Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“ARRI is a Woman…”: Christopher Doyle on Finding a Film and the Gender of Cameras
Cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s interview with Kaleem Aftab was one of our most highly-read pieces of last year, and in this concise interview posted at the ARRI channel, he discusses specific aspects of his methodology, including adapting his approach to his physical surroundings and the importance of camera ergonomics.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2018 -
“… A Running Dialogue Between Past and Present Notions of Screen Culture”: Jeff Reichert, Damon Smith and Eric Hynes on Room H.264
In 1982, in the Hotel Martinez at the Cannes Film Festival, where Steven Spielberg’s E.T. was the closing night film, German auteur Wim Wenders set up a stationary 16mm camera in a room on the sixth floor and asked a succession of directors to film themselves answering a single question: “Is cinema becoming a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?” Respondents ranged from yes, Spielberg, to Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michelangelo Antonioni, and topics covered included film vs. television, the rise of blockbuster “sensation-oriented” cinema, and the evolving theatrical experience. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 7, 2018 -
The Art of Being Alone: Brian Bolster’s Elegant Short Doc, Winter’s Watch
A hotel left empty during wintertime, a stormy island and a lone caretaker are the poetic elements of Brian Bolster’s elegant Winter’s Watch, a short documentary screening on the Atlantic Selects. For 19 winters photographer Alexandra de Steiguer has worked as a caretaker of the Oceanic Hotel, an imposing structure located on Star Island, 10 miles off the New England Coast. The island’s lone inhabitant, she sinks into her solitude and makes images, although, it is clear that, in this instance, her artistic practice is a byproduct of her need to escape the noise of the mainland and exist, one-on-one, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 4, 2018 -
Filmmaker‘s 20 Most Popular Posts of 2017
As always, we’re breaking our annual “most read Filmmaker posts” into two lists — 10 posts published in 2017 and 10 archival posts that are still registering large readerships. Throughout the 20, and particularly in the archival posts, there’s a strong current of practical advice conveyed by working filmmakers — the hallmark of this magazine. Here are our most popular posts of 2017. Published in 2017 1. The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn’t Working in a Vaccum. Our top post in 2017 was filmmaker Nina Menkes’s preview of a presentation she’ll give at Sundance next month, one in which […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 28, 2017 -
Remembering Production Designer Thérèse DePrez, 1965 – 2017
If you were a director or producer coming up in the New York independent film scene of the early 1990s, you wanted to work with Thérèse DePrez. Right out of the gate as a production designer, DePrez, who had been diagnosed with cancer and passed away Tuesday in New York City, defined for herself an imaginative, boldly-colored and stylized approach that brought a high level of ambition and finesse to often meagerly-budgeted films. Not settling for generic indie naturalism — the gentle accenting of our everyday world that is the default approach on so many low-budget pictures — she cited […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 21, 2017 -
Tamara Jenkins, Todd Haynes, Jonas Akerlund and More Added to 2018 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance always drops an announcement or two following their initial burst in early December, and today the Sundance Institute has done just that, releasing the titles of films and programs that cross the festival’s various programming categories. Honestly, when the first list came out without Tamara Jenkins’s latest, Private Life, I was expecting to see it slide into the schedule at a later date, which it has done today. The Slums of Beverly Hills/The Savages director’s new film stars Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti in a tale of a couple exploring assisted reproduction and domestic adoption as they try to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 19, 2017 -
Dee Rees, Brooklynn Prince, Howard Rodman and More Announce the 2017 Black List
If you don’t have access to all the work, and if you’re not plugged into the industry development community, the annual Black List — a “most-liked” list of unproduced screenplays floating around in Hollywood — is always a bit of head-scratcher list. Do the loglines — Daddio‘s “A passenger and her cab driver reminisce about their relationships on the way from the airport to her apartment in New York,” or The Mother‘s “A female assassin comes out of hiding to protect the pre-teen daughter she gave up years before” — herald exciting new voices or simply clever takes on durable […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 14, 2017 -
Editor’s Letter
So many of our film industry colleagues shift their focus each fall to awards. Here at Filmmaker, we decided to devote more of our coverage, both in print and online, to distinguished collaborators who don’t receive quite the same amount of ink as directors and movie stars. I’m talking, of course, about below-the-line, and you’ll find almost a dozen of them highlighted throughout these pages. Just after we shipped our last print issue, Filmmaker celebrated its 25th anniversary at IFP Week by hosting the opening day of panels and seminars. One highlight was contributing editor Taylor Hess’s onstage version of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 14, 2017 -
Reviewers Hail Video Performance of Apple’s New iMac Pros
After neglecting the pro market in recent years, Apple is out with the first of two new machines this Thursday, the iMac Pro. (The redesigned Mac Pro is expected sometime in 2018). The ultra-high-end 18 Xeon core processor version won’t be available until next year, but the 10-core version seeded to reviewers this week is receiving very high marks for power and speed. Over at MKBHD, Marcus Brownlee posts a seven-minute video with his thoughts, including how Final Cut Pro on the machine has handled 8K RAW files with simultaneous color correct and use of plug-ins. Regarding Final Cut use, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 12, 2017 -
Watch: Christopher Arcella’s Bitcoin-Inspired Short, The Satoshi Sculpture Garden
With bitcoin values soaring and “blockchain” the soon-to-be-new film industry buzzword, Christopher Arcella is out with a well-timed short, The Satoshi Sculpture Garden. With a cool, meditative calm, he follows a young woman as she surveys an outdoor sculpture garden consisting of pieces that play upon ideas tied to the cryptocurrency. Data visualization indeed! From Arcella’s director’s statement: In order to fully appreciate Bitcoin one needs to have a basic understanding of Bitcoin’s technology and the systems that the technology is disrupting. Otherwise, trying to understand Bitcoin is a bit like trying to derive meaning from abstract sculpture. The Satoshi […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2017
