Authors — Scott Macaulay
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What Richard Stanley Learned from the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Along with Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time, a book — an essay comprised of diary excerpts, actually — I recommend to all aspiring directors is Richard Stanley’s “I Wake Up Screaming.” It originally appeared in the 1994 third edition of the film anthology Projections, and it’s now published (with permission, the site claims) at the director’s unofficial website, Between Death and the Devil. “I Wake Up Screaming” documents Stanley’s attempt to make an ambitious Namibia-shot art horror-thriller called Dust Devil years after an earlier production fell apart. The movie Stanley went on to make instead, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 3, 2014 -
Why Your Film Needs a Good Gaffer: Watch How Lighting Changes a Face
Here’s a hypnotic video showing the importance of film lighting. Watch as this woman — yes, this is just one woman — finds her features altered as the lighting shifts around her. The plans of her face move, the vibe she projects alters, and the genre of film she’s in morphs from drama to horror to comedy. (Hat tip: Sploid at Gizmodo.) The video, “Sparkles and Wine,” features music from the band Opale and was directed and produced by Nacho Guzman. According to Petapixel, the video was shot “using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR and two lenses (a Canon […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2013 -
Samah Tokmachi Finds Creativity at the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab
Launched in 2011, the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab is an intensive program for artists working “at the convergence of film, art, media, live performance, music and technology.” This Fall, it completed its third Lab, bringing together artists with an impressive variety of mentors from all of these fields. Among the folks traveling to the Sundance Resort was filmmaker Samah Tokmachi (Living in a Global Society) in the role of Creative Observer. Sundance invited him to make a short video, posted above, “in hopes that his reflections would enrich the wider discourse about media innovation and the future of storytelling.” […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2013 -
Will Film Production Tax Incentive Section 181 Die?
Tonight at midnight film investors and producers will be faced with a familiar uncertainty. Section 181, the portion of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 incentivizing U.S.-based film production, is set to expire, and independent filmmakers will lose a powerful tool in their fundraising arsenal. Section 181 encourages film investment by allowing investors to write off the complete cost of a qualified film in the first year. (Normally, this write-off is amortized, occurring in future years as a film demonstrates that it is money-losing. If and when profits then occur, they are treated as ordinary income by investors.) Scheduled […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 31, 2013 -
Filmmaker‘s Top 20 Posts of 2013
This list of 2013 top posts is broken in two — the first contains the top ten posts here at Filmmaker published during this calendar year. The second are the top ten older posts, the ones that keep on bubbling to the top of our Google Analytics. (A true 2013 top ten would be a mixture of these two lists.) So, to close out the year, here is what you read most at our site. 10. 13 Steps to Directing Famous Actors on a Microbudget Film. Director and Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish has two articles on this year’s list. In […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 30, 2013 -
“I Don’t Know Where to Put the Camera”: Martin Scorsese on his Toughest Set-Up
Why is Martin Scorsese a great director? Because he’s always wondering where to put the camera. Here’s a priceless and little-viewed French television clip of Martin Scorsese traveling to the airport to present The King of Comedy in Cannes in which the director talks about his toughest set-up. Warning: it’s not from any of his films. Indeed, the clip, in addition to capturing great ’80s NYC street ambiance, is a good illustration of what makes Scorsese Scorsese. After telling the interviewer about all the decisions a director must make when it comes to framing a shot, he answers her question […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 29, 2013 -
Filmmaker‘s Top 10 Posts of December, 2013
Our top ten posts of 2013 will follow, but, before we get to that, here are Filmmaker‘s top posts of December, 2013. 10. Film vs. Digital: The Canon 5D and 7E. Sarah Salovaara’s post of a video A-B’ing two Canon still cameras as a way of comparing film and digital was next on the list. 9. Christine Vachon in Wroclaw. Another November post is in the #9 slot — a synopsis by Ashley Green of producer Christine Vachon’s talk about the producing business at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. 8. How Many Films Does the Average Low-Budget Filmmaker […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 28, 2013 -
Happy Holidays to All!
Wishing all of our readers a very happy holiday season!
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 25, 2013 -
Fred Armisen Stars in Alix Lambert’s Superhero Comedy Ambiance Man
Ambiance Man is a new comedy web series from MOCAtv created and directed by filmmaker (and sometime Filmmaker contributor) Alix Lambert and starring, as the eponymous superhero, Portlandia‘s Fred Armisen. The concept, Lambert says, hails from her teens, when she imagined a superhero who would sweat the small stuff. She tells MOCA, “Ambiance Man is a series about a super hero who fixes what we really need fixed in our day-to-day lives. While most super heroes are focused on preventing the end of the world, Ambiance Man is focused on transforming the moments that feel like the end of the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 22, 2013 -
Joe Swanberg Names Tiger Tale in Blue Best Film of 2013
Joe Swanberg has posted his Top Ten list over at Esquire, and in the top slot is Frank V. Ross’s deceptively low-key relationship drama Tiger Tale in Blue — nominated by Filmmaker as one our Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You in 2012. In an interview with Ross, Filmmaker‘s Nick Dawson called the film a “beautifully calibrated piece of observational cinema that is emotionally compelling without ever imposing itself upon the viewer.” And here’s Swanberg at Esquire: This is by a director named Frank B. Ross. It was nominated for a Gotham Award last year for Best […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 19, 2013
