Authors — Scott Macaulay

SUNDANCE MOOD RING By Alicia Van Couvering

What’s the mood heading into the 25th Sundance Film Festival? Overall, the sense of a across the board scaling back is palpable. Almost no one will talk about their own company’s downsizing publicly, for fear of appearing financially unstable, but it’s no secret that the economic catastrophes have hit everyone’s travel and promotional budgets. Besides fewer sponsored parties – Motorola, for instance, will not be in attendance — the rumor is that some photo agencies have majorly scaled back their coverage, sticking to the red carpet only, and usually ubiquitous publications aren’t sending their film critics. “The party grid is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2009
VAULTING ACROSS SUNDANCES By Scott Macaulay

Independent filmmakers like to think that they are creating works of art that contribute to an enduring American culture. There’s just one problem: these works of art are disintegrating. Literally. More concerned with life rights than half-life, filmmakers are allowing their films to crumble and dissolve into analog blurs and forests of digital glitches as formats change, materials are uncared for, and elements are left forgotten on lab floors. Enter the Sundance Collection, a collaborative program with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. It is the first archive to be devoted exclusively to the preservation of independent cinema. This year, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2009
REVISITING I.O.U.S.A.

Here Roger Ebert reprints his review of the deficit documentary I.O.U.S.A., which CNN airs this weekend. From Ebert’s blog post: I’m reprinting my review of the nonpartisan doc I.O.U.S.A. again because it will be televised on CNN at 1 p.m. CST Saturday, Jan. 10, and 2 p.m. CST Sunday, Jan 11. Co-hosts will be CNN financial experts Ali Velshi and Christine Romans. Their panelists will include Pete Peterson, ormer U.S. Commerce Secretary; Dave Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General; Alice Rivlin, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Bill Bradley, former U.S. Senator. Okay, I’m going to reprint […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009
SCOTT KIRSNER AT CES

I was hoping to find someone to cover CES this year but struck out. (If you are a Filmmaker reader attending and would like to send some comments from the point-of-view of an independent filmmaker, you can email me at editor.filmmaker AT gmail.com.) However, discovering Scott Kirsner’s CES blog at Variety is, for me, the next best thing to having a correspondent there. I interviewed Scott in the last issue of the magazine, and over at the Variety blog he files commentary in his own patented fusion of tech coverage and industry business analysis. Among the topics: a predicted explosion […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009
THE WHOPPER AS A UNIT OF CURRENCY

I am empowering Burger King’s pernicious viral marketing campaign, which I linked to below, even further by quoting this blog from Kottke.org, in which Jason Kottke uses the mathematics behind the campaign to come up with a valuation for Facebook that is lower than the valuation Microsoft used when they invested in the company. (Getting people like me to blog about a fast food product seems to have been the whole point of the campaign.) You see, if each Whopper costs $2.40, and there are 150 million users on Facebook, but some of them live overseas and are ineligible… well, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009
FILMMAKER ON FACEBOOK NETWORKED BLOGS

This blog will be broadcast via this new Facebook app… as soon as four more of you confirm that I am indeed one of the authors. Please click here and visit the page if you are on Facebook.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009
WATCHING THE WATCHMEN

I’ve blogged before about the legal saga surrounding The Watchmen, which is the film news world equivalent of a slow-motion car crash. If you’re a producer, the idea that your film could be held hostage after its completion due to legal issues is the ultimate nightmare. One of the film’s producers, Lloyd Levin, has written an open letter that is posted over at Drew McWeeny’s new blog, Hitfix. An excerpt: One reason the movie was made was because Warner Brothers spent the time, effort and money to engage with and develop the project. If Watchmen was at Fox the decision […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009
OUTSIDE THE (WHOPPER) BOX

Now here is outside-the-box, appealingly anti-social advertising. From Burger King comes the Whopper Sacrifice campaign, described here in Ad Week: It’s a common problem for anyone who joined Facebook some time ago. You look at your friend list and wonder who these people are. Burger King wants to help consumers do something about it. The fast-food chain has released the Whopper Sacrifice application on Facebook. The app rewards people with a coupon for BK’s signature burger when they cull 10 friends. Each time a friend is excommunicated, the application sends a notification to the banished party via Facebook’s news feed […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2009
SUNDANCE SANS CHECKBOOKS

“What if Sundance isn’t about the sales anymore?” asks Stephen Zeitchik in a Hollywood Reporter piece that’s worth reading for its take on the festival and the current acquisitions market. In it he mentions several films that are screening directly for executives instead of heading towards Park City, and he summons up the following vision of the festival (which is a lot like how it used to be a long time ago): But what these breakouts show is that the fest’s main value might now lie in the classic indie model, in which little money is spent and little is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2009
FINDING YOUR VOICE (AND BUDGET) AT NETFLIX

From a press release I just received from Film Independent: Today Film Independent and Netflix announced the immediate launch of the Netflix FIND Your Voice Film Competition, which will award one aspiring first-time feature filmmaker the means, guidance and resources to make a full-length, narrative film. The winner of the competition, who will own all rights to his or her film, will be determined between now and July 2009. In addition to production resources needed to make the film, the winner will receive a $150,000 cash production grant funded by Netflix, plus turnkey resources like film stock, processing, camera rental, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2009

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