Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Power of 16mm: Directors and DPs Talk at IFP Film Week
Jake Perlin opened the IFP Film Week panel on shooting 16mm or Super16mm by saying that, as Artistic and Programming Director at Metrograph Cinema, he wants to see films in the way filmmakers want to make them: true to their vision. When it came time to shoot her second feature, director Eliza Hittman went back and forth as to what to what format to shoot on. When she was in grad school, she shot three short films on 16mm and fell in love with the format’s look as well as the shooting process. She learned to shoot in an organized […]
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Why Director Joel Potrykus is Releasing His New Movie as “Pay What You Wish”
Along with the debut of a brand new trailer (above) for Joel Potrykus’ The Alchemist Cookbook, distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories has announced that the film will be released via BitTorrent Now for pay-what-you-wish on October 7th. The Alchemist Cookbook is a portrait of a Sean, a young hermit in the woods who sets out to solve an old mystery, and loses his mind along the way. Starring Ty Hickson and Amari Cheatom, the film premiered at SXSW and screened at various other festivals including BAMcinemaFest and Fantasia. Potrykus, who previously directed Ape and Buzzard, recently penned an Op-Ed about why he’s a fan […]
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The Six Fonts of Cameraperson
Much has already been written about the piercing human insight of Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson. Working with material originally shot for a dozen other films, Johnson refashions the offcuts of her two-decade career as a documentary cinematographer into a patchwork memoir — one that reveals just as much about the woman behind the camera as the individuals who pass fleetingly before its lens. The effect is emotionally exhilarating, but the approach is unabashedly formal — and less has been written about the ways in which Johnson fractionates her footage in order to create a film of clear divisions and implicit rules. […]
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Feeling Empathetic through Virtual Reality at IFP Film Week
One focus of this year’s IFP Film Week is on the future of cinema in the form of Virtual Reality. A little background for those new to it: There are currently two ways of creating immersive worlds. The first wave and most common is spherical video, where you strap a bunch of cameras all together in an outward-facing circle. This approach has the familiarity of using cameras, but the viewer can’t physically move through the space — they’re akin to a locked-off tripod with a 360 swivel head, planted in one spot as characters and the world moves around them. […]
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New Innovators in Distribution: Talking Trends and Hybrid Models at IFP Film Week
Film has been a dying industry for as long as I’ve been making, selling and distributing them. That’s what they say. And there’s certainly evidence that sales agents and distributors are having to re-think how they do business. The recent news that respected arthouse distributor Fortissimo Films had filed for bankruptcy left many saddened, but it seems that news of this nature is increasingly frequent. One of yesterday’s first panels at IFP Film Week, “New Innovators: Distribution,” moderated by Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris, brought together industry members who are working innovatively in film, TV, and online distribution to discuss […]
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IFP Film Week: Lance Weiler on His Emergent Creative Process
In 1983, Lance Weiler’s van burst into flames during a family vacation. Eleven months later his house burnt to the ground. His latest project, “Where There’s Smoke,” mixes theater, film, gaming, and emergent technology story in an attempt to uncover the truth about those two incidents. On Sunday, September 18 as part of the IFP Film Week’s Screen Forward Conference, Weiler will discuss the creative process behind the immersive storytelling project and present hands-on opportunities for participants to experiment. Weiler has been the creative force behind some of the most innovative projects in the new immersive storytelling space. An alumni of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, Weiler is […]
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Cinema Eye Announces 2017 “Shorts List”
Cinema Eye today announced the ten nonfiction short films that have been named as semi-finalists for the 2017 Cinema Eye Honor for Nonfiction Short Film. The announcement of the annual Cinema Eye “Shorts List” was made on the eve of the 2016 Camden International Film Festival (CIFF), a key festival partner and sponsor of the Cinema Eye Honors. For the third year in a row, all ten films will screen this weekend at CIFF on the coast of Maine. “In the past few years, the short form has been one of documentary’s most exciting modes to engage subjects and stories,” […]
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Trailer Watch: Rebecca Hall in Antonio Campos’ Christine
The story of Christine Chubbuck, the Florida news reporter who shot herself to death on live TV in 1974, was recounted in two separate films which premiered earlier this year at Sundance. Kate Plays Christine, the performative documentary from Robert Greene, was released last month and now Christine, Antonio Campos’ fictional version, has its first trailer. In addition to Rebecca Hall, who stars as the titular character, the dark drama features Michael C. Hall, Tracy Letts, Timothy Simons, J. Smith-Cameron, Maria Dizzia and John Cullum. The Orchard will release Christine on October 14.
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IFP Film Week: Gabo Arora and the UN’s First Virtual Reality App
“We’re great with empathy, but we really want action because we’re the UN. We need to shift the needle on things,” said filmmaker and United Nations creative director Gabo Arora about the UN’s first virtual reality app, UNVR, which launches today. The app launches with four VR films, including Clouds Over Sidra, which was created by Arora and filmmaker Chris Milk as a collaboration between the UN Millennium Campaign and UNICEF Jordan. Shot at the Zaatari refugee camp, Clouds Over Sidra tells the story of life inside the camp through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl named Sidra. The Sidra Project, which uses the […]
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Makeup Artist Makes Herself into Actor Steve Buscemi
We’ve shown you how lighting can change a face, and now we’ll show you how a makeup artist can turn a woman into… Steve Buscemi? Over at the Huffington Post, makeup artist Katelyn Galloway impressively transforms herself into the well known independent actor in just under four sped-up minutes. Watch the transformation below and then learn more about makeup artists in our article, “Secrets of Glam Squad: Inside the World of Film Hair and Makeup Artists.”
