Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Sundance Institute Announces 2014 New Frontier Story Lab Participants
The Sundance Institute has announced the six projects set for this year’s New Frontier Story Lab, a hands-on initiative for developing content that converges at the intersection of “film, visual art, media, live performance, music and technology.” The 2014 creative teams and projects are Karim Ben Khelifa and Chloé Jarry (The Enemy), Dandypunk and Darin Basile (Heart Corps), Tracy Fullerton and Lucas Peterson (Walden, A Game), Braden King and Matthew Moore (Weather), Hasan Minhaj and Greg Walloch (Sakoon/Paint The Town) and Navid and Vassiliki Khonsari (1979 Revolution). Previously supported projects include #PostModem (from 25 New Faces Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva), Kill […]
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Gotham Awards to Celebrate Tilda Swinton and Bennett Miller
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced yesterday that Tilda Swinton will be presented with the Actor Tribute at the 24th Independent Film Awards set for Monday, December 1st at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. Bennett Miller will be awarded the Director Tribute. They will join Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, the previously announced Industry Tribute recipient. This year’s Actor Tribute recipient is known for her powerful and iconoclastic performances that have spanned the independent film scene for the past 30 years. Swinton has starred in critically acclaimed work by top independent directors, and is known for multi-film […]
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Transmedia is Still So Young: Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta on Last Hijack Interactive
Access is always an issue with documentary, creating unique challenges in war zones or similar areas where filmmakers would be in physical danger or simply cannot go. The documentary Last Hijack, produced by Submarine Channel and directed by Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta, doesn’t just deal with these issues but makes them one of the film’s greatest strengths. In documenting piracy in Somalia, the filmmakers turned to techniques like animation — Pallotta produced both Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly — to show what could not be filmed, and then went one step further by creating an interactive documentary to accompany the traditional linear film. […]
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Watch: Breaking Down David Fincher’s Directorial Techniques
While the gender politics behind David Fincher’s much-anticipated Gone Girl adaptation may be muddled, the “dark lord of cinema”‘s direction is as crystalline and precise as ever. Tony Zhou, in his latest Every Frame A Painting, examines how Fincher manages to make even the most expository exchanges cinematic by using framing to relate character dynamics. He also takes a close look at Fincher’s faithfulness to the tripod, sparing use of close-ups, and almost inhuman camera movements. It’s a must watch for anyone who values the abilities of visual language.
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6 Lessons on Filmmaking From Darren Aronofsky
Last evening, The New Museum held a conversation between Lynne Tillman and Darren Aronofsky as part of their annual Stuart Regen Visionaries Series. Tillman began with an excerpt from Genesis, a winking reference to Aronofsky’s Noah as well as the frequent depiction of beginnings — of identities and obsession — in his work. Over the next hour and a half, the two parsed through his filmography in chronological order, weighing in on themes and construction. Below are a few major takeaways from the discussion, and if time is not of the essence, the full version can be viewed above. Using Format to Create Cohesion Per […]
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NYFF ’14: Heaven Knows What, Eden, The Look of Silence
Josh and Benny Safdie’s filmmaking sensibilities are perhaps best summed up by the finale of 2009’s Daddy Longlegs. Unable to hire movers for their spur of the moment decamp to Roosevelt Island, Lenny (Ronald Bronstein) tasks his sons with hoisting their refrigerator onto his back, bootleg straps in hand. Atop Lenny’s spine, the near industrial-sized fridge is then caught between the closing doors of the tram, culminating in a moment that is hilarious, pitiful, and unexpectedly affecting. For years, the Safdies had been perfecting this brand of physical comedy, verisimilitude, cheeky humor and creeping sadness, all rendered on film with a handheld long lens, until 2012’s Lenny Cooke coaxed them outside their comfort […]
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Steven Soderbergh Re-imagines Raiders of the Lost Ark as a Masterclass in Staging
A little belated in posting the latest installment from Steven Soderbergh’s guerrilla film school, but better than never, as the saying goes. Here, Soderbergh sets Steven Spielberg’s seminal blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark to an electronic tinged soundtrack and black-and-white wash. His reasoning is that a dialogue-free version allows the film to be appreciated as a master class in the elusive technique of staging. In my book, Fassbinder is the top of the heap as far as blocking goes, but Soderbergh makes the case for the other Steven in the following terms: I value the ability to stage something well because when […]
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NYFF ’14: The Wonders, ’71, Goodbye to Language
Now entering its 52nd year, the New York Film Festival tends to benefit and suffer from its fixed position as last stop on the fall festival circuit. The obvious pro would be that the discerning selection committee, headed up by Kent Jones, is allowed to cherry pick whatever they deem to be the best of the year; the con, at least for those keeping up with film criticism, is that the majority of these titles arrive pre-packaged with their own neat and tidy media narratives. (A year later, I’m still overhearing men debating the virtues of Blue Is The Warmest Color’s sex scenes.) As such, it’s nearly […]
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Thom Yorke Explains Value of BitTorrent Bundles by Releasing a New Album
At the Sundance Artist Services Day at the IFP Filmmaker Conference, I witnessed — and wrote about — the confusion and sometimes anger that erupted during the panel discussion on BitTorrent Bundles. BitTorrent Bundles use the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol of BitTorrent to package, give away and/or sell digital goods. Some vocal members of the audience challenged the panelists to justify why filmmakers should lie down with a site many associate with piracy. Replied BitTorrent’s Director of Brand Marketing, Straith Schreder, “It is a separate website and has nothing to do with the pirate ecosystem. As for monetization, one way […]
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Lessons from the Cutting Edge Tour
I spent a half-day at Adam Epstein’s “The Cutting Edge Post-Production Tour” last week. Epstein, who is the editor for the Saturday Night Live Film Unit, has spent the past month and a half traveling the country presenting on how to be a better editor. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t stay the whole day. Unfortunately for you, the tour ended this week, so you’ve missed it too. If you can come away from an event like this with an actual tip or technique that you start using and with one piece of inspiration to improve how you work, that actually […]
