Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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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 […]
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Breaking Down the DIY Visual Effects in A Truncated Story of Infinity
Paul Trillo’s A Truncated Story of Infinity considers the limitless schema of possibilities that unfold over the course of a series of moments. The eight minute film — recently featured on Short of the Week — also boasts some pretty impressive practical effects for a budget of $10,000. I asked Paul to break down the means behind each technique, which he notes may not “the correct way” to render an effect, even if they look pretty fine to me. Hall of Mirrors at :00 “Our ‘mirror’ was just a framed piece of green on a wall. We did a simple dolly into the green so it […]
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R.I.P Robert Drew
A press release prepared by documentarian Robert Drew’s family announced his death today at age 90. Drew is remembered as a pioneer of cinéma vérité — now a term thrown around carelessly to denote just about any documentary assembled without talking heads or a narrator, which is a radical oversimplification of vérité’s possibilities. It’s not oversimplifying to note that Drew’s Primary (covering the JFK-Hubert Humphrey faceoff in the 1960 Wisconsin primary) and Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (examining the administration’s standoff against segregationist George Wallace) are two of the key documents of the Kennedy presidency, whose levels of candor, access […]
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Adam Epstein Talks Editing for SNL and “The Cutting Edge” Workshop
Adam Epstein is a freelance editor. For the last five years, he’s worked with the Saturday Night Live film unit, editing parody pieces of all kinds. He’s just begun a nationwide workshop tour with “The Cutting Edge Post-Production Tour,” a day-long seminar covering techniques, theories and editing insights. We recently spoke to Epstein about editing, working on SNL and the workshop tour. Filmmaker: How did you become an editor? Epstein: In my experience, it’s never a direct path. I started out in school, working on a student-run sketch comedy show, and we were able to get our hands on some of the […]
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Abel Ferrara Talks His Venice and Toronto-Bound Pasolini
At 1985, Evan Louison sits down in Rome with Abel Ferrara, learning more about the director’s Pasolini, starring Willem Dafoe as the murdered Italian director. Below Ferrara talks about the film’s relationship to fiction, non-fiction, imagination and the subconscious. Read the complete interview at the link. AF: He was a part of a tradition, a movement — Rosselini, Antonioni, & Bertolucci after that. I’m sure if you’re hard pressed you could call it all the same style. These guys are working with the same DPs, & a lot of the same actors. He wasn’t the only one using guys right […]
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Celebrating 4K: The Art of Amazing 4K Film Competition
4K — a spec, or perhaps an aesthetic? Plenty of us are shooting in older, lower-resolution cameras, but others are buying new units that offer double — or more — the resolution we shot just a few years ago. Our images are finer, more detailed… but how else are they different? Sharp, along with RED and THX, are for the second year presenting “The Art of Amazing 4K Film Competition,” a short competition exploring the aesthetics of 4K cinematography. From the contest’s site: We are seeking short 4K films (10 minute maximum) that capture the full potential of an amazing […]
