Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Five Questions with Bloomin Mud Shuffle Director Frank V. Ross
For my money, Frank V. Ross is one of the most inventive, witty and honest low-budget filmmakers that major festival land has neglected to embrace. With the exception of the SXSW-premiering Audrey the Trainwreck, Ross’s films have toured the regional circuit like best kept secrets, with their structurally complex, yet casually rendered studies of modern relationships serving as any program’s unmitigated highpoint. His latest, Bloomin Mud Shuffle, which premieres tonight at the Wisconsin Film Festival, concerns Lonnie (James Ransone), a vaguely alcoholic house painter, and the object of his unsteady affection, Monica (Alexia Rasmussen). Such a distilled synopsis scarcely does justice to Ross’s execution, with its […]
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Sibling Riflery: Black Souls e eccezionale
“You’re dressed like a shepherd!” Driving around Milan, middle-aged Luigi Carbone (an unrecognizable Marco Leonardi, of Like Water for Chocolate fame) affectionately disparages his 20-year-old nephew, Leo (Giuseppe Fumo), before planting him in a job in his own industry. The only child has fled a Calabrian farm and the father who runs it, Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane, master of fluctuating facial tics), who is Luigi’s oldest brother. Leo hopes for an exciting and lucrative life better tailored to his needs than herding: working with Luigi, his idol, Uncle Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta), and their childhood pal and staunch ally, Nicola (Stefano Priolo). […]
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Living through Death: Points of View in Shogun Assassin 2
At Filmmaker, we like and frequently post critical video essays, and today we are happy to post the first in a series from writer, editor and director Joe Peeler. Watch his explicated take on Shogun Assassin 2 and read his critical essay below. — Editor Life is like film. The moments tick away, insistent upon their accumulation until the movie ends or you die. The thesis of comedy is: life is ahead of you. The thesis of tragedy is: life is behind you. The thesis of Misumi Kenji’s Shogun Assassin 2 is: joke’s on you, nothing fucking matters. Every joke […]
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“What Do We Mean by ‘Interactive’? Why Does it Have to be 0s and 1s?”: Tribeca Interactive’s Ingrid Kopp on the She Does Podcast
Ingrid Kopp has been exploring the highest peaks and lowest valleys of independent film for the past 15 years, and for the past six years she has been island-hopping to discover intersections between storytelling, social media and technology. As the Director of Interactive at the Tribeca Film Institute, Kopp supports interactive and cross-platform projects through the TFI New Media Fund and TAA Interactive Prototype Fund. She is the creator of Tribeca Hacks, TFI Interactive and the curator of Storyscapes at the Tribeca Film Festival. All of these spaces invite story, tech and design into the same room to foster conversations […]
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The Sony Action Cam Can Make Movies Never Seen Before (Sponsored Post)
Sony’s Action Cam line provides a competitive alternative to GoPro for filmmakers looking to expand their production resources. To showcase the camera’s capabilities, Sony’s launched a series of films demonstrating how filmmakers can use the Action Cam to make movies “never before seen.” More than 20 will eventually be unveiled on YouTube and Sony’s products website, where you can find more information about the making of each film. Above, check out Charles Young’s Paperports, which documents his work with intricate miniature paper architecture. The FDR-X1000V model offers both 4K and 2K resolution. Some notable technical specs regarding resolution and frame rate: 4K: […]
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Iain Marcks on Navigating Ambition, Directing Actors and His Short Film, Switched
Imagine you’re neighbors with a film-world colleague. With that unmistakable, breathless post-postproduction glow, he asks you to take a look at his new short film – and while it’s certainly slick, with grist for conversation to spare, there are a few things you can’t help but think could have been done differently. The film is a head-on tackle of an intrinsically repugnant (some would say “problematic”) genre, the rape-revenge picture. It turns tables on audience expectation by pitting a witless pickup artist (Joe Mischo) against a woman he meets at a bar (Kara Elverson) who, duly, kidnaps and ties him […]
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How Stanley Kubrick Shot Barry Lyndon Using Natural Light
Earlier this week we posted this video with Joe Dunton discussing the lenses used by Stanley Kubrick in his films. (Note: unfortunately, that previous video has been removed by the uploader.) Here’s the next in a Kubrick cinematography playlist: various cinematographers on his use of the BNC camera and Zeiss f/0.7 lenses to shoot Barry Lyndon in natural light. (As a reader below notes, this is an excerpt from Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, which is recommended viewing.) Previously at Filmmaker, Jim Hemphill sat down with three of the film’s actors for a discussion of the making of that […]
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Factory 25 Releases Caveh Zahedi Box Set Retrospective, Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi
Factory 25’s long awaited Caveh Zahedi box set is now accepting pre-orders and on the verge of shipping. From Filmmaker’s print edition, here’s Peter Rinaldi on the mammoth release. DVD is not dead. It’s the new vinyl. Unconvinced? Perhaps a six DVD set of an important and influential American director’s films, most of which have never been released on video, will change your mind. Factory 25’s “Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi” might be the most comprehensive collection of an independent filmmaker’s work available in one set: five feature films, over two dozen shorts, a feature-length series […]
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Why the Art of Observing Life is Enough
The following guest essay by filmmaker Amy Benson, about how sad, unexpected developments changed the course of her documentary, Drawing the Tiger, coincides with a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the film’s completion. Please visit its Kickstarter page to learn more and consider donating. — Editor My husband, Scott Squire, and I started filming what is now Drawing the Tiger seven years ago. It began as a ‘social justice’ documentary; we imagined the tagline would be, “The best thing we can do in the world is educate the girls.” We knew the story we were going to tell… you know it too. […]
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“Getting Funded is Only Part of the Story”: Kickstarter Embraces Timeline Film Pages with Spotlight
Kickstarter has rolled out today Spotlight, a very clever new design option for their project pages. On first glance it seems simple — sort of like Facebook’s Timeline, Spotlight turns your Kickstarter page into a reverse chronological story of your project’s inception, development, successful funding (you hope) and afterlife. By organizing your updates and milestones in the form of a clean narrative scroll, it encourages you to continue that story long after your campaign ends — making Kickstarter a stickier site. (More traffic for Kickstarter!) To make it worthwhile to filmmakers, as the video below shows, you’re given a prominently […]
