Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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On Golden Frog: The 22nd Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography
Located in the nearly unpronounceable Polish town of Bydgoszcz, Camerimage – the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography – is the must-attend event of the year for DPs, aspiring DPs, or any cinephile prizing visual craft over auteur theory. At this 22-year-old fest, folks like Caleb Deschanel (who received a Lifetime Achievement Award, a retrospective, and a massive hardcover book highlighting his career) and Vilmos Zsigmond are the stars, complete with their names in lights on the marquee of the massive Opera Nova, the festival’s headquarters and main venue on the scenic Brda River. Far from passive honorees, […]
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Never the Twain Shall Meet: Maidan
Our own separation of church and state is tenuous. From the Pledge of Allegiance: “…one Nation under God, indivisible…” Less official but equally patriotic are the lyrics of Irving Berlin: God bless America, Land that I love, Stand beside her and guide her Thru the night with a light from above; From the mountains, to the prairies… Church, state, soil: a trinity often muddled, collectively held sacred. Few would confuse our glib phrasings with imminent theocracy and unchecked nationalism. Pantheism aside, you might say that, if you can disregard Native Americans in the same way that our government always has, […]
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Editing Boyhood: Dealing with Changing Technology
The filming of Boyhood, shot over 12 years, posed some unexpected challenges in post-production. At a recent meeting of the Boston Creative Pro Users Group, First Assistant Editor Mike Saenz explained the difficulties of the editing process, made more complicated by changes in technology that occurred over that 12-year period. Begun as what Saenz called “an indie side project” by director Richard Linklater, Boyhood was originally edited using Final Cut 3, as they couldn’t afford to rent an Avid system for 12 years. A couple of years into the project, they switched to Avid Xpress, a lower-end system from Avid. They […]
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“I See It More as a Visual Poem”: Animator Glen Keane on the Interactive Film Duet
Glen Keane made me want to make movies. As a head animator at Disney from the 1970s until just a few years ago, when he left to create his own company, Keane created iconic characters like Ariel, Aladdin, and Tarzan, plus gorgeously drawn animals like the bear in The Fox and the Hound and the eagle Marahute in The Rescuers Down Under. But what held me spellbound was the moment when the Beast — his character — and James Baxter’s Belle walked into the computer-animated ballroom during the title song of Beauty and the Beast: I’d never seen anything like that before, and I […]
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Miranda July and Carrie Brownstein Promise a Somebody App That “Works”
Regarding her eccentrically beautiful messaging app Somebody, Miranda July has posted this video with Carrie Brownstein about its v.2. “Over the next few months we will be making Somebody 2.0,” she writes. “It’s just like Somebody 1.0 but it works.” If you don’t know about Somebody, it’s an iOS app (Android coming, says July in this video) that allows you to send a communication to someone via a nearby third party, who delivers that message in person. Still confused? Well, Somebody was the subject of a new podcast, Reply All — the second from podcasting startup Gimlet Media. Watch above […]
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Director Diane Bell on What You Should Do if Your Film is in Sundance
Following this week’s Sundance announcements, I linked in my newsletter to two articles I wrote back in 2009: “So You Didn’t Get into Sundance” and “Letter from the Future.” This first is a consoling “what to do next” kind of piece, and the second is an only partly tongue-in-cheek riff on alternative ways to approach festival distribution. The latter owes a lot of Jon Reiss, who in articles written for Filmmaker and elsewhere has advocated for making your festival premiere your premiere and to make a DIY distribution your plan A, not some hastily considered fallback plan when a big […]
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“The More a Film Challenges an Audience, the More Resistance It Will Inspire”: Five Principles to Live By for Provocative Filmmakers
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Guy Davidi is currently raising funds on Indiegogo for Mixed Feelings. From the Indiegogo page: is an inspiring story about cultural resistance of Israeli director and teacher, Amir Orian – a once successful actor that left his blooming career to create an alternative theater in his own apartment. This documentary tries to create space for artistic expression and the discussion of alternative points of view in a country troubled by destructive nationalistic forces.” Below, Davidi writes about the life of the filmmaker who chooses to make provocative work. Please visit the Indiegogo page linked above to learn more […]
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In the Family Way: Still Alice
To watch Julianne Moore portray a 49-year-old woman diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s might be as close as one can get to understanding the disease and its effects on patient and family without having oneself received a positive diagnosis. Make no mistake, though: Still Alice is no downer. It is a closely observed and brilliantly performed story of struggle and — how can I write this out without appearing trite? — love. Director-driven it is not. Yes, it is nicely shot (by Olivier Assayas’s frequent DP Denis Lenoir) and suitably edited. Filmmakers Richard Glatzer (whose battle with ALS since 2011 became […]
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The U.K. Crackdown on Porn – And Why It Hurts Independent Producers
If Britain’s recently enacted legislation – specifically, the Brazil-sounding Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 – wasn’t on your radar, you can be forgiven. As an American it wasn’t on mine either. Basically, this is an amendment to the U.K.’s 2003 Communications Act, which now requires that those producing online porn in the U.K. must come under the same BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) scrutiny as those producing DVDs for the sex shop market. Innocuous enough, right? Problem is, this new law bans British porn producers from depicting a variety of fairly ordinary BDSM practices. Among the list of over […]
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Watch: How to Highlight Depth of Field
As a two dimensional medium, film employs a handful of techniques to convey a greater depth of field than what exists in a given frame. In this handy video, cinematographer Matthew Rosen breaks down his five favorite ways to highlight depth, through lighting, focus, perspective, parallax, and occlusion. The dolly effect, which Rosen argues is perhaps most effective in relating depth of field to an audience, is in fact a combination of parallax and occlusion.
