Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Red Giant’s Shooter Suite: Video Acquisition and Image Processing Software
Red Giant have been expanding their software offerings. Well known for their easy-to-use color correction tools Magic Bullet and Colorista, they’ve also built up a wide collection of tools for keying and effects. Their latest suite consists of some new tools and some updated ones and is geared towards content acquisition and initial image manipulation. The Red Giant Shooter Suite consists of the following applications: OffLoad, BulletProof, and PluralEyes, as well as the plug-ins Denoiser II, Frames, Instant 4K and Lut Buddy. I was most interested in the two acquisition tools, Offload and BulletProof, but it’s worth running down the […]
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Red River Vallée: Wild
It is Day 80 of a tremendously difficult, three-month, 1100-mile trek up the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mojave Desert to the Bridge of the Gods that spans the Columbia River at the Oregon-Washington border. On a narrow path in a lush Oregonian rain forest, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) runs into an elderly woman and her grandson — an angel-faced child of no more than five — accompanied, perhaps not so strangely, by a pet llama. The precocious boy politely offers her a tune. His rendition of “Red River Valley” is as innocent as the nostalgic lyrics, so pure it […]
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Short Film: Ferguson NYC Protests, Scored by Dev Hynes
In the days following the Grand Jury decision to not indict Darren Wilson in the murder of Michael Brown, protests and marches were held throughout the country in solidarity with the people of Ferguson. In New York, crowds wound their way through middle and lower Manhattan, across the bridges, and into Brooklyn. This short film from the music video director Aaron Stewart-Ahn, set to a piano tune from Dev Hynes, captures an evening of protests, with some beautiful, rankling imagery: white people pushing against the crowds as they stare into his camera; bus passengers with their hands held high, mirroring […]
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10 More Really Bad Things About the Film Business, 2014
Along with the usual “ten best” lists, year’s ends in the movie blogosphere have recently included producer and Fandor CEO’s exhaustive surveys of the film industry’s good and the bad — the business practices, social trends and technological issues that improve or deteriorate our lives as both filmmakers and film viewers. This year, prior to their complete unveiling at his Hope for Film blog, Hope has given three outlets early previews. Below, here at Filmmaker, are 10 More Bad Things about the Film Business, following up on Hope’s first ten over at Keyframe and 10 Really Good Things about the […]
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How I Gained 20 Pounds and Found My Next Movie
Currently on our curated Kickstarter page is Hungry for Love, a food-fueled love story directed by Justin Ambrosino. Below is a guest essay from the film’s producer, Soojin Chung, on her own journey towards the culinary when she moved to the U.S. Please visit the film’s Kickstarter page to learn more and consider donating. Growing up in Korea, I was never interested in food. I was an unusual kid who never asked for candy or hamburgers like the other children. In fact, food was last on my list of things to obsess over. But since I moved to America things […]
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Trailer Watch: Spike Lee’s Vampire Film Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
Here’s the trailer for Spike Lee’s forthcoming, crowdfunded vampire film Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. The trailer for what’s reportedly a close remake of Bill Gunn’s 1973 cult classic Ganja and Hess lets us know that everybody’s addicted to something — “sex, food, drugs, nicotine, alcohol, money, power,” says star Stephen Tyrone Williams. Expect all of that to explode in what’s billed up front as “the newest, hottest Spike Lee joint.” The film hits theaters and iTunes on February 13.
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Birdman, Citizenfour Top the Gotham Independent Film Awards
One of the more enjoyable aspects of the Gotham Independent Film Awards is that there aren’t really any politics involved. The nominees are selected by critics, and the juries are comprised of filmmakers and actors, resulting in your fair share of wild cards, while the rest of awards season continually awards the pre-ordained “frontrunner.” Last year, it was great to see Inside Llewyn Davis take home the top prize, even if it was scarcely nominated elsewhere. Last evening, at Cipriani Wall Street, there were a few surprises, but I’d wager that Julianne Moore and Michael Keaton are going to continue apace all the way […]
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Top 10 Round-Up: John Waters, Cahiers du Cinéma, Sight and Sound
Year end top 10 lists are, for some reason, an inflammatory exercise. There are those who balk at the notion of reducing 365-ish days of output to tiers, others who seem to pride themselves on plucking unreleased titles from obscurity, along with the underlying question of authority — as though a given arrangement must be the chosen one. In any event, I just think they’re fun, and few, year after year, are as pithy as John Waters’ list for Artforum. Unsurprisingly, Maps to the Stars and Nymphomaniac make the cut, but he also gives a shout-out to the more middle of the road charmer Gloria, […]
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Damon Locks on New Projects Involving Animation, Prison Art and the Music of Sun Ra
Damon Locks is a visual artist and musician based out of Chicago. Throughout his career he has consistently found exciting and original ways in which to incorporate both visual and audio elements into his work, to collaborate, and to find a range of communities and venues within which to work. In two recent projects, New Moons for the Experimental Sound Studio and Freedom/Time, Locks uses animation to address unheard music from the Sun Ra archive and to work with inmates at Stateville Correctional Center, respectively. I sat down with Locks to talk about both projects. Filmmaker: I want to talk […]
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The Sound of Helicopters in Apocalypse Now
A film’s first shot, its first image, is one that’s obsessed over by many directors. But how many put as much care into its first sound? Francis Ford Coppola did, along with sound designer Walter Murch, when constructing the opening of Apocalypse Now. The famous helicopter sounds actually enter over black — they are the first input of any kind an audience member receives. And, of course, those weren’t just any helicopter sounds. In the video above — a section of a documentary commissioned for the Paramount 2006 home video release and made by Zoetrope’s former head of post, Kim […]
