Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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BuzzFeed: The Next Netflix?
The New York Times broke the news this Sunday that BuzzFeed received $50 million in funding for their Los Angeles-based Motion Pictures arm. Recognizing the massive revenue generated by the company’s video content, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti hired Ze Frank, “web video pioneer,” to produce a “rapid-fire” stream of everything from “six second clips made for social media to more traditional 22-minute shows” under the new banner. Eventually, the company will look to produce feature-length films and TV series, not unlike Netflix. Another thing BuzzFeed Motion Pictures has in common with the online streaming paradigm is an unsurprising affinity for data science. In […]
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Seattle’s Scarecrow Video Raising Funds to Transition to Non-Profit
Seattle’s legendary Scarecrow Video houses some 120,000 titles on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, VCD and laserdisc. The store was the brainchild of the late George Latsios, whose compulsive purchasing of ever more and more titles (documented in this affectionate obituary from 2003) provided the base foundation for the store’s current inventory. With rentals decreasing 40 percent in the last six years, current owners Carl Tostevin and Mickey McDonough have come up with a viable strategy to try to keep the store’s formidable collection intact. A Kickstarter has launched to help Scarecrow complete a planned conversion to non-profit status, a move necessary […]
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Watch: Cassavetes Between Takes of Love Streams
“If our films are supposed to be something like life is…then how can you determine what’s going to happen tomorrow?” That’s John Cassavetes from the set of Love Streams on the importance of surrendering to the unpredictability of filmmaking. Excerpted from the film’s on-set documentary I’m Almost Not Crazy…–John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work, this short clip provides a glimpse of Cassavetes’ ethic between takes. The full behind-the-scenes exposé is available in Criterion’s just released edition of Love Streams, and you can read Dennis Lim’s supplemental essay over at the site, which examines the film as a brilliant collision of Cassavetes’ (and Rowlands’ and […]
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Revisiting Robin Williams in The Birdcage
I didn’t particularly intend (or want) to contribute to the inevitable avalanche of Robin Williams memorial writing online today, but I dropped by last night to visit a friend who’d just put on The Birdcage, which seemed the most appealing of the instant tribute options on Netflix Instant, so here we are. The bedrock tools powering Williams’ patented babble of voices were his formidable mimicry skills and the kind of physical dexterity great athletes have that makes the extremely difficult look very simple. His capacity to assimilate dozens of disconnected reference points and appearances was favorably comparable to Peter Sellers, […]
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Old, Faded Pictures: Vilmos Zsigmond on McCabe & Mrs. Miller
“We didn’t want it to look good. The whole idea was to make some old, faded pictures.” Master cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond was talking about McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the 1971 anti-Western he shot under Robert Altman’s direction. Speaking in a thick Hungarian accent, the 84-year-old had just watched a rare 35mm screening with a packed audience at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, which is hosting an Altman retrospective. “That is an amazing print,” he declared. For 30 minutes after the screening, Zsigmond candidly recalled shooting the film, which almost didn’t get released. Now it’s considered a classic, perhaps Altman’s best. “The […]
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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, […]
