in a project. And, if the folks at Prefundia are right, there's crowdfunding pre-awareness — buzz preceding a project's launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo that can help […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2013 -
Five Films Announced for 8th Annual Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Series at MoMA
Filmmaker, Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), and The Museum of Modern Art announce today the five films chosen for the organization’s annual Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You series, running November 15 – 18 in MoMA’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2. They are: Eddie Mullins’ Doomsdays; Kevin Jerome Everson’s The Island of St. Matthews; Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love; Aaron Douglas Johnston’s My Sister’s Quinceanera and Benjamin Greené’s Survival Prayer. As always, Filmmaker editors (myself, Nick Dawson, Brandon Harris, Alicia Van Couvering and Ray Pride), the IFP’s Milton Tabbot and, new this year, MoMA’s Sophie Cavoulacos have […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 7, 2013 -
Recommended Short: Brandon LaGanke’s Playhouse
I’m a fan of Brandon LaGanke’s short film Play House, writing in my print magazine SXSW report, “Play House is an elegantly disturbing suburban horror short in which the defeated apathy of a wife, daughter and son is revealed to be sickeningly explicable.” The short has just gone up on Vimeo where it is a Staff Pick. Check it out above.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors
The premiere of Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors, hosted by Steven Soderbergh and with Phillip Glass’s score performed live by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, was my most singular experience at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. As I wrote in the current issue of Filmmaker: Glass’s haunting soundtrack is among his best, while Reggio’s film is a radical departure from hyperkinetic works like Koyanisquatsi that presaged the visual language of our connected age. Shot in black-and-white and containing less than 60 cuts, the lulling Visitors is mournful yet concerned elegy for a world in which experience has been subsumed by spectatorship. Amusement parks […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2013 -
What’s in the New Fall Edition of Filmmaker (And Why You Should Pick It Up)
Filmmaker‘s Fall issue is now live, arriving on newsstands, in mailboxes and online, both as a digital issue and in Apple’s Newsstand. (The iPad edition can be bought here) and you can subscribe here. I like this issue. It’s got an old-school Filmmaker flavor to it, in a way. By that I mean it’s got an eclectic mix of articles, each with its own voice, covering topics ranging from practical filmmaking concerns to theory. Our Line Items section, consisting of long-form articles, is particularly robust, which I think is appropriate. These days when you buy an individual copy of a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 31, 2013 -
Watch the New The Wolf of Wall Street Trailer
A new trailer for Martin Scorsese’s upcoming The Wolf of Wall Street has just dropped, and it’s very different in tone from the Kanye-scored one that’s been circulating on the interwebs for the last few months. Check it out above.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 29, 2013 -
Welcoming Contributing Web Editor Sarah Salovaara
This week we are happy to welcome Sarah Salovaara to our Filmmaker team as our new Contributing Web Editor. Filmmaker readers will recognize Sarah’s byline as she has contributed previously to the site as a freelancer, but with this new position she’ll be contributing each week on a wide range of topics spanning film production, financing, new media and criticism. Most recently in a series of thoughtful and well-read articles, she spoke with the founder and participants of Dogfish Accelerator, looked past the media circus of Blue is the Warmest Color and spoke with director, actor and No Budge founder […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2013 -
R.I.P., Lou Reed
Lou Reed died today. My condolences to his wife, Laurie Anderson, as well as to everyone who, like me, he meant so much to at so many different stages of our lives. Here are just a few of my favorite Lou Reed songs.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 27, 2013 -
All Clear
“What surprised me more than anything when we got to Sundance,” says John Sloss about Randy Moore’s Escape from Tomorrow, “was this sort of tacit acceptance that this film will never see the light of day. Everyone kept saying, ‘See it here because Disney won’t allow this to be [commercially] released,’ as if Disney by itself has that power. That kind of compliant response awakened something in me.” Sloss, whose Cinetic Media was selling the film, may have been surprised at the industry’s dismall of its commercial prospects at Sundance, but I was not. A confession: After seeing the first […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2013 -
The Happiest Place on Earth
The memories of our childhood are owned, their copyrights controlled by giant multinational corporations. Whereas the fantasy figures of the 20th century hail from centuries-old sources — the Brothers Grimm, Greek and Norse mythology — their contemporary incarnations, found on T-shirts, lunchboxes, mugs, iPhones and in video games, constitute precious intellectual treasure, their value diligently upheld by World Trade Organization rulings. Or, to phrase things a bit differently: If you’re an independent filmmaker, make sure your lead actor isn’t wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt you haven’t cleared! Despite the forces aligned against pop culture-deploying media artists in our mash-up, remix […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2013
