Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“Do We Need to Be Cured of It?” Considering Web Junkie
Web Junkie, Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia’s startling documentary about internet addiction in China opens today at New York’s Film Forum. At Sundance, where it premiered, it was considered by Brandon Harris, and Danielle Lurie interviewed the directors. Wrote Harris, in a piece that also included discussion of the doc Love Child: In Web Junkie, teenage boys, often having been deceived into going or plainly drugged and captured with their parents’ approval, suffer a military bootcamp-style existence complete with isolation chambers and other forms of moderately cruel discipline, interspersed with moments of counseling from sensitive, largely female psychologists and a […]
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How To Survive Your First Color Grade
For any film, color grading is an essential part of the process. For some it’s simply a way to get the shots within a scene to match cohesively, despite adjusted lights or a change of sun position. For others it can help tell the story. Either way, If you’ve never sat in on a coloring session before, the whole thing can seem quite daunting. Jalal Jemison has colored five features and has an extensive background in VFX and compositing. He has been a VFX supervisor, a director, a lead compositor and has had his own small VFX studio. For the […]
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Not So Fast: A Short Film With G&E Equipment Sourced From Ikea
In his short film Not So Fast, filmmaker David Sandberg managed to achieve a dramatic tunnel effect with no more than a few Ikea products and the free 3D modeling app, Blender. The very embodiment of DIY ethos, Sandberg fashioned a portable light — enclosed in a trashcan — to his dolly — a bit of shelving — and orchestrated the action atop his PVC pipe track. Granted, his battery pack and Black Magic Cinema Camera don’t exactly run cheap, but the homemade equipment used to relay his protagonist’s sleepwalking probably rounded out to no more than $30. Watch Sandberg break down his […]
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The Music Bed Launches #ProjectFilmSupply Contest
The following is a sponsored editorial post from The Music Bed. For filmmakers, The Music Bed offers the valuable opportunity to license from a highly curated selection of music for use in films, commercials, etc. Their mission is to help visual artists tell their stories better than ever and this month, they want to help you bring your dream project to life through their new campaign: #ProjectFilmSupply. Here’s how it works: starting August 4, filmmakers will have one month to submit a short film idea along with an accompanying mood board. Participants are encouraged to use social media throughout the […]
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Rip Torn and the Indignities of Product Placement
Forty-ish years on, Rip Torn’s thoughts on the demeaning nature of product placement (as told to Studs Turkel in his classic oral history Working) remain relevant, with no contemporary amendation necessary: I remember doin’ a television show, oh, about ten years ago — I haven’t worked on network television for about eight years. I was smokin’ a cigar. I was playing a Quantrell-type character, so I had a long Cuban cigar. I got up on a horse and we had to charge down a hill. It was a long shot. The director and the producer both hollered, “Cut! Cut! What’re […]
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Why We Are Giving Our Feature Away for Free at LYLEmovie.com
Lyle is the “sharp and moody” story of Leah (Gaby Hoffmann), whose grief over the death of her toddler turns to paranoia when she begins to suspect her eccentric neighbors are involved in a satanic pact. It is an updated, lesbian take on Rosemary’s Baby and is available for FREE at LYLEmovie.com. Two years ago, Stewart decided to stop making films. She had just spent the last six years of her life obsessively trying to make her first feature — a mother-daughter real-estate thriller — and it all fell apart in a month. We were excited about the script that […]
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Watch: Richard Linklater’s Perception of Time
Friday afternoon, the Los Angeles Times ran a piece entitled “Kenneth Turan Takes A Critic’s Lonely Stand On Boyhood,” in which the film critic relays his alienation at finding Linklater’s latest short of a masterpiece. The article is less concerned with flushing out his exact grievances with the film, but he does say that he finds the “12 years, one cast,” aspect to be “a bit like a gimmick,” failing to achieve the breadth of Apted’s Up series. In my opinion, the viewing experience of watching the actors age is what makes the film special, overshadowing the more prosaic events in each of Mason Jr.’s 12 years. […]
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At a Test Screening
It’s hard showing your movie to other people for the first time. You put your heart and soul into it to the point that you either run out of ideas, money, energy, or all three, and you finally have to show it to people. You play it, seeing all the things you’re still not quite happy with, and then you have to listen to them point out all problems you already know are there. You have to have a thick skin, or an ability to just keep on going, to keep doing this. I attended a feedback screening of a […]
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Sexploitation and the Bechdel Test
As a woman/feminist, I put little stock in the Bechdel Test. Yes, it’s a quick means of exposing the macho-centric ways of Hollywood, but the picture grows hazier in independent and experimental film. Kevin B. Lee addressed this in a recent video essay, where he makes the case that Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours contains a richly drawn female character, despite the fact she confides in a gay man and not another woman. In a follow-up of sorts, Lee considers sexploitation films in the context of the Bechdel Test, noting that questionable motives can nonetheless earn a passing grade. While Doris Wishman’s bold melange of genres frequently downplays […]
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Stray Links, 7/28-7/31
• For years, Bollywood star Salman Khan released one of his big films around the same time as Eid, the first day after the end of Ramadan. Last year he deviated from form and — as Nancy Tartaglione points out points out at Deadline — watched as rival star Shah Rukh Khan’s record-breaking Chennai Express took advantage of the slot. This year Salman’s back in scheduling place with his new film Kick, which is off to a good start — no thanks to the qazi (religious judge) at Bhopal, who in the middle of a sermon admonished his flock to […]
