Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Ranking Crowdfunding Sites: Kickstarter, Seed&Spark, Rockethub and More
Crowdsunite, a website that specializes in crowdfunding reviews like only a millennial startup could, recently compiled a list of the industry’s top 10 platforms based on user reviews. Weighing the funding success rate, customer support and user friendliness, Crowdsunite concluded that the niche hybrid Seed&Spark ranked higher than Kickstarter, while the likes of IndieGogo and GoFundMe didn’t even make the cut. A plausible reason for this is that the survey considered platforms that cater across several industries (publishing, medical), but the reasons behind their viability are nonetheless worth considering for your next campaign. While users have frequently taken issue with Kickstarter’s “all […]
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We the Animals Producer Jeremy Yaches at the Sundance Creative Producing Lab
The following is a guest post from We the Animals producer Jeremy Yaches, who was a Producing Fellow and the Mark Silverman Honoree at this year’s Sundance Creative Producing Lab. The Sundance Creative Producing Lab was a transformative experience. I arrived a mess of nerves, pre-occupied with the overwhelming stresses and responsibilities that come with my role as executive producer and co-owner of a small but growing commercial and branded content production company, Public Record. We had just been awarded a large and complicated campaign for a national chain on a Friday and I was scheduled to fly to Sundance […]
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Trailer Watch: Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery
Wiseman’s At Berkeley was a favorite of mine last year, and I’m just as eager for his follow-up, a three hour rumination on London’s National Gallery. Here’s our first look at the documentary, en route to TIFF and likely NYFF after its Cannes premiere, which covers the visiting public, the curators, the staff and, of course, the art, with Wiseman’s characteristic brand of watchful analysis. It’s all faintly reminiscent of the Bruegel room conversation in Museum Hours, in the best possible way. Watch above.
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Commemorate Nixon Resignation Day with 1972’s Another Fine Mess
The obvious viewing choice to commemorate today being the 40th anniversary of Richard M. Nixon’s resignation would probably be either Oliver Stone’s expansive, feverishly/ludicrously compelling Nixon or Robert Altman’s more compact but no less outlandish Secret Honor, a paranoid monologue barked by an increasingly intoxicated Philip Baker Hall. In a more ironic vein, you might turn to Nixon’s own viewing choices: he watched 528 movies during his time in office. An apt favorite might be Patton, which he viewed three times prior to initiating the bombing of Cambodia (he told David Frost the movie didn’t influence his decision), or his […]
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Kickstarting Trans Visibility on Screen: Sasha Wortzel on Funding Happy Birthday, Marsha!
The following is a guest post from Sasha Wortzel, who is raising funds for her film directed with Reina Gossett, Happy Birthday, Marsha! on Kickstarter. “We were ladies in waiting, just waiting for the thing to happen. And when it did, we were there,” Sylvia Rivera recalls in a radio documentary produced in 1989 – 20 years after the historic Stonewall Riots in New York City. It was the first documentary of any kind to examine the riots. Since then, there have been a handful of films that deal with this tremendously important event in LGBT, and I would argue, […]
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Watch: Robert Greene on “The Art of Nonfiction”
Last week, Sight & Sound released their poll of the top 50 documentaries of all time, sourced from 340 critics, programmers and filmmakers. The list includes seminal films such as Nanook of the North, Sans Soleil, Man With a Movie Camera, and Salesman, as well as recent, form-pushing works in The Act of Killing and Leviathan. Robert Greene took time out of his impressively hectic schedule to craft a video essay that is a send up to said titles and more, examining documentary for its inimitable, observational approach, and noting that “the art of nonfiction lies in the tension between chaos and structure.” Head over to Sight&Sound to view it.
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Stray Links, 8/4-8/7: Foreign Blockbusters, Film Preservation and Grazing Goats
Here’s this week’s links round-up of film reading and other assorted pieces: • “My main impression was that Batman looks like he’s wearing a small tank turret on his head. The fans were apparently pleased with what they saw.” Kristin Thompson’s level-headed report from Comic-Con has enthusiasm for Peter Jackson, less so for Zack Snyder, and a detailed overview of the on-the-ground administrative logistics of the fantasy gathering behemoth. • Roaring Currents, a war film/biopic of Admiral Yi, one of Korea’s most historically revered figures, is doing massive, record-setting business at home. The movie inflates the scope of Yi’s (still […]
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Fundraising $100,000 a Year for Online Video: Mike Stoklasa on Patreon
“Red Letter Media is Creating Weird Internet Videos and Films” is the tagline for the Milwaukee-based collective’s page on online fundraising platform Patreon. It’s an appeal that has impressively generated the group almost $100,000 a year in fan donations. Red Letter Media is the home of various creators, including Mike Stoklasa, whose critical vivisections of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequels landed him on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2010. Offering reviews of films and video games alongside other content (like a comedic instructional feature film, How Not to Make a Movie), Red Letter monetizes itself through YouTube advertising, DVD […]
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“This is Softcore”: The History of Radley Metzger
Opening today, August 7, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center is This is Softcore: The Art Cinema Erotica of Radley Metzger, a survey of the director whose arty erotica more or less defined what in the ’70s was dubbed “porno chic.” On the occasion of this retrospective we are reposting, from our archives, this wide-ranging 1997 interview conducted by Steve Gallagher. Among the topics: Metzger’s days creating edited versions of European arthouse masterworks; the origins of his glamorous soft-core aesthetic; distribution in the ’60s and ’70s’ his hardcore work, including The Opening of Misty Beethoven, done under the name […]
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Short Film: Sam Green’s Lot 63, Grave C
Thanks to The Seventh Art for flagging this haunting 2006 short documentary from Sam Green, a belated inquiry into the murder of Meredith Hunter at the 1969 Rolling Stones concert in Altamont. Green’s presentation of the bizarre silence surrounding Hunter’s identity at the time of his death is relayed through archival newspapers, footage from Gimme Shelter, and a tour of his unmarked gravesite in California (a proper headstone was purchased in 2008). Despite its brevity, Lot 63, Grave C is a fascinating look inside the metaphorical end of an era.
