Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Paper Co-Creator Andrew Allen about his Award-Winning iPad App of the Year
Back in April I published this interview with Andrew Allen, filmmaker and developer with the software company 53, about his newly launched Paper app. This week the app was named by Apple as its #1 app of the year for iPad. Our original conversation about Paper’s development, and Allen’s journey from filmmaker to developer, is detailed below. — SM Andrew Allen, one of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces of 2011,” had a big premiere this month, but it’s not a film. Allen is part of FiftyThree, the company behind Paper, an iPad drawing app that made Apple’s App Store “App of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 15, 2012 -
Where Are the New Independent Film Superstars?
I was reading this interview in Vice about the Blu-ray reissue of Richard Kern’s short films from the ‘80s, and the names came flooding back to me. “Back in the day, Richard, along with buddies like Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Lung Leg, Sonic Youth, and Henry Rollins, made some of the most bloody, sexually deviant, and generally fucked up short films ever,” writes Christian Storm in his intro. Lung Leg – I haven’t heard that name in a while. She was on the cover of Sonic Youth’s album Sister. I wonder what she’s up to. Lydia, of course, is still […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 14, 2012 -
25 New Face Rosario Garcia-Montero Goes for the Oscar with The Bad Intentions
When we put assemble our 25 New Faces list each year, we like to play the long game. We’re not looking for people who are going to break in just a few months at Sundance, although some inevitably do. For the most part, we’re trying to be ahead of the curve — sometimes extremely ahead of the curve. We want to find people who aren’t on all the tracking lists yet so we can claim our bragging rights years later. One of the long calls we made was on Rosario-Garcia Montero, selected for our list in 2004 on the basis […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 12, 2012 -
Sheldon Candis explores The Subculture of Real Life Superheroes
We’ve seen the RLSH phenomenon explored in dramatic films like Kick-Ass and Super, but now Filmmaker 25 New Face director Sheldon Candis looks at it in the form of a documentary short. Here, executive produced by Ashton Kutcher for Thrash Lab’s Subculture Club series and based on San Diego’s XTreme Justice League, is The Subculture of Real Life Superheroes. From the press release: “Superheroes are for both children and adults. With so many varying characters there is at least one superhero everyone can take a liking to. We heard about these guys that live their lives playing the role of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 12, 2012 -
Can Independent Film Be an Addiction?
Addiction. It’s a bad thing, right? Except that a lot of businesses are based around it. I’m not just talking about the illegal business of selling narcotics, but about other things. Junk food is certainly an addiction, but so are things like video games. In our Fall, 2011 issue, Game Engine columnist Heather Chaplin wrote that understanding addiction — the system of challenges, rewards and dopamaine delivery — is key to any successful game designer. She quoted Dr. Bennett Fody, fellow and deputy director of The Institute of Science and Ethics at Oxford University, who said, “The design of video […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 12, 2012 -
Cinema Eye Announces Nominees for the 2013 Heterodox Award, Launches Voting for Audience Choice Prize
Nominees for the Heterodox Award, the Filmmaker-sponsored Cinema Eye award given to a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates non-fiction strategies and aesthetics, were announced today by Cinema Eye Honors. The five nominated films are: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire), Craig Zobel’s Compliance, Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours, Pablo Larraín’s No, and Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Said Scott Macaulay, Editor of Filmmaker Magazine, “In the third year of the Heterodox Award, our nominated filmmakers explore the interstices of documentary and fiction in fascinating and diverse ways, from situating their characters within the confines of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 11, 2012 -
Jessica Oreck and Murmur Launch Interactive Documentary, The Aatsinki Season
When we last checked in with 25 New Face filmmaker Jessica Oreck, she was attending the POV Hackathon, a two-day event at which the documentary television series paired filmmakers with web developers. There Oreck met Mike Knowlton and Hal Siegel of the hybrid studio/technology company Murmur, and in just over three months the team has created The Aatsinki Season, an online counterpart to Oreck’s forthcoming feature documentary, Aatsinki: The Story Of Arctic Cowboys. Launching today, the work is both hypnotic and thoughtful, comprising text, film and flow charts, and allowing the viewer to initiate debate over the ecological issues facing […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 11, 2012 -
Coffee and Celluloid Looks at the Panasonic GH3
At his excellent filmmaking blog Coffee and Celluloid, Joey Daoud posted this short video review of the just-released Panasonic GH3. From the sounds of it, this seems like a great next version of the camera, with better controls, sturdier construction, Quicktime recording instead of just AVCHD, and a better bit rate. You can read Daoud’s quick thoughts on the camera here and watch the video above.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2012 -
Cary Fukunaga Explores Relationships and Landscapes in Kenya
Filmmaker Cary Fukunaga recently traveled to Kenya to shoot what is described as “a trailer with no feature attached” for the fashion brand, Maiyet. Nowness has run an excerpt, and describes the project here. Against the arresting backdrop of the East African bush, Haley Bennett portrays a young woman at a crossroads in life in this daring film by the critically acclaimed director Cary Fukunaga, commissioned by the distinguished fashion brand Maiyet. “We showed up in Africa with a one-line idea of what we were trying to do,” says the young auteur, whose cast and crew spent three days in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2012 -
“Blacklists,” Caveh Zahedi and Thom Powers
As one of the three journalists contacted by documentary film programmer Thom Powers last Spring about Caveh Zahedi’s The Sheik and I, I wanted to weigh in on the controversy that erupted this week following Zahedi’s accusation that Powers has “blacklisted” his picture, which opens today from Factory 25. After watching Zahedi’s YouTube video and then reading Powers’ response, I decided to talk to both men to explore the situation in more detail. Then, in the midst of writing this, I noticed Eric Kohn’s post at Indiewire this morning, which exhaustively discusses the film, the timeline of Powers and Zahedi’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2012
