Authors — Scott Macaulay

HOW TO (MAYBE?) MAKE A LIVING AS FILM JOURNALIST

I took note of Anthony Kaufman’s most recent blog post, “How to Survive the Recession?” for a number of reasons. First, Anthony writes our “Industry Beat” column, which is a place every issue where we survey the broader trends affecting this industry. He’s one of the few writers in our independent sphere who equally understands art and business issues, and he knows how to communicate both in concise and clear prose. But Anthony only does four columns a year for us, and if he’s finding the freelance world in general too forbidding at the moment, that’s awfully sad. He writes: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 12, 2009
FREE IS NOT ENOUGH

I’m making my way through Chris Anderson’s Free, which I’d like to finish before posting thoughts on it and the current discussion of free pay models for content creators. (In order to most meaningfully connect with the deep content of the book, I am reading it for free — or, rather, listening to it for free in the downloadable audio book linked to from Anderson’s site.) But Anderson’s colleague at Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, just linked to a great article that’s relevant to filmmakers whether or not you subscribe to all the tenets of Free, so I’m going to link […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 12, 2009
THE VIEW FROM THE 10TH ROW

Interesting article in The Guardian this week about Tied to a Chair filmmakers Michael Bergmann and Doug Underdahl who obtained a Leica Pradovit D-1200, built a tenth-row rig at New Jersey’s Washington Theater and projected their film off their laptop. From the piece: The picture on the ageing silver screen in front of us is unquestionably of theatrical quality. The independent film-makers Michael Bergmann and Doug Underdahl move around, checking from all angles. It is, as Bergmann has warned, different: not film’s luminous grain nor video’s harsh flatness. This digital image is thrown by a high-end Leica business projector powered […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 11, 2009
HELLO HURT LOCKER, GOODBYE, FILMMAKER

Kathryn Bigelow’s incredible new film, The Hurt Locker, which is on the current cover of Filmmaker, is just now rolling out to more theaters. And, next week, Filmmaker‘s issue with Bigelow rolls off of newstands. To help confirm your decision to see this film, the distributor has posted the first nine minutes of the movie, which I’ve embedded below. Check it out and if you want to learn more, pick up the current Filmmaker while its still available and read Nick Dawson’s cover story on the director.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 9, 2009
MUST SEE IN CHICAGO: RAY PRIDE PHOTO EXHIBITIONS

If you are a regular reader of this site and occasionally venture into areas other than this blog, then you will have seen Filmmaker contributor Ray Pride’s gorgeous photographs in our Festival Ambassador section. In addition to his work at Movie City News and Movie City Indie, Ray has been a contributor to Filmmaker for years, and over that time I’ve watched as his photography has gotten stronger and stronger. There’s stunning work in two new shows that are up in Chicago, and Windy City residents are urged to check them out. The first show is titled you want to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 9, 2009
THE DEFILED’S "FIERCELY INDIE" BLOW-BY-BLOW

Filmmaker Julian Grant, who is a tenure-track film professor at Columbia College, Chicago, is making a “fiercely independent” ultra-low-budget, dialogue-less horror film entitled The Defiled, and he’s reporting a very detailed blow-by-blow of its production on his blog. He describes the film as ” a story of love and survival against a horror that is cataclysmic and…entirely possible.” Grant is shooting on the Canon HV20 with a cine-adapter and Nikon 50mm lens. He’s in the middle of week two, so if you’d like to follow from his production, head over there now. You can find footage tests, make-up tests, test […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2009
ERROL MORRIS DISCUSSES ROBERT McNAMARA IN NEW DOC

The National Film Board of Canada has produced a documentary called Capturing Reality: The Art of the Documentary, and the website is incredible, featuring over 160 interview clips. Here’s their description of the doc: Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary is a film about contemporary documentary cinema and features some rock stars of the genre, including Albert Maysles, Errol Morris, Alanis Obomsawin, Michel Brault, Nick Broomfield, Kim Longinotto and Werner Herzog. Thirty-three filmmakers from 14 countries share their passion for documentary and talk about the artistic and ethical choices they make in their craft. Capturing Reality premiered at the International […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2009
LOVELY BY SURPRISE’s NEW KIND OF OPENING DAY

Producer Jake Abraham, well known to Filmmaker readers on account of his long tenure at InDigEnt Films, is a producer of Kirt Gunn’s festival charmer Lovely By Surprise. He’s taking the film out in a DIY-sort of way, and I’m going to spoil the closer of the article he’s just written for us over at Web Exclusives by reprinting it here: Our release date is today, July 7th. It feels different than opening days in the past. No premiere party, no box office reports. The effects of our plan will begin to appear over the next few weeks as we […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2009
PINA BAUSCH, R.I.P.

I missed the news that the astonishing German choreographer Pina Bausch died on June 30. From a lovely appreciation by Mark Swed: She became associated with big spectacles that were part-theater, part-dance battles of the sexes and society played out in extravagant environments. She might litter her stage with zillions of carnations or put her company in pools of water. Her highly sexed world-weary women paraded around in high heels, clothed and nude – just like the men. They beat each other up and the men usually ended up worse for the wear. Everything always looked amazing – costumes, sets, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2009
AN ESSENTIAL ANDREI TARKOVSKY RETRO AT THE WALTER READE

I received an email asking if I’d post something about the upcoming Film Society of Lincoln Center Andrei Tarkovsky retrospective at the Walter Reade. Sure, I wrote back, laughing as I imagined that a retro of the great Russian filmmaker would actually need a press boost, that it wouldn’t be packed from the outset with lines of people around the block hoping for tickets. But then I thought, what if that is not the case? Could it be that the current generation of young moviegoers has yet to fall under the spell of this rigorous and involving master director? Maybe. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2009

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