Authors — Scott Macaulay

NEILL BLOMKAMP ON LIFE OUTSIDE OUR UNIVERSE

Here’s District 9 director Neil Blomkamp’s TED Talk in which he discusses life on other planets and the fate of our human civilization.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 3, 2010
Paul Devlin on the Afterlife of Blast!

‘Theatrical Launch,” Paul Devlin’s account of self-distributing his documentary Blast!, ends with his post-mortem on that release, a self-examination that takes into account not only box office but the press and further bookings the film received. I asked Devlin if he could update us on what’s happened since the article, specifically how he approached the educational market. (He had received offers from non-theatrical distributors.) Here is his response. And, if you haven’t read the article, you can pick it up on the stands or receive it immediately as a PDF when you subscribe to Filmmaker. We turned down the distribution […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2010
A VENTURE CAPITALIST TALKS MEDIA AND MOBILE START-UPS

Fred Wilson runs the blog A VC. NYC 3.0 is a blog about tech start-ups in New York. The latter interviewed the former in this video, which works its a way towards Wilson’s recommendations about pitching new media and the mistakes people make. Fred Wilson talks trends, advice for startups from Vadim Lavrusik on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2010
COLLEAGUES REMEMBER EDITOR KAREN SCHMEER

I didn’t know documentary film editor Karen Schmeer, but I certainly knew her work. Her first credited feature, Errol Morris’s Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, is one of my all-time favorite documentaries and a Filmmaker magazine cover story. Brilliantly constructed, it weaves portraits of four oddball individualists and dreamers into a single meditative essay on creativity, self-worth and man’s desire for legacy. The film would be an incredible feat for even the most seasoned of editors; that she cut it early in her career is astounding to me. She also edited The Fog of War and Mr. Death (again, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2010
WHY YOU SHOULD BUY OUR PRINT ISSUE

An apology for this brief plug, but now that Sundance is over I wanted to write this short blog post on the difference between Filmmaker in print and Filmmaker online. As most of you know from reading this site, we make about 50% of each issue available online. (We also put up a lot of stuff — this blog, the Director Interviews, our Videos, our Web Exclusives — which is not in the magazine.) Here’s a breakdown of articles in the current issue that aren’t available online: 1. The longest article we’ve ever published — almost 10,000 words — is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2010
“THE RED CHAPEL”‘S MADS BRUGGER | By Alicia Van Couvering

When Danish Zentropa director Mads Brugger decided to take himself and two Korean-Danish comedians to North Korea under the guise of a fake comedy project, he employed what he thought might be the magic word for repressive regimes seeking international image burnishing: “cultural exchange.” The film opens with a shot of Brugger, lying on a hotel bed, calmly reading Kim Jong-Il’s official Instruction Manual for Film Directing. The secret police who watched this footage every night apparently had no objection. What they somehow did not expect or anticipate was that Brugger would one day turn this footage into a feature […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2010
PRODUCER RON SIMONS ON FINALLY GETTING TO SEE FILMS AT SUNDANCE

This is the fifth of our posts from guest blogger Ron Simons, who produced Tanya Hamilton’s Sundance Competition film Night Catches Us. Scroll back through the blog for his earlier entries. I’ve finally transitioned into the cooler, calmer phase of the festival. The weather is warmer and the snow is starting to melt (including the gargantuan stalactites hanging from the roof edges of about town). No more press interviews in backrooms of galleries, TV studios or revamped office spaces. Gone are the paparazzi blocking traffic to get the best shot of Ben Affleck, Ryan Gosling or Paris Hilton. Exit the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2010
HITLER RESPONDS TO THE iPAD

The extension of the Downfall meme to the iPad was inevitable, but, still, nearly a million views in two days?
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2010
HOW THE iPAD WILL AFFECT FILMMAKERS

I posted a vaguely impressed impression of the iPad yesterday just after the Apple press conference was over. Of course, 24 hours later, I’m thinking about the details, good and bad. The big downer is Apple’s reintroduction of the 4:3 format (1024×768). That means that watching a 16:9 movie on your iPad will give you big black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Obviously, Apple had to make a choice regarding screen dimensions and they went with one that trades off in film and TV what it will gain with other forms of content. Nonetheless, it’s not […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 28, 2010
“DADDY LONGLEGS”‘ JOSH AND BENNY SAFDIE | By Scott Macaulay

When I was asked by The Huffington Post to comment on New York movies premiering in Sundance, the first film that popped into my mind was Josh and Bennie Safdie’s Daddy Longlegs. Now, as you may know, I’m a big fan of the Safdie brothers, selecting Josh for our 25 New Faces for the film he directed, The Pleasure of Being Robbed in 2008. That picture is a delightfully freewheeling romance of sorts involving a young woman, played with depth and originality by Eleonore Hendricks, who casually steals, not out of maliciousness or for greed but simply because of a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 28, 2010

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