Filmmaker Videos
-
Short Film: Michael Tyburski’s Actor Seeks Role
25 New Faces Michael Tyburski and Ben Nabors have teamed up yet again on their latest short film, Actor Seeks Role. Starring Alex Karpovsky as an aspiring method actor who resorts to medical acting in lieu of a silver screen gig, Actor Seeks Role is a witty, efficient rumination on the downsides of a theatrical affliction. Watch above.
-
Short Film: Mukunda Angulo’s Mirror Heart
Anyone who’s seen Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack knows that the Angulo brothers have a flair for costuming, and those talents are on full display in Mukunda Angulo’s Mirror Heart, a rather abstract short film made for Vice. Billed as “an imaginative tale about a cast of dreamlike characters who unify around the necessity to create,” Mirror Heart also employs the voice acting of a handful of the brothers as that nagging, negative portion of one’s creative conscience. Check out the short above and a making of video at the link.
-
Jerzy Rose and Samy Burch on Casting Neighborhood Food Drive
Chicago filmmakers Jerzy Rose and Halle Butler are currently fundraising for their feature length satire Neighborhood Food Drive, about two egomaniacal restauranteurs and their unpaid intern as they throw a series of lavish and disastrous fundraisers. Below, Rose interviews his casting director Samy Burch about the process of pulling together both professional actors and otherwise for a cast headed up by Bruce Bundy and Lyra Hill.–SS Jerzy Rose: I have a vague memory of you telling me, after you’d seen Crimes Against Humanity, that you’d love to help me cast my next movie. I followed up one year later. I think I simply asked “How […]
-
RIP James Horner: The Late Composer on The Rocketeer
We’re saddened to learn of the death of composer James Horner, whose well-known film scores include the highest-selling orchestral score of all time (Titanic), and a bevy of other beloved titles. In this interesting clip, Horner talks about writing the score for The Rocketeer — some 100 minutes altogether — in just two and a half weeks’ time. As he discusses, the film was originally cut with temp music, leading executives to feel that certain scenes were too long and needed to be cut to shreds; with his score added, scenes played better and could be restored to their original, necessary […]
-
Exclusive: Sam Fleischner and Iva Gocheva’s Porcupine
Straight from BAMcinemaFest where it preceded Krisha last Friday is Sam Fleischner and Iva Gocheva‘s short film, Porcupine. A far cry from the subterranean world of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Porcupine features Gocheva as a woman holed up in her sun-drenched Brooklyn apartment, trying and failing to reconnect with her partner through a series of unanswered phone calls. Strung together, her voicemails intimate a relationship — and several household items — lost. Check it out above.
-
Watch: The Life and Death of an iPhone, Shot and Edited on Vimeo’s Cameo App
In honor of Vimeo’s updated Cameo app, filmmaker Paul Trillo created a short film entirely shot and edited on an iPhone, appropriately titled “The Life and Death of an iPhone.” Trillo utilizes the phone’s POV to create the illusion of a constant “feed” between cuts, which he accomplished in camera: Believe it or not the transitions are deceptively simple like a slight of hand. At the end of each take, we just did a quick wipe into black. The key is to do these moves at the same speed each time and make sure you’re cutting on precisely the right frame. I found that […]
-
Trailer Watch: Les Blank’s A Poem is a Naked Person
Receiving its theatrical release 41 years after its completion, Les Blank’s A Poem Is A Naked Person is set to open at New York’s Film Forum on July 1, following its bows at BAMcinemaFest and SXSW. A portrait of singer-songwriter Leon Russell shot between 1972 and 1974, the film was the result of considerable release delays as a result of music clearance issues and creative differences between Blank and Russell. Check out the trailer above.
-
Watch: Shelley Duvall Talks Kubrick Using an 18mm Lens on The Shining
A while back we posted a vintage half-hour documentary about the great cinematographer John Alcott. For Kubrick fans reluctant to commit to that whole program, here’s an excerpt in which Shelley Duvall talks about the director’s use of the 18mm lens on The Shining. The lens is great for furniture but terrible for faces, she says, speculating that Kubrick was trying to make everybody look more frightening. In her telling, Alcott tried to get Kubrick to occasionally relent and use a 50 or 75mm lens, but with no success.
-
Watch: An Exclusive Clip From Gabriel, the Rory Culkin-Starring Debut Feature by Lou Howe
Two years ago we profiled Lou Howe as one of our 25 New Faces of Film; this week, his debut feature Gabriel is seeing theatrical release. We have an exclusive excerpt from this drama, which stars Rory Culkin as the title character, a mentally ill young man on trial release from a hospital. In this clip, Gabriel rummages through the apartment of Alice (Emily Meade), a girl he knew in his childhood who he’s determined to track down. Gabriel opens in limited release this Friday; for more screening information, click here.
-
Watch: DP Roger Deakins Talks LUTs, Sicario and the ALEXA
In this interview conducted by ARRI reps at Cannes, the great DP Roger Deakins talks about his work on Sicario, his (equally fantastic-looking) second collaboration with Denis Villeneuve after Prisoners. This is a fairly technical conversation, as Deakins talks about shooting with an open gate on the ALEXA for the first time, why he prefers to minimize his work with LUTs and his approach to storyboarding.
