Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Orchard Releases Detailed Distribution Revenue Figures for Cartel Land, Launches New Film Analytics Dashboard
Distributor The Orchard launched today what they are calling “the industry’s first fully-transparent dashboard for film analytics.” Using figures for their recent release, the Oscar-nominated doc Cartel Land, the dashboard provides hard figures for film revenues across both different platforms and then tracks and projects them over time. Simply put, this is extraordinary. The lack of digital reporting figures has been cited repeatedly in Filmmaker and elsewhere as an impediment to filmmakers seeking to create business plans for their films. The Cartel Land example posted today provides significantly more granular detail than is typically reported in the trades, and dynamic […]
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Canon Surprises With Two Camera Announcements
Canon has announced two new cameras, one expected, the other a bit of a surprise: the Canon 5D Mark IV and the Canon C700 Cinema Camera. Ever since the amazing success of the Canon 5D Mark II, the announcement of new cameras from Canon has tended to provoke a fairly standard response from bloggers and social media; in their still cameras, the video functions are always considered hobbled in some way, and their video cameras are always too expensive and don’t have the features found in some of the latest cameras. And then Canon sells a boatload of the cameras, […]
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VR Creators Can Now Submit to Sundance New Frontier Story Lab
Calling all creators working at the intersection of film and technology: Sundance Institute is accepting applications for the next New Frontier Story Lab. Now in its tenth year, New Frontier at Sundance Institute provides support to artists working in Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and other new storytelling forms. The Labs and Residency programs at New Frontier work to identify and foster independent artists and creative technologists who are developing interactive, immersive or experimental projects that aim to create rich and resonant experiences for audiences. Past participants include Roger Ross Williams, Yung Jake, Chris Milk, Cory McAbee, Navid and Vassiliki Khonsari, Karim Ben Khelifa, […]
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Attention, Young Filmmakers: This Could Be Your Chance to Go to Sundance
For the second year in a row, Adobe Project 1324 and Sundance Institute are teaming up for a short film challenge to find bold new voices in the next generation of filmmakers. If you’re a filmmaker between the ages of 18 and 24, you can create and submit an original one to eight minute film exploring the theme “What’s Next?” “We encourage you to respond as broadly or specifically to the prompt as possible,” advises the Adobe Project 1324 web site. According to the Sundance Institute, films will be evaluated for technical excellence, demonstration of an original voice, innovative storytelling and strong […]
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#DocsSoWhite?: A Panel on Diversity in Documentary Filmmaking
#OscarsSoWhite is hardly a new phenomena in dramatic narrative circles and Hollywood, but determining where the doc community fits into the debate – is. Without empirical data, it would seem the doc community is doing a better job at building diverse and inclusive opportunities than Hollywood counterparts. But if that’s true, by how much? What measures are in place to ensure that the people in front and behind the camera better reflect the world in which we live and the stories we tell? How do public vs. private dollars impact this outcome? If, in the end, it is determined that […]
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Missy Mazzoli, Royce Vavrek, and James Darrah On Their Opera Adaptation of Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves
Lars von Trier’s fantastically wrenching 1996 film Breaking the Waves has been adapted into a new opera by composer Missy Mazzoli, librettist Royce Vavrek and director James Darrah. Excerpts from the opera will be performed this coming Monday, September 12, at the Guggenheim Museum and then the opera itself will officially premiere in an Opera Philadelphia production in Philadelphia from Thursday, September 22 through Saturday, October 1. At I Care if You Listen, Mazzoli and Vavrek discussed their adaptation. From Vavrek: I have loved von Trier’s film since I first saw it at the age of fourteen. I can remember […]
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What Filmmakers Need to Know About Indie Film Distribution in 2016
You’ve made an independent film and you’d like to get it out into the world. Unfortunately, unless you’re already a “name” director with an established track record or your film has played at top festivals, there’s no clear route to getting distribution. In recent years as the traditional distribution model has shifted, the future of film distribution has been murky. But at a Portland Film Festival panel devoted to distribution, Drafthouse Films chief operating officer James Shapiro declared that “We have finally arrived at a place where we know what the future will look like, at least for the immediate […]
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Watch: Spike Jonze’s Amazing, Four-Minute Kenzo Perfume Ad
Whether the performer is Bjork or Christopher Walken or even himself, Spike Jonze has committed some amazing dance scenes to film. Add one more to his impressive choreographic filmography with this brand-new Kenzo perfume commercial. To the beat of “Mutant Brain,” composed by Jonze’s brother, Sam Spiegel, actress and dancer Margaret Qualley escapes the suffocating drone of some kind of charity event by cutting loose in the conference hall’s surrounding hallways, staircases and balconies. The dance was choreographed by Ryan Heffington, known for his work with Sia and Maddie Ziegler.
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Trailer Watch: Borbetomagus Documentary A Pollock of Sound
Well into their fourth decade, experimental music trio Borbetomagus remain for the musically adventurous an ear-blistering and essential listening experience. With saxophonists Don Dietrich and Jim Sauter in New York and guitarist Donald Miller in New Orleans, that experience is one caught live on one of the band’s European tours or occasional U.S. one-offs and mini tours. But now moviegoers will have a chance to take in some of Borbetomagus’s impact with A Pollock of Sound, Jef Mertens’s documentary about the band. With commentary from, among others, writer Byron Coley and Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore, the documentary should place […]
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DP Eve M. Cohen Discusses Virtual Reality and Crowdfunding
In part I of this interview, cinematographer Eve M. Cohen talked about working on the independent feature Be Somebody. In the second part of the interview, she talks about her experience with shooting for virtual reality projects, as well as Seed and Spark, a crowd funding and community site for filmmakers. Filmmaker: You’ve started working in virtual reality. Can you tell us about that? Cohen: Virtual reality is really exciting and I think that it’s important to differentiate virtual reality filmmaking from 2D or linear filmmaking. Virtual reality is a completely new medium and it takes place completely surrounding you, […]
