Filmmaker Videos
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Gordon Willis on the Faux Pas of “Dump Truck Directing”
We’re back to legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis in a Craft Truck interview as he cautions against “dump truck directing” — a term he coined to describe the bad habit of directors who aren’t discerning when shooting and overwhelm editors with footage. Willis’ sage advise comes in handy for the digital filmmaker whose temptation to fix everything in post can overshadow the simplicity of doing it right the first time. You can watch the rest of the interview here.
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Trailer Watch: Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow
To my mind, the quality of a really great trailer is that it makes you want to watch the film right then — even if you’ve already seen it. I saw Randy Moore’s Disneyland-shot excursion into the bizarre, Escape from Tomorrow, at Sundance earlier this year — admittedly under less than ideal circumstances — but this incredible and joyously subversive trailer makes me excited all over again about the movie. Though declared unreleasable at Sundance because Moore filmed at Disneyland without permission, Escape From Tomorrow will be having a day-and-date release through PDA (the distribution arm of the film’s sales […]
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Cinematographer Reed Morano on Learning by Doing
In the newest installment of our Craft Truck video series, cinematographer Reed Morano offers the career advice of figuring it out as you go, even if that means bluffing a bit on set. In the rest of the interview, Morano, the d.p. of the crime drama Frozen River, discusses how creativity is the answer to limitation, particularly when she learned that she only had one day to shoot on ice in Frozen River. You can watch all of Morano’s charming interview here.
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Now Online: Hannah Fidell’s A Gathering Squall
Last year, watching The Gathering Squall, based on a short story by Joyce Carol Oates, alerted me to the talent of the film’s writer/director, Hannah Fidell. Seeing shortly afterward a rough cut of her debut feature, A Teacher, confirmed that considerable talent. A Teacher is being put out theatrically by Oscilloscope this Friday, and to help promote the release The Gathering Squall is now on Vimeo, where it is a Staff Pick. Fidell was one of our “25 New Faces” last year, and Squall was shot by another New Face, Andrew Droz Palermo, who also shot A Teacher and Adam Wingard’s […]
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First Clip from Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie
Despite what its title might suggest, The Armstrong Lie is a film which Alex Gibney made with full cooperation from disgraced cycling cheat Lance Armstrong. Errol Morris’ Rumsfeld doc The Unknown Known somewhat disappointed when it screened at Telluride, so maybe this will be the season’s definitive doc about a high-profile American male owning up to his deceit and misdeeds? Here’s the first clip from the film, which shows Armstrong talking to Gibney directly after filming his mea culpa interview with Oprah Winfrey.
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Trailer Watch: Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin
The word from Telluride is rather mixed on Jonathan Glazer’s long-waited third feature, Under the Skin, a (by definition) very ambitious adaptation of Michel Faber’s remarkable novel about an alluring female alien (Scarlett Johansson) picking off hapless hitchhikers in the Scottish highlands. This teaser for the film — which plays today in Venice, and in Toronto later in the week — gives us little to go on in terms of plot but strongly indicates that Glazer has created a dark, brooding vision seemingly untroubled by commercial concerns. Johansson, an apt choice in the role of the extraterrestrial temptress, is (fittingly) the […]
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A Trailer in Clips: Lars von Trier’s Curious Nymphomaniac Rollout
Oh, Lars, what are you playing at? The court jester of Cannes has remained uncharacteristically tightlipped about his next film, the pornographic two-part epic Nymphomaniac, having sworn off the press following that infamous Melancholia conference. In lieu of his usual stops on the festival circuit, von Trier has taken to releasing “appetizers” from each of the film’s eight chapters. Trailers are for the merely conventional. The first clip, entitled “The Compleat Angler,” appeared on June 28th, and introduced us to Young Joe, the adolescent iteration of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s protagonist. The hallmark handheld sways in unison with the train car where […]
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First Look at Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known
Errol Morris’ Donald Rumsfeld doc The Unknown Known played at Telluride last night (to somewhat mixed reactions), and today Vice has the first clip from the film. Delving into almost 50 years of Rumsfeld’s memos, which he refers to as “snowflakes,” the film obviously harkens back to Morris’ Oscar-winning The Fog of War — also an intimate examination of a failed U.S. war with the Secretary of Defense who oversaw it — but with a difference. Whereas Robert S. McNamara was looking back 40 years after the fact on his handling of the Vietnam war, Rumsfeld is here talking about a […]
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Now Online: Devyn Waitt’s Not Waving But Drowning
Just a quick heads up that Devyn Waitt’s 2012 festival title Not Waving But Drowning, an NYC-set 20something drama starring Adam Driver (Girls) and Vanessa Ray (Pretty Little Liars), has debuted for free on YouTube, playing alongside a short also directed by Waitt, The Most Girl Part of You. It’s an interesting approach to take, as opposed to going the VOD route, and presumably is seen as the simplest and most direct way to connect with the film’s young demographic. And, of course, in contrast with VOD, where the numbers are tightly guarded by distributors, here the filmmakers will have […]
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The Intersection of Film and Live Music: Jem Cohen’s We Have an Anchor
Jem Cohen is back at BAM with the New York premiere of We Have an Anchor — a hybrid documentary that blends projections of landscapes in a variety of formats (Super 8, 16mm, HD), poetry and newspaper clippings to the sounds of a live score by an indie rock supergroup featuring members of Fugazi, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and more. A spiritual sequel to 2008’s Evening’s Civil Twilight in Empires of Tin, We Have an Anchor is an exploration of place (specifically Nova Scotia, more specifically Cape Breton) utilizing footage Cohen has shot over the last 10 years. Cohen departs […]
