Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Panos Cosmatos
When Panos Cosmatos was growing up on Vancouver Island, his parents wouldn’t let him watch scary movies. He’d go to his local video store and, he says, “spend hours looking at the box covers of the horror and science fiction films, just imagining my own versions of them.” One of the first R-rated films he was able to see was Alien. “My parents were watching it in the living room,” he explains, “and I was supposed to be in bed. But I snuck into this other room where I could see the film reflected on a framed print that was […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
Everynone
If you listen to the radio, then you may have seen the short documentary essay films of the New York collaborative, Everynone. For the last two years, the three filmmakers — Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadante and Julius Metoyer III — have been creating witty and allusive short films to accompany the popular WNYC radio program Radiolab, heard on more than 300 public radio stations around the country. Radiolab explores science and philosophy in the guise of radio theater, mixing music and sound effects into presentations that thrillingly veer from the pedagogical to the personal. And if you listen to Radiolab […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
Yance Ford
Yance Ford was a sophomore at Hamilton College 19 years ago when her brother was murdered. “My brother’s death picked up my life and put it down somewhere else,” Ford says. “I had an image of myself in my mind as a working artist, and when he died, all of that changed.” By her senior year, Ford, who made images as a photographer, decided she wanted to make a film about her brother’s death. She moved back to her hometown New York, worked as a p.a. and took a Third World Newsreel production workshop. Then in 2002 she became series […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
David Lowery
In the middle of writing the follow up to his 2009 feature, St. Nick, David Lowery was stuck. “I reached a point in the script where it became very difficult,” Lowery remembers. “I was trying to make it an action movie, but I wasn’t sure why I wanted to make the story. So I did what I always do when I’m fed up, which is go for a run.” While jogging, Lowery plucked the seed of a scene from his script — a father talking to his daughter one night — and spun it out into something a little different: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
Andrew S Allen & Jason Sondhi
By the time Andrew S Allen and Jason Sondhi posted their latest short, The Thomas Beale Cipher, on the Internet, they had it all figured out. “There’s a myth about online video that you can just put it up and the masses will discover it, that it’s a meritocracy,” Allen says. “But that doesn’t always happen. There are great films online that only have 200 views.” Allen wrote and directed the animated film, Sondhi produced, and they both knew to do things like post it on multiple platforms at once and to immediately mobilize a community of video bloggers to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
Dean Fleischer-Camp & Jenny Slate
Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate came up with the idea for their utterly charming and unexpectedly poignant lo-fi animation, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, while at a friend’s wedding. Slate remembers, “We were in a hotel sleeping six to a room because most of us were really broke, and I was beginning to feel really small. I had been doing this little voice over the weekend, so I started talking like Marcel: [in a squeaky, slightly forlorn voice] ‘I’m just feeling really squished here.’” “We were both feeling unfulfilled in our jobs,” Fleischer-Camp adds. “We were coming from a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
Alma Har’el
L.A.-based Alma Har’el was making a Beirut music video with the band’s Zach Condon at the Coachella festival when she decided to find a less distracting location. A friend told her about Bombay Beach, the spare, sun-blasted community in California’s Salton Sea, so she hopped in a car with a $600 Canon Vixia camera and shot footage that made it into the video. Rather than return to L.A., she stayed by herself in the economically-distressed, end-of-the-world-seeming town, using her DV camera to go a level deeper into not only the lives but the imaginations of the people she met there. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
Joe Nicolosi
Most short filmmakers have a hard time getting people to watch their work. Joe Nicolosi has had the opposite problem. His filmmaking career recently took off because of the playfully inventive and technically accomplished bumpers he wrote and directed for the SXSW Film Festival. Because they play in front of every film, his shorts were guaranteed audiences as they screened again… and again… and again. “There is a certain responsibility in making something that people will watch as many as 30 times,” Nicolosi admits. “So I try to cram these pieces full of details so there will always be new […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2011 -
Miranda July @IFC Center and On the Beach
“Some people look more like themselves with the photo filters on,” wrote one person on my Instagram. Snapped last night in back of the IFC Center, where I moderated Miranda July’s talk on the early short films of Jane Campion. And, at this link, July dancing on the beach in front of Sam Taylor-Wood’s camera. (Unfortunately, this New York Times video is not embeddable.) It’s a funny clip when you see the photo of Miranda on the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. July’s new feature, The Future, opens in two weeks at the IFC Center, and it […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2011 -
JASON BYRNE COVERS SOUTHERN SUDAN INDEPENDENCE
A 2010 25 New Face, filmmaker Jason Byrne has been based in Tanzania, where he’s an Audio-Visual Archivist for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He recently sent an email to his list about a new project, and, with permission, I’m reposting it here. Over the weekend, I was in Southern Sudan to witness the country’s independence. I made a film within the celebration, which included two actors. One actor plays the “North” and one actor plays the “South.” The history of the two countries will be captured through the telling of the characters experiences. Here are some images […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2011
