Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“I Play a Little with Fire”: Photographer and Director Stacy Kranitz on She Does Podcast
Stacy Kranitz is a documentary photographer who explores history, representation and otherness. She has developed her style, one that is full of movement, emotionally raw, gritty and features individuals in high-octane environments. These individuals are sometimes new subjects and other times her longtime friends, folks she has been documenting since she started her work in Appalachia in 2009. Stacy’s photos are sometimes bloody, many times violent, often sexualized, occasionally drug-induced and always causing a stir. She has documented people and places all around the world, including snake handlers in Appalachia, cockfighting in Louisiana and black metal bands in Norway. Her […]
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Blurred Lines: Content Intersections at the IFP Screen Forward Conference
As the IFP Screen Forward Conference comes to a close this afternoon with a series of talks on VR, I’ve collated a handful of takeaways from the week’s panels that point towards an ever thinning gap between episodics and film, festivals and an official release, marketing and distribution, and, hopefully, creator and audience. With the abundance of tools at her finger tips, today’s filmmaker must function like a Swiss army knife, ready and willing to carry her project every step of the way from inception to distribution. Here are a few tips on how to do just that. Know your serials before pitching your film. During […]
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Shooting on Film? At IFP Screen Forward, Debating the Merits and Pitfalls in a Digital Age
In this era of digital projectors, ALEXA cameras and minimal, DSLR-enabled budgets, the art of loading rolls of film into a magazine and shooting with a 16 or 35mm lens is fast becoming a fading practice. And yet, there are those determined storytellers who dare to pull it off. But is shooting on film on a low budget even possible these days? A Wednesday morning panel at the IFP’s Screen Forward conference comprised of cinematographer Frank DeMarco (All is Lost, Margin Call), producer Adam Piotrowicz (Listen Up Phillip, Queen of Earth). cinematographer/producer/director/editor Ferne Pearlstein (Imelda) and director/producer Ari Taub (79 […]
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NYC Filmmakers Supporting One Another: Ani Simon-Kennedy at IFP Independent Film Week
[As IFP Independent Film Week comes to a close, Ani Simon-Kennedy shares her experience there in this guest post.] “I think coffee counts as a food group.” As we enter Day 3 of IFP Film Week, talk is of the fuel that keeps us going. It’s been a mad dash from meeting to meeting with my partner-in-crime, Cailin Yatsko, who has the badass title of cinematographer/producer on our next feature film The Short History of the Long Road. As one of the 25 projects selected for RBC’s Emerging Storytellers, ours is in good company and part of the fun of this week has been getting […]
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IFP Screen Forward: 5 Questions for Producer Peter Phok about Crowdfunding’s Aftermath
Producer Peter Phok (The Sacrament, The Innkeepers, V/H/S) is one of five professionals this morning at an IFP Screen Forward panel titled “Bridging the Gap after Crowdfunding.” The title of the panel is an interesting collision of terms as only recently has crowdfunding been factored into independent film financing equations alongside terms like “mezzanine,” “senior debt” and “tax credit monetization.” But, indeed, crowdfunding is part of many independent films’ financing schemes, and its success — or failure — has much to do with a film’s greenlight. Below, Phok answers questions about film and crowdfunding. Filmmaker: Your panel is called, “Bridging […]
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Anticipate Questions and Be Prepared with Answers: Jennifer Reeder at IFP Independent Film Week
[Jennifer Reeder files a guest post from IFP Independent Film Week; above, a still from her short film A Million Miles Away.] Coming to you live from the morning of day 3 of the Project Forum. I spent all day yesterday in meetings with my feature length narrative project called As With Knives and Skin, a feminist teen noir set in rural Kentucky. Sunday, which was day one, was relatively light. All the projects had a pitch rehearsal in the morning, which was really helpful, and l loved getting a sense of all the other invited projects. The wide range is inspiring […]
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IFP Screen Forward: Five Questions for Producer Mike S. Ryan
Ahead of his conversation at tomorrow’s Screen Forward conference, Mike S. Ryan fielded five questions about his career and recent Filmmaker piece “TV is Not the New Film.” A producer on such films as Meek’s Cutoff, The Comedy and Palindromes, Ryan explains how transmedia represents an loss of faith in the filmic medium, why True Detective is an exception to the rule of the TV writer as auteur, and what he looks for in a script. Filmmaker: In your “TV is Not the New Film” piece, you mention that the move to transmedia shows a “[loss] of faith in the medium,” while many others seem to argue that transmedia is […]
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IFP Screen Forward: 5 Questions for Sales Agent and Producer Bill Strauss
You can conceive an ingenious plot, pen the perfect script, even begin to line up your ultimate cast — but it all risks being for naught if you can’t sell your vision. Even today, as alternative platforms emerge onto the distribution landscape, a successful pitch and getting that greenlight remains one of the most critical steps towards your project seeing the light of day, not to mention one of the most intimidating. But what goes into — and stays out of — making a powerful pitch? How do the people on the other side of that desk approach the process […]
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An Unpredictable Release: Four Surprising Facts about It Follows’ Road to Success
During the second day of IFP’s Screen Forward conference, Indiewire’s Eric Kohn moderated a discussion between Animal Kingdom producers Joshua Astrachan and David Kaplan, and former Radius-TWC CEO Tom Quinn on the breakout success of David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. An indie juggernaut, It Follows grossed 15 times its $1.3 million budget at the box office, in large part due to Radius’s last minute decision to stall VOD and expand to a wide release two weeks after its limited theatrical opening on March 13, riding the wave of word of mouth rather than costly P&A. Below are four major takeaways on the film’s unusual […]
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Reinaldo Marcus Green’s Ten Goals for IFP’s Independent Film Week
[Editor’s note: this is the first of two guest posts from Reinaldo Marcus Green about his experiences at this year’s IFP Independent Film Week. Green was one of our 25 New Faces of Film this year; click here to read that profile.] IFP’s Independent Film Week is an exciting time in New York City, where both aspiring and established filmmakers — writers, directors and producers — come together to share their stories. For one week, NYC becomes the world’s premier destination for independent film, television, and web-series development. It’s a time when nomadic filmmakers feel like they have a home. […]
