Authors — Scott Macaulay
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APP REVIEW: VIDEO TIME MACHINE
Video Time Machine, free this weekend on the App Store for both iPhone and iPad, is one of the most entertaining apps I’ve played with in a while. Like all good video viewing apps, it’s based around one simple curatorial concept. In the case of VTM that concept is — yep, you guessed it — time. Dial up a year and the app pulls from YouTube videos produced during that year. You can further drill down by category, browsing TV, movies, music, sports, news and advertisements. And, there’s a curatorial element: the videos are “hand-picked” and always seem to strike […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2012 -
REMEMBERING ADAM YAUCH, 1964 – 2012
“Where is Cooky Puss at?!?” I still remember breaking up over that line from “Cooky Puss,” the single from the Beastie Boy’s second EP. A recorded prank phone call to Carvel Ice Cream about their inexplicable dessert treat set to sleazy electro-funk and streaming over my college dorm room speakers via WNYU’s New Afternoon Show, it was my introduction to a group that swiftly went from novelty item to cultural force. “Cooky Puss” may not be the group’s highest moment, but it made me laugh then and it makes me laugh now even as it throws me back in time. […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2012 -
Kickstarter is for People!
A filmmaker asked me, “Do you think I can raise $400,000 on Kickstarter?” I told her that that sounded like a lot. Start-up technology companies using Kickstarter as, essentially, a customer-financed pre-buy platform, are raising in the seven figures. But $400,000 would be on the high-end of a feature film raise. Blue Like Jazz raised about $350,000, and that was based on a New York Times best-seller. Koo did great with Man-Child, scoring about $125,000, but he spent a couple years seeding his campaign by building an audience at No Film School. But as I was talking, I realized the […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2012 -
15 Steps To Take After You Finish Your Script
A Filmmaker reader recently emailed me with a simple question. After going to film school, making some shorts and working conspicuously within his means, he’s now written a script purely from the imagination — not censoring himself by thinking of things like money and production requirements. The resulting project, I take it, is too big for his usual DIY methods. He asked, “What do I do now?” A tough question, not knowing the filmmaker very well and not having read the script. There are easier-said-than-done answers: “Find a producer! Get an agent!” But just sending out a bunch of PDFs, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 2, 2012 -
CISPA, EXPLAINED IN PICTURES
I’ll confess to, after getting all worked up about SOPA and PiPA, not being up to speed on CISPA, the latest internet bill barreling through Congress. So, I found the below graphic, from ParaLegal.Net, pretty helpful. Created by: Paralegal.net
by Scott Macaulay on May 2, 2012 -
Jon Reiss Launches the TOTBO System
Jon Reiss has finally realized that the secret to indie-film tutorial success is having a catchy moniker. So, his DIY distribution-and-marketing book Think Outside the Box Office has now birthed what he is artfully dubbing “the TOTBO System.” If you’re a filmmaker, file this snazzy acronymn along GTB, Zen to Done, or 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. Oh yeah, and you need a YouTube channel too. Reiss has relaunched his under the authoritative title “TheJonReiss.” Each week he’ll be posting excerpts from his workshops, which I recommend to anyone considering releasing his or her own film. Here he is […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2012 -
Five Questions with Jessica Oreck About Her New Kickstarter Project
With her debut documentary, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, Jessica Oreck reinvented the nature doc. Oreck, an entomologist who worked as a docent at the American Museum of Natural History, made a film about an insect that was as much about man’s fascination with that creature as it was the creature itself. To top it off, she made her poetic and allusive picture in Japan, exploring the country’s endemic beetle-mania through evocative cinematography and haunting voiceover. When so many documentary filmmakers make their artistic choices based on the desires of their funders, Oreck chooses the harder path. Her latest film, Aatsinki, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2012 -
ANDREW DOSUNMU TALKS THE BEAUTY OF “RESTLESS CITY”
Andrew Dosunmu’s debut fiction feature, Restless City (currently in release from AFFRM in New York, L.A. and Atlanta), is perhaps the most ravishing film you’ll see on a movie screen right now. An immigrant crime drama set along Canal Street about a Senagalese motorcycle messenger, a local crime boss, and the beautiful woman that comes between them, the film combines the sensitive eye of Dosunmu, a fashion photographer and music video director, with the masterful cinematography of Bradford Young. The result is a film that reimagines our urban landscape in bold, fresh ways. I interviewed Dosunmu for the current issue […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2012 -
DAVID LOWERY, ROONEY MARA SET TO TEAM ON NEW PICTURE
David Lowery, one of Filmmaker’s 2011 “25 New Faces,” is set to direct a new, “contemporary western” that teams him with three others from our annual talent survey. As announced by Deadline, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is set to star Rooney Mara (picked for our 2009 list) and will be produced by a team including Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen (from our 2006 list). Ben Foster and Casey Affleck are also attached; James Johnston, Toby Halbrooks, Amy Kaufman also produce; and the pic is repped by WME Global. Evolution Independent’s Cassian Elwes is putting together the financing. Lowery’s Pioneer […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2012 -
LETHEM TALKS MUMBLECORE AND MORE AT SIFF
I’ve always connected with the work of Jonathan Lethem. I’m a fan of his novels and all, but I especially look at his criticism because his reference points are invariably the same as mine. We’re both big Philip K. Dick fans, he ended a novel (Fortress of Solitude) with an extended celebration of one of my favorite albums (Another Green World), and when he wrote an essay on his formative books and albums as a teenager, our lists were like dopplegangers. He also just wrote a book about Talking Heads Fear of Music, and his Promiscuous Materials project let independent […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2012
