Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Bold Choices: Making the “Film-to-Table” Short Film, The Slaughter
It’s March 2012. I’m standing outside a warehouse with 18 people. We’re about to watch a pig die. Three cameras are ready to roll: two for the movie and one for legal purposes. My actors have the morning off; because of my agreement with SAG, they’re not allowed to be on set for this particular scene. Rory Royston, the operator of an independent slaughterhouse, as well as his assistant, stand in for my lead actors, dressed in their wardrobe; they will make sure the slaughter about to be performed is both safe and humane. Rory looks to me; it’s time. […]
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Five Questions for Humanity Creators Kerrin Sheldon and Gaston Blanchet
“An iPad app for explorers,” the just-launched Humanity dubs itself as a “new kind of travel show that places authenticity and storytelling above all else.” Notably, Humanity avoids star ratings, food porn and shopping tips in favor of immersive looks into the landscape and the people of a particular place of interest. From the press release: Humanity is an app that allows you to choose your own path. We don’t want you to check-off a country, we want you to live and breathe it, to explore its many offerings and expand your horizons. While quality storytelling will always be our […]
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Not an Option: The Ins and Outs of Shopping Agreements
The motion picture and television industries have become increasingly informal in recent years. In the past, agents would sign actors and writers before trying to sell their services or material, members of producing teams would sign collaboration agreements with their partners before taking a project to a studio, and producers would enter into written option agreements with writers under which they would pay money to exclusively option the motion picture and television rights to a property. These days, however, many agents will “hip-pocket” new artists and promote them without a contract to avoid commitment; a collaborator will walk a project […]
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Charting the Course: Data Visualization in Documentary Film
“Every single pixel should testify directly to content.” So says Edward Tufte, a professor emeritus at Yale and pioneer in the field of data visualization. And if this emphasis on clarity and, essentially, story is true in the world of static infographics, it’s exponentially so when content comes at 24 frames per second. In the short PBS film The Art of Data Visualization, Tufte reaches far back in time, before the mundane pie charts and bar graphs that school children are taught to decipher, finding the beginnings of data visualization in stone-age cartography and the rise of science during the […]
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Positive Trauma: Editor Mathilde Bonnefoy on CITIZENFOUR
Paris-born editor Mathilde Bonnefoy has criss-crossed documentary and fiction, working with directors such as Wim Wenders (The Soul of a Man) and, most prominently, Tom Tykwer. Her first feature editing credit is the director’s time-bending international hit Run Lola Run, and she has continued to work with Tykwer on Heaven, Three and The International, among others. Long based in Berlin, Bonnefoy, as she relates below, was sought after by Poitras because of her work on Tykwer’s films and the “thriller” nature of CITIZENFOUR’s source material. Below, in the final days of post-production, I speak to Bonnefoy about encrypted workflows, working […]
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When Restoration Met Distribution
As CEO of the Los Angeles-based creative studio and postproduction house Cinelicious, Paul Korver had the unsettling feeling that too many deals were passing him by. The preferred film scanning and restoration vendor for Criterion and Alamo Drafthouse, Cinelicious was also making a name for itself as a digital intermediate supervisor. Touring the festival circuit with the likes of Boyhood and Prince Avalanche, Korver found himself in conversation with various rights holders who were looking to restore films but without the funds to do so. What if, he thought, Cinelicious had a distribution arm to monetize that restoration investment? Thus […]
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Afternoon Smackdown: Pre-Vis’ing a Fight Scene
Action cinematographer Lawrence Ribeiro forwards this short video of an afternoon’s work — literally. Below, he explains how, with a camera and two top stuntmen, he can mock-up a dynamic fight scene. From Ribeiro: Here’s a chase and fight sequence we shot, in five hours, using two top stunt professionals and one camera. In 2nd unit, we’d consider this type of shooting a level above pre-visualization (previs). Previs is a critical tool for designing action sequences. Sometimes all a script will say is, “…and they fight.” So videos like this allow us to experiment with choreography, and save time and […]
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See No Evil 2 Directors The Soska Sisters on Collaborative Directing
In the upcoming issue of Filmmaker, Esther Robinson writes about directors who work in pairs. Robinson’s focus is on how two directors is better than one when it comes to navigating the development and financial aspects of being a director, and she surveys a number of them on how they structure their work. But then there’s the also the basic question: how do they actually do it? Is everything discussed jointly? Does one talk to the actors and the other direct the camera? Is one more dominant in production and the other in post? In this short clip, Jen and […]
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Why Independent Filmmakers Should Embrace GoPro (and Vice Versa)
Filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough is in the final days of an Indiegogo campaign for his skater doc, The Motivation 2.0: The Chris Cole Story, currently featured on our partner page. Below, he writes about his use of GoPro cameras for his independent films. Visit the Indiegogo page for more information on his project and please consider donating. GoPro cameras have long been popular in the action sports market and reality television, but have been completely ignored by the indie film community. This should change and here’s why: Recently I needed to film a car scene, where two characters were driving and […]
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Watch: The Art of Terrence Malick’s Voiceovers
They’re a tricky thing, voiceovers, and arguably no one utilizes them as frequently and as effectively as Terrence Malick. Where many filmmakers deploy them as an expository device, Malick allows voiceovers to deepen his characters’ perspectives through literal and abstract observations. This video essay from Kevin B. Lee and Scott Tobias at the Dissolve analyzes the evolution of voiceovers in Malick’s films, from a young Sissy Spacek and Linda Manz in Badlands and Days of Heaven to the layered choruses of The Tree of Life and To The Wonder.
