Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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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 […]
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IFP Announces Narrative Line-Up for its Annual Independent Filmmaker Labs
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced today the ten narratives selected for the 2015 Independent Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s annual year-long fellowship for first-time feature directors. The creative teams of the selected films are currently attending the first week’s sessions – The Time Warner Foundation Completion Labs – taking place June 8-12 at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. Featuring a stylistically diverse slate of sci-fi, fantasy, drama, young adult, comedy, hybrid and horror, this year showcases films from filmmakers across the nation. 70% of the creative teams hail from outside of New York and Los Angeles. […]
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Five Picks for the 2015 Northside Film Festival
Clocking in at just three days, the Northside Film Festival still provides enough breadth in programming to rival an event three times its size. In addition to the centerpiece DIY Competition and short programs, the fest has added an episodics sidebar this year, featuring Doron Max Hagay’s Monica web series, among others. Due to pre-screener availability, the following recommendations are features only, but that scarcely means you shouldn’t keep any eye on the other sections. Northside runs from today through Wednesday at UnionDocs, Nitehawk, Videology and the Wythe Hotel. Tired Moonlight If you missed Britni West’s Slamdance Grand Jury Prize winner at New Directors/New Films, […]
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Watch: Jack Dunphy’s Serenity
Jack Dunphy, a co-writer on Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven and a frequent collaborator of Caveh Zahedi, is currently raising funds for his first feature, Living With Others, on Kickstarter. To celebrate crossing his initial goal, Dunphy has released his animated, Sundance-selected short Serenity online. Living With Others, which just added Zahedi as an executive producer, will blend live action and animation, and Dunphy had the following to say about his choice: I’m punctuating the movie with animation because it makes it easier for me to communicate difficult thoughts and emotions. Subconscious hang-ups are brought to the surface when I animate, and that helps me realize […]
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Spy: The Third Feature by Paul Feig, Our George Cukor
During his career, George Cukor was often referred to as a “women’s director” for his facility with foregrounded female performers: Katharine Hepburn in no less than 10 collaborations, Jean Simmons in The Actress, the women in The Women. By that logic, Paul Feig is our Cukor: beginning with Bridesmaids (since we’ve confined I Am David and Unaccompanied Minors to the rubble of collective amnesia), he’s established himself as a specialist in female-led comedy, following up with The Heat and now Spy. In interviews prior to Bridesmaids‘ release, he mused that the film better not bomb or he’d have messed it up for women in comedy for decades. If none […]
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Five Questions for Sabrina Dridje about the Creative>>Founder Lab
The Creative>>Founder Lab is the newest offering from the Made in New York Media Center by IFP, a eight-week program intended to help creative professionals develop the business skills required to see their projects to fruition. Design thinking, monetization, rapid prototyping, how to speak with developers, gamification and systems thinking will all be taught by a team of leaders in their fields. (Note: IFP is Filmmaker‘s parent organization.) The fee for the program is $1,200, and only 20 spots are available. Deadline is June 18 at 11:59PM. More information can be found here at the link. Below, we ask Sabrina […]
