Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
Screening Abel Ferrara’s Director’s Cut of Cat Chaser
After Cat Chaser, Abel Ferrera was reluctant to give up final cut again, not without a fight anyways. The erotic thriller’s 1989 theatrical release, complete with a clunky voiceover ghosted by another actor because leading hunk Peter Weller refused, has a fundamentally different character from Ferrera’s director’s cut currently housed in the basement at Anthology Film Archives. Last Tuesday, Anthology screened the only known copy, on video with time code, a rough audio mix, and without a score, for the first time maybe ever since it played on the Fox lot to studio bigwigs in the ’80s. That’s the last […]
-
Happy Christmas Director Joe Swanberg on the Financial Life of the Independent Filmmaker
“Transparency benefits everybody.” That’s Joe Swanberg, whose recommended Happy Christmas opens today, talking about distribution dealmaking, but he might just as well have been talking about all aspects of his career and financial life. Indeed, Swanberg is nothing but transparent in this long interview with producer, director and ArtHome founder Esther Robinson focused specifically on making a living as a writer/director — precisely the subject most directors won’t issue a comment on. The interview was conducted for Robinson’s current piece in the new print edition of Filmmaker, “Still on the Job,” in which she revisits several directors featured in an […]
-
Behaving Badly in Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven
I love being on set. Mine, yours, whomever’s. I like eating exorbitant amounts of food. I like idle conversation. I like the feeling you get when sleep deprivation kicks in and the dullest minutiae is suddenly hilarious. But mostly I like being around a group of people who have cast aside their better judgement to create something together. So when Nathan Silver asked if I wanted to come to the Stinking Heaven set, I gladly hopped the train to Passaic. I was excited to see how Nathan, who works from outlines and improvisation, constructs a film from the ground up. The following is a loosely timestamped diary […]
-
Stray Links, 7/21-7/25
Starting this week, I’ll be posting a round-up of stray news items and articles — mostly film, though not all — that caught my eye. Let’s get started: • The great Michael Almereyda’s short film Skinningrove won the short film jury award at Sundance this year, and now you can watch it at the New York Review of Books. It’s about 15 minutes of photographer Chris Killip discussing and showing mostly unpublished photos of the titular Yorkshire village from the ’80s. • Here’s an interesting obituary for Thomas C. Senesac, owner of Chicago’s Acme Prop Rental, a company which got […]
-
Applications Open for Dogfish Accelerator
Last year, I did a lengthly profile on Dogfish Pictures’ inaugural Accelerator program, which adapts a start up financing model to the independent film landscape. Dogfish equips each of its selected participants with seed financing and an office space where they’ll develop their product(s) over the course of nine-weeks, with added input from mentors. The program is capped off by a demo day, in which a member from each team pitches to a room full of investors, industry personnel and lowly journalists like myself. Applications are now open for the second edition of Accelerator through August 8, but this year, James Belfer and Co. are widening the field. “Content […]
-
Watch: The First Teaser for Michael Medaglia’s Creepy Deep Dark
Our ace webmaster Michael Medaglia is also a talented filmmaker. We’re happy to share the evocative, darkly handsome teaser trailer for his debut feature Deep Dark, the story of a talentless sculptor who gets help with his mobile sculptures from a talking hole in the wall of his mother’s house. His career takes off, but the possessive hole wants more. Clearly no good will come of this relationship. For more information, head to the film’s official website.
-
Moog Synthesizers at the Movies: Deep Cuts
Over at the website of the Bob Moog Foundation, electronic music historian Thom Holmes has an interesting post about some lesser-known cinematic uses of the Moog, the pioneering analog synthesizer popularized by Wendy Carlos with 1968’s Switched-On Bach album, which introduced the public at large to the idea of electronic sounds as more than simple novelties. Carlos would go on to the soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Tron, but many other movies in the ’60s and ’70s were quick to latch onto the instrument’s possibilities. Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause were among the Moog’s most productive practitioners […]
-
IFP Announces Its 2014 Project Forum Slate
IFP, Filmmaker Magazine’s publisher, announced today the 133 new films in development and works in progress chosen for its Independent Film Wee Forum Project. A complete list of the projects can be found here. Featured works at the 2014 Independent Film Week include filmmakers and content creators from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, from documentarians Tony Gerber (Full Battle Rattle), Pamela Yates (Granito: How To Nail A Dictator), and Penny Lane (Our Nixon) to Michelangelo Frammartino (Le Quattro Volte) and Alexis Dos Santos (Unmade Beds), as well as new work from critically acclaimed artists and directors Aurora Guerrero (Mosquito […]
-
The Last Days of Collapse Subject Michael C. Ruppert
The life and final days of Michael C. Ruppert — author, 9/11 Truther, podcaster and prophet of economic collapse — are chronicled by The Verge’s Mat Stroud in a fascinating, quite sad story. Filmmaker readers will remember Ruppert from Chris Smith’s 2009 documentary, Collapse, in which the author discussed his theories of societal collapse in the decades following “peak oil” — the moment in which there is less oil in the ground than has been used by mankind. For Smith, however, the documentary was as much about Ruppert the man as his work. In an interview with Brandon Harris, Smith […]
-
35mm Colors in Digital Translation in Boyhood
One aspect of Boyhood that’s been relatively underdiscussed (assuming there are any such left) is its use of 35mm, which has been widely noted but little parsed. Richard Linklater’s repeatedly noted that the primary reason for shooting on film over 12 years was to ensure visual continuity from one year to the next. This doesn’t mean he’s a Luddite in any way, as he explains in comments from a recent screening at the BFI on technology’s pros and cons: There is nothing more stable than a 35mm negative. Had I started on the best HD camera back in 2002, I’d […]
