Authors — Scott Macaulay

WELCOMING ST. NICK

Filmmaker David Lowery keeps one of the most literate film blogs out there, Drifting: A Director’s Log, and one topic that has popped up from time to time is his feature film, St. Nick. The film will be premiering at SXSW next month, and now Lowery has posted the first trailer. Check it out. ST. NICK trailer from ST NICK on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2009
SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING INITIATIVE DEADLINE THIS WEEK

Emerging U.S. producers have until Friday to put together their application for the Sundance Creative Producing Initiative, perhaps the only non film-school program of its kind. It is described on the web page like this: SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING INITIATIVE The Sundance Creative Producing Initiative is a year-long creative and strategic fellowship program for emerging American producers with their next project. The program was conceived to develop and support the next generation of American independent producers. For over 27 years, the Sundance Institute has offered in-depth year-round programs for feature screenwriters and directors. In an increasingly competitive and complex marketplace, the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2009
KIM’S VIDEO, DUBBED

Sophia Hollander in the New York Times has written an excellent recounting of the last days of East Village video institution Kim’s Video and its move to Salemi, Italy. I was having dinner the other night with a director from abroad and one of the first things he asked me was what happened to Kim’s. I just emailed him the piece, which details the blows Mr. Kim’s underground video store suffered from Netflix. Over the years, Mr. Kim, now in his late 40s, built a staff that traveled the world scouring for additional titles — the only way to find […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2009
A PRIMER ON COLOR CORRECTION

At his Prep Shoot Post blog, filmmaker Eric Escobar links to a free primer he’s created on desktop color correction. If you’ve read the new Filmmaker, you’ll remember that director Barry Jenkins and d.p. James Laxton created Medicine for Melancholy‘s distinctive, desaturated but with splashes of color look by timing the film themselves using Apple’s Color on Final Cut. Escobar’s video tutorial was created for Red Giant Software’s Colorista as used in Final Cut Pro, but, as he notes, the basic theories apply to all the primary color correction tools out there for desktop systems.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2009
FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND FOR ARTHOUSE CINEMA

Related to the post below, Mike Ryan posts over at Truly Free Film that instead of spending so much time thinking about the future of movies on handheld devices we should be more concerned about making sure that the values of classic arthouse cinema are not allowed to wither and die. An excerpt: For me one of the scariest aspects about the future state of indie film is not the problems connected to distribution (though they are formidable and problematic for other reasons) but instead I am most worried about the future DEMAND for the auteur driven films that I […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2009
ARTS FUNDING, FILM BREAKS STRIPPED FROM SENATE STIMULUS BILL

Stripped from the version of the economic stimulus bill being sent to the Senate for vote are two provisions that affect the film community. First, a bill offering a tax break for film production that appeared in the House version was cut, and, second, increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts was eliminated. Jim Puzzanghera reports in the Los Angeles Times, explaining that the film provision consisted of a bonus depreciation tax break allowing investors to take an immediate 50% write-off on projects begun in 2009. (Here I need the help of some of our regular tax-break-savvy readers […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2009
NEW YORK FILM TAX CREDIT ON HOLD

From Crain’s New York Business comes this disquieting news about the New York State refundable tax credit for film production that has been integral to the health of our business here. It’s titled “Television Production Stalls Out in New York,” and its subhead says it all: “The state’s tax credit for filming in the Big Apple has become a victim of its own success; the state is out of money and a lack of pilots is threatening jobs.” From the middle of the piece, this salient passage: Studio and local production executives began to worry several months ago about the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2009
THE ORPHANAGE SHUTS DOWN

Slash Film passes on the sad news today that The Orphanage, the San Francisco-based special effects house that worked on such films as Iron Man and Superman Returns but was also known to indies for their so-called “Magic Bullet” tape-to-film process back in the early days of digital cinema, has closed its doors, an apparent victim of the economic downturn. Co-founder Stu Maschwitz is also the author of the excellent Pro Lost blog, which I’ve linked to here before. From his most recent post: Today I had the heart-wrenching task of joining my co-founders Scott Stewart and Jonathan Rothbart in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2009
LUX INTERIOR, R.I.P.

1946 – 2009.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2009
TICK, TICK, TICK… NOT

Commercial mortgages, CDOs, the derivatives market — there are a lot of ticking time bombs present in American society right now. Something that is not, however, such an impending explosive is the type of scenario regularly featured on shows like 24 — interrogations that promote torture as a tool to keep America safe. Don’t believe me? Then check out this video by a group of army interrogators who preach the message that “Jack Bauer is a great fantasy hero… and [the real world] doesn’t work that way.” In addition to the interrogators, the video includes comments from the producers of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 3, 2009

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