Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Amy Pascal Leaves Co-Chairman Post at Sony Pictures Entertainment
The timing of this is a little too close for comfort. I am of course referring to the late November/early December Sony hacks that exposed staff members’ social security numbers, as well as Amy Pascal and Scott Rudin’s unsavory email exchanges — damning, casually racist back-and-forths, that appeared to be ghostwritten by second graders. I’m not excusing Pascal’s actions, but it is rather disappointing to see several major outlets reporting that Pascal is “stepping down” from co-chairmain to take over a producing post at Sony, working on upcoming ventures such as the female Ghostbusters reboot and the Amazing Spider Man franchise. Whether or not […]
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Film Emulation: Behind the Scenes of the Short Old/New
Red Giant has released a new short from Seth Worley called Old/New. Over the past few years Worley has produced a number of imaginative short films on a limited budget that tell a great story and also – somehow – manage to demonstrate the use of Red Giant’s software. Cue the announcement of new software from Red Giant. Red Giant has also released Magic Bullet Suite 12, their collection of color correction and finishing tools. This release brings new features to the applications that make up the suite, as well as a new product: Magic Bullet Film. One of the focuses of this […]
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Dealing with Archival Footage: Making The Prime Ministers
Documentary films often rely extensively on archival film, and dealing with different archive sources and the variety of formats involved can become a significant headache. For The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers, co-producer and editor Nimrod Erez had to deal with hundreds of sources and dozens of video formats. As editor and co-producer, Erez ran the post-production department, overseeing the additional editors brought in to work on the picture and seeing the movie through grading and final picture. The film will be released this year and is the second and final part to follow The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers, which was released in 2013. The […]
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How to Hack Google Cardboard VR into a DSLR or Phone Lens
Google Cardboard was a hot piece of Sundance sort-of-swag at Sundance this year. (“Can you get me Google Cardboard,” several friends emailed me during the fest.) I happened to check out one of the pieces designed for Cardboard, Chris Milk’s Evolution of Verse, a beautifully disorienting lakeside mountain-scape with an enveloping, 2001-ish finale. But, if you’re like Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish, and “the whole virtual reality thing gives you an aneurysm,” you can hack Google Cardboard into a rather arty-in-a-low-fi way 35mm lens. Check it out above.
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SXSW Announces the 145 Features Playing in its 2015 Lineup
SXSW announced today the 145 features being show in its upcoming SXSW Film Conference, March 13-21 in Austin, TX. From a record number of 2,385 feature submissions will be shown new work by directors Hannah Fidell, Benjamin Dickinson, Patrick Wang, Ron Nyswaner, Alex Sichel, Ondi Timoner and Alex Garland, among many others. The festival’s Episodics strand continues, with five new web series being shown in this second year. Of the large number of submissions, Festival Director Janet Pierson said, ““When faced with a record 2,400 feature submissions, we had every intention to cut back on the total number in our […]
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Watch: Mike White on Why Pierre Bismuth’s Truly Unique Hybrid Where is Rocky II? Needs Your Support
The term ‘hybrid’ has become increasingly debatable when discussing the divide between fiction and nonfiction, though it’s a rather apt description of the French artist Pierre Bismuth’s cinematic inquiry, Where is Rocky II? Perhaps best known for his Oscar winning collaboration with Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry on the script for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Bismuth became obsessed with a fake rock, called Rocky II, that Ed Ruscha placed amongst its geological counterparts in the Mojave Desert around the release of the eponymous Stallone film in 1979. The pitch of Where is Rocky II?, Bismuth explained in an email, “is that a […]
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Director Maro Chermayeff on the Independent Lens Doc A Path Appears
Two years ago a team surrounding journalists Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof and producer Maro Chermayeff released a four-hour documentary and multimedia project called Half the Sky, a companion to WuDunn’s and Kristof’s book of the same name. It dealt with basic human rights issues for women, focusing on topics like women’s healthcare, domestic violence and rape, and girls’ education in countries like Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Somaliland, and Cambodia, and I wrote a piece for Filmmaker about its transmedia components and outreach efforts. Late last year WuDunn and Kristof released their follow-up book, A Path Appears, shifting their focus from women in extreme […]
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Cinematographer Adam Hobbs on Shooting Sundance Competition Doc, Finders Keepers
Premiering this past week at the Sundance Film Festival was Finders Keepers, the tale of an eccentric Southern feud pitting two social outsiders against each other for the possession of a severed foot. Here, cinematographer Adam Hobbs discusses the challenges of mixed camera formats, long days and natural lighting, and choosing to shoot with prime lenses. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hobbs: In 2010 I was working in commercial production, A close friend told me about […]
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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Wolf Pack Top 2015 Sundance Film Festival Awards
In a ceremony tonight hosted by Tig Notaro and filled with special jury awards, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Wolf Pack took home the two top prizes — the Dramatic and Documentary U.S. Grand Jury Prizes. The former is an Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s adaptation of Jesse Andrews’ young adult novel, a film that picked up steam throughout the festival as word spread about its fusion of slacker comedy and heartfelt emotion. Fox Searchlight won a bidding war for the film. The Wolf Pack is Crystal Moselle’s bizarre and troubling documentary about six kids who find escape through […]
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Transmedia in Miami: Diliana Alexander on FilmGate Interactive
It seems that everywhere you look these days festivals and conferences for new media are springing up, and one of the fastest growing is Miami’s FilmGate Interactive, running this year from February 1-8. Now in its third year, FilmGate has already hosted numerous screenings, presentations, workshops, and works-in-progress. One of last year’s presenters, Jake Price, showed an early version of his new project The Invisible Season, about the Japanese tsunami and nuclear accident, that went on to screen at the New York Film Festival. Other past presenters have included POV Interactive and the NFB, and this year individuals like Murmur’s Mike […]
