Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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“Who the Hell is From Maine?”: Director Lance Edmands on Bluebird and Regional Specificity
I still have a Maine driver’s license, even though I’ve lived in Brooklyn for more than a decade now. When it comes up for renewal every few years, I travel back to the DMV in the town where I grew up and dutifully pose for a new photograph. People think this is crazy (and illegal) and I suppose they’re right, but it means a lot to me to be identified as a Mainer. When I get carded at a bar, the bouncer will take one look at my ID and inevitably say something like, “Maine? Who the hell is from […]
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Behind-the-Scenes of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’s Digital Restoration
In conjunction with the release of The Essential Jacques Demy box set, Criterion has offered up a supplemental look inside the 2013 digital restoration of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Above, Agnès Varda, the couple’s children, Mathieu and Rosalie, and technical specialists discuss the intricacies of upgrading the film’s sound, color, and image for the modern viewer. It’s depressingly easy to see why so many films fall by the wayside as prints run obsolete, and digital projection cements its spot as the industry standard. The attention to detail is, as Criterion notes, painstaking, to say nothing of the expense.
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Lauren Wolkstein Talks Stony Brook Southampton and Killer Films’ 20/20/20 Filmmaking Intensive
Stony Brook Southampton’s 20/20/20 intensive filmmaking course offers participating students an opportunity to learn the practical and technical tricks of the trade from Killer Films’ Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. Over the course of 20 weeks, the graduate-level program pairs lecture-style master classes from Killer and visiting filmmakers like Todd Haynes with development and production workshops so that each writer-director walks away with her own completed short at the end of a 20-day boot camp. Lauren Wolkstein, one of our 2013 25 New Faces of Film, reprises her role this summer as a 20/20/20 mentor for the workshop phase, and spoke […]
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Sympathy, Said the Shark: Shooting in POV
Writer, director and editor Devin Lawrence says that when he set out to make Sympathy, Said the Shark he’d already gone through two projects which had stalled out due to lack of financing, so he decided he had to come up with something where “money can no longer be the ultimate road block.” The resulting project was shot in 14 days and primarily in one location, but it was by no means a simple project to make as much of it was shot using a POV rig built around the Blackmagic Pocket Camera. Lawrence, who works in LA primarily as […]
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(T)ERROR Co-Directors Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe at the Sundance Labs
[Below, co-directors Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe share their experiences at the Sundance Documentary Edit and Story Labs. For more background on the team, read our 25 New Faces profile from last year.] Lyric: I have closely known the main character of our film for 12 years, and have witnessed, firsthand, many of the salient moments of his lengthy career as an FBI counterterrorism informant. We met while he was active in two separate international and domestic sting operations, and our trusting relationship has always been complicated by both government surveillance and the turbulence of his past. Because of his […]
