Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Aiming for the Tectonic: Composer Keegan DeWitt on The Tribe
In the brutal closing sequence of Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s The Tribe, I stirred so uncomfortably that I shut and covered my eyes. The fact that the sounds of this truly stunning finale proved more traumatizing and lasting than anything I could have seen with my eyes is a bold testament to the powerful work Slaboshpitsky’s done with his film. He has made you ingrain yourself so completely with the restrictions he’s put on you as a viewer that your involvement is total and devastating. Loosely following the drug-dealing and prostituting tentants of a Ukranian boarding school for the deaf, The Tribe unfolds with […]
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Process vs. Result: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Enjoy Filmmaking Again from my Brother, Mike Leigh, Rory Culkin and My Newborn Daughter
Lou Howe landed on our 25 New Faces list in 2013 while in post-production on his debut feature, Gabriel. An IFP Narrative Lab veteran, Howe here describes the lead-up to his film, and how one crucial, family-oriented decision in pre-production reshaped and enriched it. Gabriel opens today in New York at the Village East. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I see now that I had stopped enjoying making movies. It took me a long time to realize it, deep into post-production on my first feature Gabriel, I think, but I had lost sight of what I was doing over […]
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“I Had No Idea if It Actually Worked as a Film”: Christopher Makoto Yogi on the Sundance Directors Lab
Hawai’i-born director Christopher Makoto Yogi is at the Sundance Directors Lab with his feature, I Was a Simple Man. “Like marionettes on a toy stage, the ghosts of Seiichi’s past haunt the countryside in this tale of a Hawai’i family facing the imminent death of their eldest,” is how its described by the Sundance Institute. Below, Yoti describes his scene work with advisors at the Lab. Today ends week number three at the Directors Lab. These past three weeks have been a motion blur, too fast to process, but now in this brief Sunday respite I’m sitting outside looking up […]
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Kickstart Frederick Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights
The great documentarian Frederick Wiseman has turned to Kickstarter to complete his latest sweeping portrait, this time of the titular Queens neighborhood, In Jackson Heights. Wiseman is currently whittling down 120 hours worth of rushes to complete the finished product, which is set for a fall festival debut and a 2016 PBS broadcast. Check out a teaser of the film above, and read a bit about Wiseman’s editing process below. My job as editor is to make the film as best I can from the rushes. What I think about the subject matter is what you see in the final film. At least […]
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“What If I Had the Baby on the Mountain?”: Livi Newman on the Sundance Directors Lab
Olivia Newman is at the Sundance Directors Lab with her feature First Match, the tale of “a teenage girl from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood [who] decides that joining the all-boys high school wrestling team is the only way back to her estranged father.” She is also eight months pregnant. Below, she writes about that experience. “What are you afraid of?” A month before the Sundance Directors Lab began, this question was posed to us via email by artistic director, Gyula Gazdag. I hadn’t yet met Gyula, and had no idea that he would eventually impart some of the deepest insights to […]
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“The Audience May Never Know How Personal It Is”: Mary Coleman on Developing Films at Pixar
We’re very excited to give you a sneak peak into the Pixar process in this week’s episode of She Does Podcast featuring Mary Coleman. Mary is the Senior Development Executive at Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios. For the past 16 years, she has worked with directors and writers to dig into their personal memories and create stories that adults and kids can relate to. Mary got her start in theater, performing on stage, working behind the scenes and a stint as a director. She talks about time spent with her grandmother, who fostered her creative side; how “faking it ‘till you […]
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Sundance Institute Announces Eight Projects for Documentary Edit and Story Labs
The Sundance Institute has announced the eight projects that will take part in their Documentary Edit and Story lab at the Sundance Resort in June and July. All participating projects are in the advanced stages of post-production and will work on their rough cuts in the two-part lab. This year’s Creative Advisors include Marshall Curry (Point and Shoot), Geoffrey Richman (Racing Extinction), Kate Amend (The Case Against 8), Richard Hankin (God Loves Uganda), Victor Livingston (The Queen of Versailles) and more. The full list of projects and synopses is below. The Bad Kids Director: Keith Fulton & Lou Pepe Editor: Jacob Bricca At […]
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Behind the Crowdfunding Campaign to Finish Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind
At first, I viewed the Indiegogo campaign to help finish Orson Welles’ last film as a desperate attempt to solve a troubled situation. I was hauling in all my feelings about the Kickstarter saturation that has infected indie film culture. Everyone and their mother is crowdfunding their films — now the late Orson Welles? It felt like a violation against his legacy and made me incredibly sad. After all of this time, Orson Welles still can’t raise money the “normal” way?! But now, after much thought and digging, I see the campaign as a triumphant way to actively and symbolically help […]
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Understanding Copyright Law: Pitches, Facts, Characters and the Ambiguities of Section 102
Gregory Bernstein’s book Understanding the Business of Entertainment, the Legal and Business Essentials All Filmmakers Should Know, published this week, discusses such important topics for filmmakers as copyright law, First Amendment law, the FCC, the growth of media conglomerates, studio development and distribution, entertainment contracts, as well as a section for independent filmmakers. The following excerpt comes from the chapter about copyright law. Among many other things, the chapter discusses how story ideas cannot be copyrighted. The excerpt below, however, discusses one way filmmakers and other creative people can nevertheless protect ideas from being stolen, and whether facts, characters and titles may be copyrighted. Protecting Ideas via Contract Law Say […]
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Mad Women: An Excerpt from Jeff Lipsky’s Memoir
Filmmaker Jeff Lipsky’s latest feature, Mad Women, opens July 10th in New York, July 24 in Los Angeles and across the country in August. Here, the longtime distributor and director shares an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, which is scheduled for publication in 2016. At noon, on an early October day in 2014, after wrapping a scene at the Plainview Library for my sixth film Mad Women, a scene that would end up on the editing room’s digital floor, I commandeered a crew car and chaffeured a breakaway team to race back to Massapequa, Long Island. I needed to film […]
