Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Moby Dick, Mad Max: Fury Road “Black and Chrome” Edition, and Moscow on the Hudson: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
A great American film finally gets a proper home video treatment on Twilight Time’s new Blu-ray of Moby Dick, John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s 1851 classic novel. It’s a film of many virtues, starting with the literary – Huston collaborated with Ray Bradbury on the screenplay, and their adaptation is a surprisingly successful distillation of Melville’s voice and themes. Huston’s memories of the production were not fond; he described it as the most difficult picture he ever made and said in his autobiography, “I lost so many battles during it that I even began to suspect that my […]
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“Made in NY Fellowships” Recipients Announced by Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in Partnership with IFP
In partnership with IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment has announced this year’s ten projects to be chosen for Made in NY Fellowships. The projects, which span documentary and narrative filmmaking as well as gaming, post-production, animation, VR and media/technology platforms, will receive yearlong incubator positions at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. Read the full press release below. NEW YORK, NY – Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) Commissioner Julie Menin and the Made in NY Media Center by IFP today announced the recipients of the second year of Made in NY Fellowships, […]
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How Do You Market a Madman? On the Trailers of Werner Herzog
“The sun dimmeth, the land sinketh, gusheth forth steam and gutting fire,” rasps Werner Herzog ominously, quoting Norse poetry from the Poetic Edda as bursts of lava erupt onto the screen in the trailer for his latest release, Into the Volcano (Netflix). The message is clear: the Underworld awaits. And your Teutonic guide is a veritable Stygian ferryman. So how do you market a madman? Or — more accurately — when? Herzog, the acclaimed septuagenarian director, first rose to prominence as part of the New German Cinema movement in the 1970s and quickly staked his claim in film’s firmament with […]
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Podcast: Alix Lambert Interviews Westworld Stunt Coordinator Mike Watson
In one of our occasional Filmmaker podcasts, director, artist and writer Alix Lambert interviews here stunt coordinator Mike Watson, whose work can be seen on HBO’s Westworld, which has its season finale tomorrow night. In addition to Westworld, Watson’s over 70 credits include films like Django Unchained, Hail Caesar!, Lost Highway, Rambo 3 and Silverardo. He was also the stunt coordinator for HBO’s Deadworld, which Lambert wrote for, and for the network’s subsequent David Milch series, John from Cincinnati, on which Lambert was an associate producer. In this wide-ranging conversation, the two discuss Watson’s background, what makes a good fight […]
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One-Eyed Jacks and Dreams: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks for Friday, December 2, 2016
One of the major film restoration events of 2016 was Universal’s digital overhaul of Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks (1961), an important bridge between the classical Westerns of John Ford and the genre-busting revisionism of Sam Peckinpah and Sergio Leone, not to mention Arthur Penn, who would work with Brando on another great iconoclastic Western, The Missouri Breaks, around 15 years later. Like The Missouri Breaks, One-Eyed Jacks is an unruly passion project filled with idiosyncratic touches and auteurist preoccupations. Yet since Brando never directed another movie before or after, the motifs connect not to his other work behind the camera […]
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In Austin, Building Community While Waiting for Festival Acceptance — or Rejection — Letters
Many of our filmmaker colleagues are at this very moment hoping to learn when they will screen their new projects to audiences for the first time. Come January, the semi-official season of festivals kicks off with the Sundance Film Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam, both in late January; followed immediately by Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin in early February; and in March, the South by Southwest Festival. This past week, those admitted to Sundance were notified after a panicky period of several months, and we’ll learn collectively later today which movies the official lineup includes. Regardless of the real path these […]
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Rabid, C.H.U.D. and More: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks for Friday, November 25, 2016
My “Recommended on a Friday” column is taking a holiday break, but in its place we’re spinning off Jim Hemphill’s picks into their own weekly series of posts. Here, Hemphill goes genre in his recommendations for Thanksgiving weekend. — SM Christmas comes early this week for horror fans with the release of one unadulterated masterpiece (David Cronenberg’s Rabid) and a trio of cult favorites (the two C.H.U.D. movies and Brian Yuzna’s underrated Return of the Living Dead 3). All four films, in different ways, embody virtues that are much rarer now than they were when the movies were released: an […]
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Ten Tips for Securing “Out of the Box” Funding from DOC NYC
At a DOC NYC panel titled “Out of the Box Funding,” moderator Julia Labassiere (Chief Executive of BAFTA NY) defined the prhase as “anything besides getting a commission (for example, from HBO or National Geographic, etc.).” Marilyn Ness, producer of Cameraperson and Trapped, started the panel off by noting that there are no shortcuts to obtaining so-called “out of the box” money: “It’s a lot of work.” Here are ten tips for how to successfully bring in this type of funding. First Money: Friends, Family and Affinity Groups When you begin a new film, you have to figure out your […]
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10 Ways to Advance Your Film’s Story, Outreach and Impact: A Report from the IFP Filmmaker Lab
With all the trauma of this past week, I at least had the good fortune of spending it at the IFP Filmmaker Lab in New York City. Filmmakers and my fellow mentors all showed up Wednesday morning stunned, tired and depressed from watching the election returns all night. Some stayed home but by the middle of the morning nearly all the filmmaking teams had turned up. I say that I was fortunate because one of the things that I love about the labs is that we become a community of support for each other. Even though my morning presentation was […]
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Show Me the Money! At DOC NYC, Making Your Skills Pay as an Independent Filmmaker
You’re a filmmaker. You’ve made one or two films, maybe even more. Or maybe you’re working on your first one and trying to figure out how to build a sustainable career. For now, you’re struggling: struggling to make ends meet, to find work that utilizes your skills, to keep your head above water while also finding the time, the energy, and the resources to work on your next project. If this sounds like you, welcome to the club. You’re not alone. Producer and director Esther Robinson led a panel discussion at DOC NYC about how to sustain yourself financially, while […]
