Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Can She Pull It Off? (Or, How to Hire Women Directors)
When I started working in film in 1995, there weren’t many women in the business overall, and women directors were almost unheard of. Twenty years later, I’m still here, but, despite gains in a variety of other fields from pharmacy to law, women directors are not getting any more work than they did when I was starting out. During the last several months we have enjoyed what you might call a consciousness-raising moment in show business, with a variety of folks sounding the alarm all over social media about Hollywood’s sustained resistance to bringing in new faces. (For example, check […]
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The Data Says, “We Have a Problem”: Finding Solutions for Film’s Problems with Diversity
Since the publication of “The Data Says, ‘We Have a Problem’” in our Winter print edition, the conversation around diversity and the movie business has become louder and even more urgent. As more and more studies are published detailing Hollywood’s biased hiring practices and hashtags like #oscarssowhite explode across social media, now, during the lead-up to the Academy Awards, is an apt time to unlock from our paywall this article by Esther Robinson. It cogently articulates the reasons why all of us must care about these issues before it then goes on to offer actual and practical solutions that we […]
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“Let Me Work it Out”: Four Takeaways from Veep Writer Alexis Wilkinson on She Does Podcast
Alexis Wilkinson went from being the first black woman President of Harvard’s acclaimed humor publication, The Lampoon, to writing for HBO’s hit comedy series, Veep. She’s become an outspoken public figure and writer–with work featured in Slate, Opening Ceremony and TIME–but as we know, big victories such as these don’t come without a lot of work, a few disruptions and some twists and turns in the road. In this episode of She Does podcast, Alexis recalls her experiences of “comping” or trying out for The Lampoon multiple times, finding her place in the middle of an elitist institution, losing her […]
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Time Travel via Production Design: Jia Zhangke’s Mountains May Depart
Mountains May Depart begins as a love triangle, whose three connecting lines separate and recross across three segments in 1999 (two years after Jia Zhangke’s debut feature), 2014 and 2025. The 1999 opening brings us back to Jia’s native Shanxi, whose streets by now look very, very familiar to anyone who’s kept up with his work. As Tao, the woman at the center of the love triangle, Jia’s professional/personal partner Zhao Tao is introduced in period peasant style: strategically layered brightly lined sweaters, nothing too form-fitting or fashion-forward, hair straight and uncomplicatedly pulled-back. In 2014 — following marriage and divorce to wealthy Zhang Jinsheng (Yi Zhang) — she’s […]
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Creating a Promotional Video for the Kindle Best-Selling Sci-Fi Series Post-Human
David Simpson is the author of the bestselling sci-fi novel series Post-Human. There are currently five books in the series, with two more planned. Born in Ireland, he has lived in Vancouver since 2000 and believed he would end up a teacher of English until he discovered self-publishing on the Kindle. Having had success self-publishing, he hoped to create a promotional video for the series that might lead to the production of an actual movie. The resulting video represents what Simpson thinks the opening sequence of a Post-Human film might look like. The truly fascinating part of the story is […]
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Six Filmmaking Takeaways from a Novelist-turned-Director
The path that finally led to the making of The Removals — a feature-length paranoid lo-fi thriller and love story produced by Two Dollar Radio — was a very, very long and twisty one. As it probably is for many films. I spent five weeks in the summer of 2015 with an amazing crew and actors making a film that I had been dreaming about and plotting out in fits and starts since I was about 20-years old. And I’m 50 now. I basically had to unlearn everything I thought I knew about the creative process. Here are a few […]
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On Being an Independent Filmmaker and Watching Star Wars: The Force Awakens Six Times
Like a lot of people, I went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens when it opened in December. By my fourth screening, I started to feel embarrassed. By my sixth, I was at peace again. Most times, I went with combinations of family and friends (though that third screening was definitely solo) because Star Wars had helped shape these relationships years ago. Just as important, it was the series that hooked me and so many of us on filmmaking. In 1983, PBS aired From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga during their December telethon. I was […]
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Bringing People Together in VR: Sakchin Bessette on Moment Factory
For the past 14 years Montreal’s Moment Factory has been bucking the online trend to create larger-than-life, physical reality (PR?) experiences that force folks to come together in the flesh-and-blood world. With over 300 multimedia projects in wide-ranging locations under their belt — from the LAX international terminal, to the Atlantic City Boardwalk, to Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia cathedral — the studio is still perhaps best known to Americans for designing Madonna’s halftime spectacle at the 2012 Super Bowl. Filmmaker was fortunate enough to speak with co-founder and creative director Sakchin Bessette about the profession of experience designing, and whether the […]
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DP Caleb Heymann on Evoking the Early ’90s in Sundance Winner As You Are
The first feature film from writer/director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, As You Are unfolds as the story of three teenage friends in the early 1990s. Joris-Peyrafitte hired Caleb Heymann, a fellow newcomer to feature filmmaking, to shoot the film. Heymann spoke with Filmmaker about shifting aspect ratios, vintage anamorphic lenses and the execution of a tricky long take. As You Are premiered at Sundance 2016 in the U.S. Dramatic program. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Heymann: Producer Sean Patrick Burke had seen […]
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Cinematographer Steven Holleran on Capturing the Streets of Cleveland in The Land
Cinematographer Steven Holleran has shot more than a dozen shorts since 2011. He makes his Sundance debut with The Land, a film about four skateboarding teenagers in Cleveland. Holleran speaks with Filmmaker below about Cleveland and capturing a city’s essence visually. The Land debuted in the NEXT program at Sundance 2016. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Holleran: The writer and director of The Land, Steven Caple Jr., and I were in the same introductory filmmaker class at USC’s MFA […]
