Authors — Scott Macaulay
-
TRAILER WATCH: “REDLEGS”
Over the last year Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris has been making his first feature, Redlegs, and it receives a sneak preview next Thursday at Brooklyn’s reRun, sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council. It then opens for a week on May 25 at that same venue. Check out the trailer below. (There’s also a Tumblr blog, where Harris is promising “goofy, poignant and otherwise unmissable stuff.”)
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2012 -
FROM AN ABANDONED FARM TO THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Critic and cultural forager Nick Rombes is making an artistic practice of unexpected connections, chance encounters and disrupting the temporal logics of cinematic narrative. Filmmaker readers know him well for his on-going The Blue Velvet Project, but he has other ventures, including recently, the “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” series. “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” was birthed when, while on a long, late-night drive, Rombes pulled over to the side of the road and decided to explore an abandoned barn nearby. There, he found a box containing film strips cut in 12-frame segments with the written directive, “Do Not Screen.” And then… (from Peggy […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2012 -
“NICKSTARTER” — MONEY FOR A GUY CALLED NICK
Very funny Kickstarter parody because, after all, life is a project too. (By the way, Filmmaker has a curated Kickstarter page, and I just added some new projects.)
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2012 -
Made in New York Program Expands Marketing Credit
New York City’s “Made in New York” marketing credit, which offers NY-shot movies and television productions free, co-branded citwide advertising, is expanding. Now offered to these productions are additional bus shelters, subway advertising and TV spots. Participating projects are eligible to receive the following packages (and, as noted, must pay a very small percentage of their production budget to a New York charity): A production with a below-the-line budget between $5-$10 million: 40 Bus Shelters (4 week run) 500 Subway boards (4 week run) 13,000 taxi cabs (2 week run) City covers cost of producing the creative elements production donates […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2012 -
VOTE ONLINE FOR THE 2012 VIMEO AWARDS
We’re entering the final week of voting for the 2012 Vimeo Awards. Over at the Vimeo site are 12 videos each in categories ranging from Narrative to Documentary, Romance to Experimental, Lyrical to Captured. Voting is open until April 30, and you can vote once a day per category. “Each category will be evaluated by a mix of industry experts in that category and the category winner from the 2010 Awards, taking into account the community vote,” Vimeo says, so that means your vote will be mixed in with the opinions of judges like Philip Bloom, Lucy Walker, Ted Hope, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2012 -
FILMMAKER BEATS IRS, PROVES DOCUMENTARY FILM IS NOT A HOBBY
Independent documentary filmmaker Lee Storey has won her long battle with the Internal Revenue Service over deductions related to her film, Smile ’til it Hurts: The Up with People Story. The IRS’s case against Storey panicked the documentary community as it was poised to declare documentary filmmaking itself “a hobby” and not a professional, profit-seeking endeavor eligible for tax deductions. However, the same judge, Tax Court Judge Diane L. Kroupa, who said during a hearing, “By its very nature, a documentary to me means that it’s not for profit. You’re doing it to educate. You’re doing it to expose,” has […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2012 -
TRIBECA TRAILER: “THE FOURTH DIMENSION”
Here’s the trailer for The Fourth Dimension, the collaborative film by Harmony Korine, Alexey Fedorchenko and Jan Kwiecinski. (All trailers should be scored using Songify.) From the press release The Fourth Dimension stars U.S. actor Val Kilmer and is the first film to come from Golsch Film Words and VICE, and brings together a trilogy of directors from across the globe: Harmony Korine from the U.S., Russia’s Alexey Fedorchenko and Polish-born Jan Kwiecinski. Find out more at GrolschFilmWorks.com.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2012 -
25 FILMS I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO AT THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
At last year’s Tribeca Film Festival I discovered two of my favorite films of the year, Alma Har’el’s Bombay Beach and Panos Cosmatos’s Beyond the Black Rainbow. I’m hoping for at least as good a track record this year, and in surveying the schedule I see more than enough potential candidates. Assuming I can successfully surmount my usual Tribeca challenge — getting into a film-festival headspace while working at home in New York — here are 25 films I’m interested in checking out. As befitting the mission of this magazine, there’s a heavy American independent focus, and I’ve also avoided […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2012 -
YOUTUBE ALLOWS DIRECT KICKSTARTER, INDIEGOGO LINKING
Big news for crowdfunders — Google announced today that YouTube videos can now be directly linked to projects on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. (Actually, in Google speak, that’s “Using annotations to help fund your creative projects.”) Given the expansive reach of the user-generated video giant, this means that many more eyeballs will land on projects seeking coin on these platforms. From Google’s announcement: Over the past year, crowdsourced fundraising has exploded as great way to raise money for creative projects. We’ve seen lots of you using platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to fund projects, and we want to make it easier […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2012 -
SXSW Film Festival
Among the many things SXSW is known for — barbecue, the Alamo Drafthouse and long lines, for example — one is breakout apps. Twitter and Foursquare both got enormous boosts from launches or promotions during previous editions of SXSW Interactive. Last year, the buzzword at the tech fest was contextual search and, indeed, you’re seeing that functionality being built into products this year from Apple, Google and others. In 2012, the buzzed-about app heading into the fest was Highlight, a sort of social version of Foursquare. Installed on your phone, it alerts you to other Highlight users nearby. “You can […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2012
