Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: Robert Greene on “The Art of Nonfiction”
Last week, Sight & Sound released their poll of the top 50 documentaries of all time, sourced from 340 critics, programmers and filmmakers. The list includes seminal films such as Nanook of the North, Sans Soleil, Man With a Movie Camera, and Salesman, as well as recent, form-pushing works in The Act of Killing and Leviathan. Robert Greene took time out of his impressively hectic schedule to craft a video essay that is a send up to said titles and more, examining documentary for its inimitable, observational approach, and noting that “the art of nonfiction lies in the tension between chaos and structure.” Head over to Sight&Sound to view it.
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Short Film: Sam Green’s Lot 63, Grave C
Thanks to The Seventh Art for flagging this haunting 2006 short documentary from Sam Green, a belated inquiry into the murder of Meredith Hunter at the 1969 Rolling Stones concert in Altamont. Green’s presentation of the bizarre silence surrounding Hunter’s identity at the time of his death is relayed through archival newspapers, footage from Gimme Shelter, and a tour of his unmarked gravesite in California (a proper headstone was purchased in 2008). Despite its brevity, Lot 63, Grave C is a fascinating look inside the metaphorical end of an era.
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Watch: Enrique Pacheco’s Tips for Time-Lapse Photography
Thanks to our friends at No Film School for pointing us to this useful video from DSLR workshop instructor Enrique Pacheco, which covers the basics of time-lapse photography in under three minutes. His useful tips include the importance of checking the position of the sun, moon and stars before shooting, why you should use an intervalometer, how to avoid flicker, and the importance of a simple ND filter.
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Not So Fast: A Short Film With G&E Equipment Sourced From Ikea
In his short film Not So Fast, filmmaker David Sandberg managed to achieve a dramatic tunnel effect with no more than a few Ikea products and the free 3D modeling app, Blender. The very embodiment of DIY ethos, Sandberg fashioned a portable light — enclosed in a trashcan — to his dolly — a bit of shelving — and orchestrated the action atop his PVC pipe track. Granted, his battery pack and Black Magic Cinema Camera don’t exactly run cheap, but the homemade equipment used to relay his protagonist’s sleepwalking probably rounded out to no more than $30. Watch Sandberg break down his […]
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Watch: David Lynch’s New Rouge Louboutin Commercial
David Lynch recently confirmed that he has no plans to direct a new film, but he’s still available for commercials. Rouge Louboutin is a $50 nail polish inspired by the Ballerina Ultima, the tallest shoe Louboutin has ever designed. You can see where this is going: the video is about as festishistic as it gets, filled out by CGI landscapes that look more like The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus than anything in Lynch’s filmography.
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Short Film: Lost Arts, by Peter Mattei
Inspired by Ira Sachs’ Last Address, filmmaker (Love in the Time of Money) and novelist (The Deep Whatsis) Peter Mattei made this short film, Lost Arts, in 2010. Sachs’ film — which he discusses in the current issue of Filmmaker — looks at the final addresses of a generation of New York artists who died of AIDS. With Lost Arts, Mattei has taken Sachs’ formal approach and applied it to the real estate of arthouse cinema. For those who have long lived in New York, see how many of these Duane Reades, health clubs and Apple stores evoke any hint […]
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Watch: Richard Linklater’s Perception of Time
Friday afternoon, the Los Angeles Times ran a piece entitled “Kenneth Turan Takes A Critic’s Lonely Stand On Boyhood,” in which the film critic relays his alienation at finding Linklater’s latest short of a masterpiece. The article is less concerned with flushing out his exact grievances with the film, but he does say that he finds the “12 years, one cast,” aspect to be “a bit like a gimmick,” failing to achieve the breadth of Apted’s Up series. In my opinion, the viewing experience of watching the actors age is what makes the film special, overshadowing the more prosaic events in each of Mason Jr.’s 12 years. […]
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Watch: Abel Ferrara Plays Guitar and Sings with Italian Band Statale 66
This one’s just for fun: while awaiting the premiere of Abel Ferrara’s keenly anticipated biopic Pasolini, you can watch the writer/director taking lead guitar and vocals with Italian band Statale 66 on a lightly bluesy number lyrically heavy on Louisiana swamps and other familiar images. Ferrara self-described himself as “a failed rock ‘n roller” in an interview earlier this year, where he recalled his youthful time with a band that “never made it out of the garage”: My uncle had a club and we were auditioning for him. When we got done he was like, “You wanna make money in […]
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Short Film: Intuition, by Danielle Lurie
Filmmaker, 25 New Face and Film Fatales early member Danielle Lurie was in Barcelona recently, and, as she writes, made a short film there on the fly. Connecting with lead actress Montse Muñoz through Facebook, she has made a lovely film about romantic indecision, conflicting signals and the magic of serendipity. Check it out above. Read Lurie on women in today’s filmmaking at Sundance and the Film Fatales collective here at Filmmaker.
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A Spectacular Collaboration: Roger Deakins and the Coen Brothers
The collaboration between the Coen Brothers and cinematographer Roger Deakins is spotlighted in this Blag Films supercut featuring moments from films such as Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Man Who Wasn’t There, True Grit, and quite a few other simply beautiful-looking films. And if these shots seem astonishingly well composed, well, then that’s due not just to Deakins’ mastery but to the Coens’ penchant for scouting, pre-production and storyboarding everything in advance. The shots in this video, with their precise time of days, frequent use of high angles and careful arrangement of what’s in the frame are clearly […]
