Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Martini Shots
Lithuania-born filmmaker Robertas Nevecka was making short animated pictures and working as an assistant director when, on a location shoot, he began to draw. It was 2019 and “It was really hard,” Nevecka remembers. “We were shooting in a small village, living in trucks, and, during the off time, I started drawing stuff about the things that happened during the day. That was the start.” Five years later, Nevecka’s film-shoot pastime has grown into a much larger endeavor, a small business that finds his witty visual accounts of set life on t-shirts, playing cards and, most recently, collected in a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2024 -
Editor’s Letter
A red flag when speaking with a first-time director of an independent film, I feel, is an overconcern with the market. There are directors who want to tell their stories and be uncompromising, but they worry the film won’t be market-friendly enough and won’t sell, and that their future career may be compromised. So, they make the changes preemptively: There’s the film the director really wanted to make, and maybe that will be the next film, but meanwhile they begin writing their debut under a cloud of internalized self-censorship. You know the outcome: The indie, not-too-bold, “market-friendly” film, trying as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2024 -
“When I Started Putting the Talking Head [Interviews] In, It Didn’t Feel as Beautiful”: Director Antony Crook on His SXSW-Premiering Mogwai Doc, If the Stars Had a Sound
On X recently, a poster asked for song titles named after movie directors. One of the few that came to mind was from the Glasgow-based band, Mogwai — “Stanley Kubrick,” from their 1999 EP. It’s a vintage Mogwai track, bass and drums in mid tempo as a reflective melody rises and falls over seesawing organ chords. The song’s connection to the great director is left up to the listener, the way of virtually all of Mogwai’s imaginatively titled, mostly instrumental songs, which over a 25-year-career have captured fans with their mixture of gentle beauty and then, in bursts, beautiful noise. Few […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2024 -
“On Our First day It Was 100°, and It Basically Went Up From There”: Writer/Director Shannon Triplett On Her SXSW-Premiering Psychological Thriller, Desert Road
A woman, a car, a gas station and a factory — from this minimalist set of locations Shannon Triplett has crafted a surprising work of supernatural suspense in her writing and directing debut, Desert Road, which premiered this weekend at the SXSW Film Festival. Kristine Froseth is the woman, a 20-something would-be professional photographer on a solo trip. When her car’s tire blows out on the ribbon-like highway, she’s momentarily dazed before coming to and walking back to that gas station to call for help. In a chilling and quickly rendered series of events, she realizes that help is not […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 11, 2024 -
Watch: Devan Scott’s “The Holdovers, the ‘Film Look’, and Why it Matters” — The Video
One of Filmmaker‘s most popular articles last month was Devan Scott’s “The ‘Film Look’ and How The Holdovers Achieved It.” Of course, any discussion of cinematography and color grading is immensely aided by the actual visuals, and now Scott has made an hour-long essay video based on that article. Check it out above.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 10, 2024 -
11 Films and VR Experiences We’re Looking Forward to at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival
With the SXSW Film Festival kicking off today in Austin, here are 11 works we’re particularly excited about and believe worthy of recommendation. The festival runs through March 16. Babes. Actress Pamela Adlon, especially beloved by this writer for voicing the endearingly “not right” Bobby on King of the Hill, world premieres her directorial debut at this year’s SXSW. From a script by Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, Babes charts the unexpected (and perhaps actively resisted) growth of chronically single woman Eden (Glazer) when she discovers she’s become pregnant from a one night stand. Desperate for direction, Eden immediately seeks […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2024 -
Exclusive Clip: Katie Mathews’s SXSW-Premiering Roleplay
Plenty of — and perhaps too many — nonfiction films today borrow from dramatic storytelling, but that synthesis of documentary and drama is the productive premise of Katie Mathew’s feature documentary debut, Roleplay. A group of Tulane University students collaborated with Mathews to create an immersive play drawn directly from their own experiences of, according to the press release, “sexual violence on college campuses, from the codes of silence, the isolation of people of color, the homophobia, the way Greek Life rules the social order, and the lack of guidance regarding issues like rape, racism, addiction, and trauma.” It’s project […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2024 -
The Sadean Horror of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex: Artist and Filmmaker Charles de Agustin on Mission Drift
The precarious and conflicted economics of non-profits — both material and libidinal — are the subject of artist and filmmaker Charles de Agustin‘s short narrative essay film Mission Drift, which, over the past year, has screened at festivals, art spaces and microcinemas in conjunction with panel discussions that are integral to the piece itself. (Writes D’Augustin on his website, “The medium of Mission Drift is described as ‘video and discussion:’ the work may only be publicly presented if it is followed by a robust audience discussion on the issues at hand, structured in consultation with the artist if he is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: Antony Crook’s SXSW-Premiering Mogwai Doc, If the Stars Had a Sound
The Glasgow-based “post rock” band Mogwai is no stranger to cinema, having scored numerous films and TV shows, from the original French version of Les Revenants to Douglas Gordon and Phillippe Pareno’s experimental doc, Zidane, to, most recently, the Apple TV+ show Black Bird. And now, after a 25 year career that has included 10 studio albums, the band is the subject of its own documentary, Antony Crook’s If the Stars Had a Sound,” which premieres March 12 at SXSW. Band member Stuart Braithwaite says in a press release: “We’re incredibly excited for people to see Antony’s film If the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2024 -
Watch: Apple-Produced Takashi Miike Film Shot on iPhone 15 Pro
In what is a refreshing — at least for us at Filmmaker — changeup from the usual sorts of films that get the iPhone demo treatment, Apple has released a new 19-minute short, Midnight, directed by Takashi Miike. It’s no Audition or Ichi the Killer, naturally, but his adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s manga is a lot of fun. There’s also an accompanying short behind-the-scenes video, below, that demonstrates the use of iPhone modes like Action and Cinematic — the former’s handheld stabilization and the latter’s rack focus — as well as, most impressively, the use of the phone’s LIDAR scanner […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2024
