Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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R.I.P., Documentary Great Albert Maysles
The legendary documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles passed away last night, reported The Criterion Collection on the day it is rereleasing one of his most indelible and influential works, Grey Gardens (co-directed with David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer). He was 88. With David, his brother, Albert Maysles made “direct cinema” documentaries that were politically and socially impactful upon release and aesthetically groundbreaking for generations of filmmakers to follow. The 1969 documentary Salesman (co-directed with Charlotte Zerin) captured the everyday sorrows of ordinary people — in this case, door-to-door Bible salesman — toiling in the shadows of both the American […]
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Say it Again: How to Do No-Budget ADR for Independent Films
My first feature, Veer!, was shot primarily on Super 16mm, on an old Eclair ACL I got off eBay. While it shot beautiful images, the camera sounded like a helicopter taking off when rolling. Interior dialog scenes were especially nightmarish for sound, and one scene in particular retains no original production audio because of this. We had to re-create the scene’s audio — dialogue, background ambience and foley — completely from scratch. But when I point out which scene it is, people don’t always believe me. Indeed, good ADR goes unnoticed, and as much as I’d like to pat myself […]
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Watch: “The Unloved: The Lone Ranger & Heaven’s Gate“
“How do we define failure when it comes to motion pictures?” Simultaneously defending the more-or-less rehabilitated Heaven’s Gate and the not-so-much The Lone Ranger is a hard task, but presumably someone has to do it. In this video essay, Scout Tafoya gives a surprisingly plausible stab at arguing that both are underrated slabs of greatness with much in common, alternately grimly realistic and expensively glossy takes on the genocide of the Native Americans, presentational flip sides of the same coin.
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Is Netflix’s Move Towards Traditional Distribution In Favor of Filmmakers, But Against the Theaters?
The notion of boycotting day-and-date releases seems a bit extreme since it’s a widely practiced distribution strategy for several years running, but that’s just what AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Carmike are planning with Cary Fukunaga’s Netflix-acquired Beasts of No Nation. The exhibitors informed Variety that they will not screen the film for the sole reason that “they do not want to provide screens to films that do not honor what is typically a 90-day delay between a theatrical debut and a home entertainment release,” thus conflating the latter, last step in the release process, with the more preliminary day-and-date. Their reasoning, however, speaks to the […]
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Sons of Anarchy: Cymbeline at Film Comment Selects
In delivering the first fully 20th-century filmic transplant of Hamlet, Michael Almereyda made wondering how he’d update each famous beat part of the fun, from “to be or not to be” rendered as prince Ethan Hawke’s internal monologue against Blockbuster’s “Action” aisle (totally unexpected, too-obvious only after its execution) to the total collapsing of “The Mousetrap”‘s text into a wordless Lewis Klahr short. That 2000 rendition took place in sleek, ever-more-expensive Manhattan — the birthright setting of one of Shakespeare’s most familiar plays, which deserved nothing less. This Cymbeline‘s location is never specified, but you can see Bay Ridge A-train subway stops at the frame’s sides; it’s an outer-borough and upstate […]
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Davey Foundation Offers Grants for Short Films; Deadline March 15
From filmmaker and Davey Foundation board member Dustin Guy Defa comes word of the upcoming deadline for the Davey Foundation, which will give three grants to filmmakers 35 years and younger for the production of short films. Ben Kegan’s The First Men won the Davey’s single grant last year. This year, two grants have been added, and the awards mix cash with in-kind services and mentorship. Full details below: The Davey Foundation was created to honor the life of David Ross Fetzer and his commitment to the film and theater arts. For 2015, the foundation is handing out three short […]
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For Your Film Set or Living Room, Dean Fleischer-Camp’s “Hyper-Generic” Prop Posters
When, in 2013, I spoke to Dean Fleischer Camp about his exquisitely deadpan web series, Catherine, created with Jenny Slate, I immediately wanted to know about its production design. How did he come up with its uncannily bland, generically discomforting visual spaces? The director told me that his inspirations included the ’90s TV show Kids in the Hall as well as Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom, but that part of the show’s visual aesthetic came from the porn-movie sets he was renting as a location. Now, Camp writes with word of a new project that furthers the aesthetic he’s been […]
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The Art of International Film Financing
As Charles Dickens aptly stated: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The global content business is booming in spite of US box office admissions not living up to expectations. Given the developing tastes of audiences and changing demographics, media today is inhabited now, not merely consumed. The recession forced innovation in funding and creativity, leading to an influx of options and new players. So, what do we look for in the future of film? If the awards season is any indication, the future is pretty stellar for us. This was the most indie Academy […]
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Palm Frites: Robin Campillo’s Eastern Boys
No matter the genre, you discover the imprimatur of the best classical Hollywood studio directors in all of their films—so posits the Auteur Theory. I accept the premise, with the proviso that it be applied, a bit differently, to the more distinctive non-Hollywood filmmakers, American or not. There’s a kernel of truth in the old saw that a director makes the same movie over and over. Robin Campillo is a French auteur, his work worthy of tracing a generic arc, even though he has directed only two films. In 2004, he made the profoundly disturbing low-budget horror flick They Came Back (Les […]
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Par Avian: Lance Edmands’ Bluebird
A frosty night alone inside an unheated school bus puts a hypothermic gradeschooler at death’s door. The multiple protagonists in model ensemble Bluebird milk the mishap, each in their own way. In an oddly similar fashion, director Lance Edmands works — let’s say plays — his audience. He short-circuits a chilling overview of the mishap’s immediate impact in favor of charging a profound visual essay on the power of love — ongoing, terminated, or altogether lacking. The titles of the two mournful vintage pop songs most prominent on the soundtrack evoke cataclysms, in theory echoing the emotional toll on those […]
