Authors — Scott Macaulay
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From the Filmmaker Newsletter: The Role of Insurance in Restarting Production Amidst the Coronavirus Pandemic
Each Friday, Filmmaker sends out a free newsletter containing an original Editor’s Letter as well as news of film openings, events, etc. (the latter mostly streaming and online, these days). The Editor’s Letters usually aren’t posted online, but here’s last week’s, which deals with the uncertainty around obtaining production insurance in this pandemic environment. It’s been passed around quite a bit, so I’m posting it here for easier reference. If you’d like to receive the Filmmaker newsletter, you can subscribe for free here. — SM “It’s what we call ‘a hard market,’” said the insurance broker on the phone. I didn’t need […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 14, 2020 -
Senator Adam Schiff Discusses Unemployment Provisions and Worker Protections for Entertainment Industry
In a virtual town hall today organized by IATSE and SAG-AFTRA, Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) addressed questions from union members regarding federal government support for entertainment industry workers during the novel coronavirus shutdowns. SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris and IATSE International President Matt Loeb led the hour-long conversation and touched on several topics of interest to Filmmaker readers. Unemployment benefits for gig workers. The first question asked came from a SAG member who complained that her state unemployment benefits were not calculated based on a combination of her previous year’s W2 salaried income and her 1099 independent contractor income. Schiff stated […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 12, 2020 -
Should We Be Filming At All? Doc Society, Field of Vision and Sundance Institute Partner on Doc Filmmaking Risk-Assessment Guide
Doc Society, Field of Vision and Sundance Institute have collaborated on a risk-assessment guide for non-fiction filmmakers considering shooting during the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The document, “Independent Filmmaking in the Time of Coronavirus,” co-signed by a number of other leading documentary organizations, differs from other such industry guides being circulated at the moment by its three-part structure. Before even getting to the third part — “Corona protocols: what’s the safest way to organize the shoot?” — the guide walks filmmakers through two other checklists. The first, “The Big Question: Should I be filming at all?”, surveys the […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 11, 2020 -
“It Was Subversive, a Political Act, Giving Screen Time to a Scrappy Stray Dog”: Director Elizabeth Lo on Her Mesmerizing Tribeca Documentary, Stray
About the production philosophy behind Stray, her captivating and immersive documentary about stray dogs in Istanbul, director Elizabeth Lo says that her shooting decisions were “kind of left to the whims of a dog” (specifically, a mutt named Zeytin). Lo is perhaps being a bit modest here — there’s a tremendous amount of human skill, empathy, observational power and narrative shaping in her mesmerizing canine saga. But a giant strength of the film is its sense that it is indeed in sync with the rhythms of a dog, occupying an animal world while also being both smartly aware of and […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2020 -
“It Ended Up Being Therapeutic for Everyone”: Eric Hynes, Jeff Reichert and Damon Smith on the Now-Streaming Room H.264: Quarantine
Do any of us remember a time when the film industry was not in crisis? At the time of Wim Wenders’s 1982 documentary, Room 666, the on-screen directors who considered his prompt (“Is cinema becoming a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?”) grappled with the kinds of issues (film vs. TV, the rise of blockbusters, the struggles of art cinema) that would go on to preoccupy filmmakers and film critics for many years — up to and through the production of Jeff Reichert, Damon Smith and Eric Hynes’s 2018 Brooklyn-set reply to Wenders, Room […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 30, 2020 -
Reflections from Quarantine: Six Cinematographers on Their Lives During Lockdown
Over the last several weeks, since the middle of March, Daniel Eagan reached out to a number of cinematographers all over the world to check in on their personal responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic and the resulting quarantine. From Los Angeles to Hong Kong, Copenhagen to a Poland lakeside, they respond with reactions encompassing their own personal coping strategies, their current professional activities (or lack of them) and the thoughts the lockdown has stimulated about not only their profession but filmmaking in general. Find the links below, and stay tuned for future roundups of more cinematographers as well as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 29, 2020 -
Watch: Michael Reich’s She’s Allergic to Cats Trailer and Short Film Quarantine Dog Good Boy
Filmmaker Michael Reich has a thing for both household pets (and vermin) as well as bleeding VHS-damaged color schemes. The former dog groomer’s debut feature She’s Allergic to Cats, which premiered in ’16 at Fantasia Fest but is only now seeing a digital release via Gigantic Pictures, is about, natch, a socially awkward dog groomer (Michael Pinkney) attempting to deal with a rat infestation in his apartment while making an all-cats remake of Carrie. Sonja Kinski is the love interest whose cat may be the answer to the rodent issue. As the trailer above attests, Reich is fond of distressed […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2020 -
Five Questions for Writer/Director Kerem Sanga about His Tribeca Competition Drama, The Violent Heart
Played with a compelling mixture of sensitivity and suppressed rage by Joven Adepo (The Leftovers, Sorry for Your Loss) Daniel, the young auto mechanic and ex-con at the center of Kerem Sanga’s The Violent Heart, is a man imprinted by the past. We meet him first in flashback when, as a young boy, he crouches in dark woods, watching a horrible crime unfold. And while the exact events of that evening remain a mystery for much of the story, the powerlessness Daniel feels that night, and the aftermath of guilt, are all we need to understand the complicated shadings of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2020 -
Day 5 of 25: Tayarisha Poe, Lauren McBride, Jomo Fray on Selah and the Spades
“She found no joy in fully formed things, she sought those times of the year, those people, who were discovering their potential. Selah loved potential.” Quoted in Filmmaker’s Winter, 2015 print issue, in our now-defunct Super 8 column, those are the words of the narrator of the first iteration of Tayarisha Poe’s wickedly beguiling, sociologically astute teen crime drama, Selah and the Spades. At that time, “transmedia” was a bit more the rage, and Poe’s hybrid website/webseries/photography/literary site had a smart, sprawling appeal. By the time we caught up with Poe again, selecting her for our Summer, 2015 issues’ 25 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2020 -
Amazon Prime Video, SXSW Announce “SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection”; No U.S. Narratives Among Seven Feature Titles
After announcing on April 2 that the two companies would partner to bring selections from the cancelled 2020 SXSW Film Festival to home viewers, Amazon Prime Video and SXSW announced today the titles that will comprise the free-to-view “2020 SXSW Film Festival Collection.” A total of 39 works — features, shorts, music videos and episodic titles — opted into the program. Of the 39, only seven are features — five percent of the festival’s feature selection — and the four narrative films are all international titles. For producers and filmmakers, the Amazon/SXSW collaboration was immediately controversial upon announcement, with several […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2020
