Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Doron Max Hagay on His No-Budget Monica Lewinsky Web Series, Monica
You would think that the filmmaker behind such razor-sharp, atmospheric satires as Erica Wexler is Online and Perfect Thoughts would go for broke with an unsuspecting subject like Monica Lewinsky, but Doron Max Hagay had other plans when it came to designing his amusing new web series, Monica. “From the outset, I was dogged about not representing Monica’s story merely as satire,” says Hagay, who joined forces with actor Lily Marotta to loosely adapt “Monica Takes Manhattan,” the 2001 New York Magazine profile that detailed Lewinsky’s post-Clinton life in the big city. The first two episodes of the six part series are now available online, with subsequent episodes […]
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“There’s No Space for that Old Style of the Big Barking Orders Coming from the Big Man”: Debra Granik Talks Documentary Filmmaking on the She Does Podcast
We’re so excited and honored to feature Debra Granik in our fourth episode of She Does. Granik is the Academy Award-nominated director and writer of Winter’s Bone, which features a young Jennifer Lawrence in a gripping story set in the Ozarks. Winter’s Bone won several awards including the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It also received four 2011 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. Previously, she wrote and directed Down to the Bone, starring Vera Farmiga. Her narrative work is heavily influenced by real life […]
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transmediale 2015: Erica Scourti, Banks of Body Parts and Body Scan
Since 1988 transmediale has been one of Europe’s premiere events for showcasing transmedia and technology for art and narrative and nonfiction storytelling. Director Kristoffer Gansing (who spoke with Filmmaker last year) and his team continue to assemble cutting-edge films, installations, performances, workshops, and other events, turning the House of World Cultures in Berlin into a hub for all things new media. I spoke with a number of artists who presented video-based pieces at the festival. Erica Scourti (seen above in an image from another project) is an Athens-born, London-based artist focusing on video art and, increasingly, Internet-centered artwork; as she describes below, her work gradually transformed […]
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ARRI’s New Small Camera and Other News
ARRI has announced a smaller ALEXA camera, the ALEXA Mini, that can record 4K UHD video. With a design described as “optimized for use on brushless gimbals, multicopters, and other specialized rigs,” the Mini has a lightweight carbon housing and is 7.3” long, 5.5” inches high and 4.9” inches wide. There’s also built in WiFi connectivity, a new internal sensor mount to ensure a stable flange focal distance when using heavy lenses, and motorized, remote-controllable internal ND filters, With a 4:3 sensor the Mini offers 4:3 and 16:9 recording modes as well as an automatic de-squeeze mode for anamorphic lenses. Frame rates from […]
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transmediale 2015: Nicolas Maigret, BitTorrent and The Pirate Cinema
Since 1988 transmediale has been one of Europe’s premiere events for showcasing transmedia and technology for art and narrative and nonfiction storytelling. Director Kristoffer Gansing (who spoke with Filmmaker last year) and his team continue to assemble cutting-edge films, installations, performances, workshops, and other events, turning the House of World Cultures in Berlin into a hub for all things new media. It ran last week, and I spoke with a number of artists who presented video-based pieces at the festival. Nicolas Maigret is a French artist who has been active since 2001. His work explores the internal functioning of media like the Internet by making its processes — […]
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Bruce Sinofsky, 1956 – 2015
Documentary director Bruce Sinofsky, whose Paradise Lost Trilogy collaborations with Joe Berlinger caused the release of the wrongly-convicted West Memphis Three, died this morning of complications from diabetes. Sinofsky’s passing was reported by Berlinger on Twitter. Sinofsky and Berlinger were nominated for an Academy Award in 2011 for the final film in the Paradise Lost trilogy, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory — the culmination of a filmic and legal odyssey that began in 1996 with Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills. In a 2011 Filmmaker interview, Sinofsky remembers the series beginning: When we went down to Arkansas, for […]
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“I Had to Be Initiated, Shave My Head, Be Frightened”: Teboho Edkins’ Gangster Project at transmediale 2015
Since 1988 transmediale has been one of Europe’s premiere events for showcasing transmedia and technology for art and narrative and nonfiction storytelling. Director Kristoffer Gansing (who spoke with Filmmaker last year) and his team continue to assemble cutting-edge films, installations, performances, workshops, and other events, turning the House of World Cultures in Berlin into a hub for all things new media. It ran from January 28 through February 1, and I spoke with a number of artists who presented video-based pieces at the festival. Teboho Edkins (on the right, above) is an American-born filmmaker who grew up in Lesotho, South Africa, Germany, and France. His work blends […]
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Andrew S. Allen and Jason Sondhi on the Relaunch of Short of the Week
“A new way to watch films” is what the venerable platform for short films, Short of the Week, promises in its freshly relaunched edition, online now. Founders Andrew S. Allen and Jason Sondhi have done a top-to-bottom redesign — a clean look that also makes both searching and streaming easier. Indeed, the new Short of the Week acknowledges that a viewer today is as likely to watch a short on a large phone or streamed through a device like Chromecast to a television as on a laptop window. Filmmaker readers should recognize both Allen and Sondhi’s names as the two […]
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Shooting Romance in NYC with the iPhone 6
Here’s a nifty behind-the-scenes featurette on the iPhone 6 shooting of Tristan Pope‘s short film, Romance in NYC. The film is shot entirely from the first-person perspective, like Lady in the Lake and Enter the Void, and the mobility of the iPhone enabled the director/camera operator to play the role of the first-person protagonist. As you’ll see in the video, Pope lets his own hands and arms enter and exit frame, aided by variety of gear — including a Gorillapod — as well as well-choreographed production assistants.
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Filmmakers, Learn How the FAA Plans to Regulate Drone Filmmaking
For over a year the FAA has been fighting a rearguard action against the proliferation of drones. The agency has had regulations in place stating that unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) — also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), or drones — can’t be used for commercial purposes, and they have mostly pursued a policy of “educational chats” for people who have caught their attention (typically videos on YouTube that get picked up by the media). Their bark hasn’t been without some bite, too. In one case they fined a pilot $10,000 for flying a drone through the University of Virginia. Interestingly, […]
