Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Big Transition: How to Break into TV Writing, Part One
Maybe you’ve had some success writing features. You’ve sold a spec, landed an assignment, made the Black List or wrote and directed your own indie feature. Maybe you’re a playwright, or you’ve got a web series, or you’ve made a few shorts, or even written a few good features. Or maybe you’re simply an emerging writer working toward that first sale or produced credit. No matter — in today’s film business, you can be any one of the above and still be thinking about one thing: moving into television. If you’re thinking about trying a TV staffing job, or even […]
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Landlord Blues: Ira Sachs on Little Men
There are little men, and then there are big forces — economic tides, societal shifts, structural change. The beautiful strength of Ira Sachs’s recent work — his mid-career surge after the five-year gap that followed his larger-budget, mini-major film, Married Life — is that Sachs’s characters are such complicated, soulful men and women clearly impacted (but not defined) by the larger issues swirling around them. In his lightly autobiographical 2012 film Keep the Lights On, Sachs essayed the romantic life of a documentary filmmaker in a relationship with a drug-addicted lawyer, set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-millennium New York gay […]
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Trailer Watch: Natalie Portman’s A Tale of Love and Darkness
Natalie Portman optioned the rights to Amos Oz’s bestselling memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness more than eight years ago. The Israeli-born actress reportedly met with the writer before adapting the screenplay herself. Now the film, written, directed, and starring Portman, gets a trailer (above). Shot by veteran Polish DP Slawomir Idzia, the Hebrew-language film tells the story of a troubled young mother, Fania Oz (Portman), as she raises young Amos (Amir Tessler) during the turbulent early days of the state of Israel. Focus World will release the film, which premiered at Cannes last year, in theaters on August […]
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Points North Institute Announces New Shortform Editing Residency to Take Place During Camden International Film Festival
As the photo above indicates, Camden, Maine in the fall is a pretty idyllic place to get one’s head out of an urban edit room and gain perspective on one’s project. Apropos of that, the newly formed Points North Institute — a year-round organization that will produce the Camden International Film Festival as well as other events in Maine — has made its first major announcement: a new shortform editing residency. The week-long residency takes place during the Camden International Film Festival (September 15 – 18) and brings four selected filmmakers and/or journalists to Maine to work on their doc […]
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LG’s 34UC98 Ultrawide Monitor Fits All Post-Production Needs (Sponsored Post)
Part of LG’s family of ultrawide monitors, the 34UC98 model is a fast, reliable fit for all aspects of post-production. For editors, the 21:9 display screen (34′ diagonally) provides plenty of organizational room, eliminating the need for multiple monitors. Keeping track of everything becomes easier with the monitor’s LG Screen Split options, which allows control over resizing and displaying windows, as well as offering 14 different options for picture-in-picture display.An sRGB display of over 99% provides accurate color display for the post-production process. That process can begin quickly, since two Thunderbolt input/output ports allow movement of about 20 gegabits per second […]
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Trailer Watch: Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine
In Kate Plays Christine, which premiered earlier this year at Sundance, filmmaker Robert Greene tackles the story of Sarasota TV journalist Christine Chubbuck, who shot herself live on-air in 1974 and died 14 hours later. But rather than taking a straightforward documentary approach to Chubbuck’s story, Greene instead chronicles actress Kate Lyn Sheil’s preparation to play Chubbuck in a film that will conclude with her suicide. While Greene’s previous film Actress explored the real life of actress Brandy Burre, Kate Plays Christine relies on a constructed situation to which Sheil must act and react. Footage of Sheil preparing for the role are intercut with […]
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How To Talk to Your Investors about IRC Section 181
At Filmmaker we have covered Section 181, the United States’ film tax credit incentive, quite extensively, but this article by entertainment attorney Daniel J. Coplan, Esq. is both a great overview of how the incentive actually works for individual investors as well as an explanation of one underknown element. The latter concerns the ability of some investors to deduct against ordinary income, not passive income. In short, if you’re raising private equity for a U.S. film this year, read on. (This piece was originally published on LinkedIn and is reprinted with permission.) The purpose of this short article is to […]
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Ghost of a Ghost: Alain Gagnol on His Animated Noir Feature Phantom Boy and Co-Director’s Jean-Loup Felicioli’s Designs
Heroically serving as a lifeboat of ingenuity and sophistication while a flood of CG talking animal features drowns the animated landscape, GKIDS offers uniquely conceived, handcrafted and thoughtful storytelling in a medium that has often reached its greatest potential through the pencils and brushes of those seeking to create art rather than doll-selling tentpoles. The independent animation distributor has eight Academy Award nominations under its belt, and few companies in field have remained as truthful to their mantra as these New York-based dream confectioners. Earlier this year GKIDS released in the States the acclaimed, Paris-set steampunk adventure, April and the […]
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“I Tried Not to Be Didactic”: Werner Herzog on His MasterClass
A frequent and vocal opponent of film schools, the director Werner Herzog founded his own, the Rogue Film School, in 2009. He teaches students in weekend seminars held at varying locations around the world in what it feels like an oppositional practice to the standard four-year university programs. Now, Herzog has taken the Rogue Film School concept one step further by devising his own online program through MasterClass. The course is available online for $90 and offers 26 video lessons with accompanying exercises and course materials. I spoke to Herzog about the production of the class, his expectations for the course, […]
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Fix It in Production: A 1st A.D. Tells You What Mistakes to Avoid when Shooting an Independent Film
I’ve been writing, shooting and producing short films, about twenty of them, since 1999. I’ve also DP’d several shorts and a zombie feature. I enjoy assisting other filmmakers in North Carolina, where I live, and I’ve worked as AD over the last five years on both short- and long-form projects. The projects I’ve ADed have had budgets ranging from the tiny to the small, all well under $100,000. More about my work at Turnip Films. This article describes what I’ve learned as AD about how to run a shoot. Everyone I’ve worked with did their best and turned out some […]
