Authors — Scott Macaulay
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The Sundance Question: What Hidden Part of Your Film Are You Most Privately Proud of, and Why?
Each year Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see past years’ questions and responses, click here.) This year’s question: Whenever directors watch their own films, they always do so with the knowledge that there are moments that occurred during their production — whether that’s in the financing and development or shooting or post — that required incredible ingenuity, skill, planning or just plain luck, but whose difficulty is invisible to most spectators. These are the moments directors are often the most proud of, and that pride comes with the knowledge that no one on […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2019 -
20 Films and VR Works to Anticipate at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival
When I look back at last year’s version of this annual “Sundance films I’m looking forward to” list, I’m seeing that my selections were pretty dead on. Almost all of my favorite films of the year — Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy; Tamara Jenkins’s Private Life; Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace; Sam Green’s A Thousand Hours; Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline — I saw in Park City. Will I come anywhere near that high-water mark this year? I have no idea, but of course I’m hoping. Here are 20 films and VR pieces (the number limited by laptop battery life on my American […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2019 -
Documentary Producers Alliance Fights “Credit Creep” with Proposed Industry Guidelines for Producer Credits
In the world of documentary film, where projects gestate and then are produced over the course of years, and with funding often raised in stages from a variety of different sources, the determination of producer credits can turn into something like the Wild West. There are usually one or more producers who are actually producing the film, and they are supported by a bevy of archival producers, field producers, etc. But what about all the executive producers, co-producers, presenters, etc. — how did they become involved in a film, and what do their credits mean? The question is more than […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2019 -
Steve Bannon, Michael Jackson Docs Added to the 2019 Sundance Film Festival
Although there’s always a chance of an unannounced sneak screening, Sundance’s program is officially locked today with two last additions. The catalog blurbs are below, but suffice to say that both are high-profile docs that lean hard into topics of the day. Dan Reed’s Leaving Neverland deals with alleged sexual abuse perpetrated by Michael Jackson through the stories of survivors while Alison Klayman’s The Brink looks at Steve Bannon’s post-Trump career as an international anti-immigrant rabble rouser. (Klayman was a Filmmaker 25 New Face back in 2011 while in post-production on her debut doc, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.) From the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2019 -
Filmmaker‘s Top 20 Posts of 2018
For Filmmaker‘s annual look at our top posts of the year, as determined by Google Analytics, we break the list into two: the top 10 posts of the year, and the top 10 2018 posts drawn from our archives. So, jumping right into it…. The Top 10 New Posts of 2018 D.P. Larkin Seiple Breaks Down Every Shot from Childish Gambino’s This is America. I’ll immodestly say that Matt Mulcahey’s Shutter Angles column presents the best DP interviews out there, and this one, hot on the heels of the Childish Gambino viral hit, topped our list of the best new […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 27, 2018 -
Skip Lievsay and Craig Henighan on Designing the Sound of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma
You should be able to watch a movie with the sound off — even before Mac Miller’s 2013 album, this was a phrase you’d hear from some producer or director extolling the necessity of purely visual storytelling. But if this dictum is true, then the inverse should be true as well: You should be able to listen to a movie with the screen turned off. Anyone wanting to try this experiment should start with the soundtrack of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, which is an astoundingly artful, immersive and intoxicating work. In addition to the crystalline dialogue tracks, Roma uses bespoke background […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 17, 2018 -
Brown Girls Doc Mafia Announces Co-Directors, Advisory Board and $105,000 Grant From John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Brown Girls Doc Mafia, an organization advocating for women and non-binary people of color in the documentary industry, announced today the appointment of its board of directors as well as a two-year, $105,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The board, comprised of filmmaker Ursula Liang, Denae Peters of Film Sprout, and Nicole Tsien of American Documentary POV will work in conjunction with the organization’s Co-Directors, Iyabo Boyd and Tracy Nguyen-Chung. Brown Girls Doc Mafia was founded by Boyd in 2015 and has a global membership of over 2,400. From the press release: “Brown Girls Doc […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 14, 2018 -
Trailer Watch: Alexandre Nahon’s Burning Shadow
French-born, LA-living filmmaker Alexandre Nahon premieres his directorial debut, Burning Shadow, tonight at the Miami Beach Cinematheque as part of its Art Basel screening series. The film, which has been described as having a Lynch or Cronenbergian vibe, is a take on one of my favorite storylines — the doppelganger tale, this time set in a City of Angels neo-noir universe. Filmmaker readers will recognize Nahon from his roles in Julie Delpy’s 2 Days films. Following the premiere, there will be the opening at the same venue of Nahon’s 3D 35mm photo show, “I Will Take You Out of Here,” […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 8, 2018 -
Magic Leap, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Eminem and Traveling While Black: Sundance Announces 2019 New Frontier Slate
The Sundance Film Festival’s always-revelatory New Frontier section announced its 2019 lineup today. Dedicated to work sitting at the “dynamic crossroads of film, art and technology,” New Frontier typically explores various forms of new media, including VR, AR, mixed reality and work implementing artificial intelligence. Amongst the highlights are the first time, I believe, that the Magic Leap technology has appeared in a Sundance selection, here in a work co-created by the Royal Shakespeare Company; Eminem taking you on a nighttime Detroit ride in VR; the VR component of Roger Ross Williams’s multi-format Traveling While Black project; painter turned VR […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 5, 2018 -
Watch: The Beginning and the End: Legendary Filmmakers’ First and Last Shots
From Troiscoleurs (Nicolas Longinotti) comes this sublime supercut based around a beautifully elegiac premise: what would be the effect of looking at the first shot of a director’s feature filmography alongside their last? What message is spoken, what story is told, either deliberately or by chance, by a split screen that crosses decades? While many of these filmmakers — who include Hitchcock, Renoir, Fassbinder and Ozu — may not have expected their final film to have been their last, some of these final shots contain more than an intimation of mortality. (The Tarkovsky first-last combination here is particularly striking.) From […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 4, 2018
