On the Filmmaker Video page you’ll find the third part of Jamie Stuart’s NYFF46. Appearances by Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood, Mike Leigh, Wong Kar-Wai, Christopher Doyle, Alexander Olch and Susan Meiselas. If you haven’t seen the first two episodes in this year’s series, which you need to have seen to follow this one, you can find them here.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 7, 2008Fresh DV has posted a podcast with filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain. Shlain is an organizer of and presenter at The Conversation, coming up next week (October 17 and 18) in Berkley, California. Below you can watch Shlain discuss her new project, “Connected: A Declaration of Independence.” And as noted in my post below, The Conversation is offering a special discount to Filmmaker readers who would like to attend the event. Click on the links here for more info and to take advantage of the discount.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 7, 2008As noted on Jon Taplin’s blog, one of his students, Russell Newman, with the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication, has “compiled a list of the main presidential candidates’ views on hot-button political topics about media and technology such as media ownership/consolidation and network neutrality.” Click on the link to compare the candidates’ views on Net Neutrality, Media Ownership and Consolidation, and other topics.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 7, 2008New models, new forms of storytelling, convergence, how we will make money, how we will make art — being an independent filmmaker or investor or producer right now is all about talking. Being part of the dialogue. Taking part in the conversation. Appropriately, then, Scott Kirsner of the CinemaTech blog, Ken Goldberg, Tiffany Shlain and Lance Weiler are co-hosting The Conversation/The Future of Cinema, Games and Online Video: New Tools/New Distribution/New Rules at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California on October 17 and 18th. The official spam: This October, pioneers at the forefront of change in cinema, video, games, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 6, 2008Back in 1995 Ted Hope wrote a full-throated and trenchant critique of the indie film business for Filmmaker that was entitled “Indie Film is Dead.” It’s either sad, funny, curious or fascinating (take your pick) that much of what Hope wrote 13 years ago still applies today. (If you haven’t read this piece, I really recommend hitting the link and taking a look at it.) I thought of this piece today while reading something on his Truly Free Film blog — a report from a panel discussion at the Woodstock Film Festival. First, from the old Filmmaker piece: The film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 6, 2008Filmmaker 25 New Faces writer/director Antonio Campos is written up in the New York Times today by Dennis Lim. About his new feature Afterschool, which plays at the New York Film Festival: Afterschool, which Mr. Campos called a “present-day sci-fi film,” wrestles with a strange and relatively new fact of life that we have barely had time to process. We live in a world where, he said, “it feels like YouTube has been around forever and will always be around.” For more from Campos, visit the Filmmaker Videos page, where our friends from Filmcatcher have produced for us a short […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2008Every week newsletter subscribers receive an email from us in which we link to key stories from the blog and the website from the previous seven days, highlight various pieces of news and festival deadlines, and in which I write a brief Editor’s Letter. I tend to write stuff that I don’t post elsewhere on the site or in the magazine, and it’s free to join — just subscribe by typing your email address in the box at the left. I’m posting below the letter from this week’s newsletter as I used it to plug two great movies opening this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 2, 2008Rex Crum at Marketwatch reports: The Copyright Royalty Board on Thursday left unchanged the amount record companies will pay songwriters for the sale of CDs or digitally downloaded songs. The three-judge panel said the record companies will continue to pay 9.1 cents a song, while the National Music Publishers Association had sought an increase to 15 cents a song. Apple Inc. and other online music stores had opposed the potential price increase. Additionally the CRB set a payment rate of 24 cents each for songs sold as ringtones for cellphones.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 2, 2008Nikki Finke points to this Los Angeles Times piece that reveals that pro-movie biz breaks are included in the bail-out bill that just passed the Senate and which is headed for the house. Specifically, the bill extends the film production cost deduction included in the 2004 Jobs Creation Act to December, 2009, and it lifts the budget cap on eligible films. Now, instead of being limited to films budgeted at up to $15 million, the deduction is capped at $15 million for any single film no matter what the budget.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 2, 2008The Fortune article entitled “Digital Music Showdown” is linked all over the web today as it contains a seemingly bombshell-like piece of news: that Apple is threatening to shutter the iTunes music store over the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C.’s proposal to increase the royalty rates for digitally-sold music by six cents a song. The story is grabber, and it grabbed me — I playfully lifted a page from Keith Olberman to protest what I called Apple’s “preposterous piece of brinksmanship.” Of course, the devil is always in the details, and as a number of posters to the original […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 2, 2008