Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Seed&Spark Partners with American Express’ Digital Distribution Service
On Monday, it was announced that the crowdfunding and streaming platform Seed&Spark would partner with American Express’ AmEx NOW distribution service in an effort to bring their titles to an audience of 67 million households. AmEx will select five films a month (both shorts and features) from Seed&Spark’s library to screen on their interactive TV channel, AmEx NOW. The first crop of films includes features Like The Water, The Man Who Ate New Orleans, Mana’olana: Paddle for Hope, and shorts Tick Tock Time Emporium and Lex. Filmmaker spoke to Seed&Spark’s Director of Content, Amanda Trokan, about the details of the new initiative and the open submissions process. Filmmaker: In collaborating […]
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This is the Electro-Optic Camera, the World’s First DSLR
A few years ago, former Kodak engineer James McGarvey posted photographs and information about the world’s first DSLR camera, which he worked on at the government’s request in 1987 as part of Kodak’s Federal System Division. Along with a team of three others, McGarvey designed an Electro-Optic Camera “intended for unobtrusive use” in situations requiring a film camera. It’s unclear whether this first prototype still exists, but McGarvey scanned his 8×10 photos of the finished product and put them online, along with an admirably detailed explanation of the camera’s circuitry and supplementary parts. The only sample image that remains (army […]
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Watch: David Fincher’s Zodiac and the Art of the Insert
Within David Fincher’s filmography, Zodiac has always struck me as something special, if not anachronistic, for its handling of the police procedural genre. Perhaps it’s because, despite legions of so-called confessors, its true-life case was never closed. Appropriately, the film seems less concerned with tidy plotting than the psychosis — personal, collective and social — such a lingering mystery can create. Still, for all the film’s meta-textual aspirations, Fincher is, at heart, a narrative filmmaker and does relate the necessary details with a compendium of insert shots. They are all spliced together here in this supercut from Josh Forrest.
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Edge of Tomorrow: The Anxiety of Expendability
Despite perpetual predictions of the imminent end of Tom Cruise’s viability as a box office draw — a fate presumably tied to his Scientology, perceived egotism or the general difficulties of maintaining longterm A-list status — the actor keeps trucking along in vehicles that, consciously or not, tap into anxiety about how he’s perceived. There is, most notably, the precedent of Vanilla Sky, which seemed like a mid-life crisis writ large: a movie about a wealthy, successful man whose sudden downfall is precipitated by facial disfigurement — surely as much an actor’s nightmare as much as anything. This type of […]
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Data Points Emerge in the VOD Landscape
Lately, it’s seemed like I’ve been inadvertently launching a weekly VOD column, but here is yet another contrarian and unexpected entry in the financially-shrouded market’s set of data points. Over the weekend, Radius-TWC released their digital grosses for The Unknown Known and 20 Feet From Stardom at $1 million and $1.3 million, respectively. In the exclusive report, co-president Tom Quinn offered his reasoning behind the films’ release strategies (“Errol Morris has a heavy following on Twitter”), while the author Brian Brooks points out that although VOD is assumed to be a major source of revenue, “some execs have noted that tabulating nontheatrical grosses is inherently not the […]
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Video: Steven Soderbergh Talks About Koyaanistqatsi Director Godfrey Reggio’s Work
“I saw Koyaanisqatsi in 1983, when it came out, so I was 20,” Steven Soderbergh explains in this interview clip about Godfrey Reggio’s influence on his work. “It was pretty significant to be that age and an aspiring filmmaker and to see that.” Soderbergh has long been vocal about his admiration for Reggio’s movies, having served as one of the presenters of the Qatsi trilogy as well for the director’s latest film, last year’s Visitors. The film is available for DVD, Blu-Ray and digital download purchase tomorrow. [jwplayer player=”1″ mediaid=”86264″]
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IFP Announces Theatrical First Runs and Narrative Lab Fellows
In addition to the ten projects and filmmakers named 2014 Narrative Lab Fellows this morning, IFP, the parent organization of Filmmaker, also announced that they will offer one-week, theatrical first runs for IFP alumni, members and others at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. Since the popularization of self-distribution, many filmmakers have squandered good resources on four-walling for the sake of that New York Times review. IFP’s decision to open up their screening room for submissions (come July) offers filmmakers a built-in curatorial buzz. As noted in the release, IFP will begin the initiative in the fall with the theatrical runs of […]
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Watch: Leos Carax Brings Rodin’s “The Thinker” to Life in Gradiva
Galerie Gradiva, a swanky, new Parisian gallery, hired Leos Carax to fashion a promotional riff on Boy Meets Girl ahead of its opening on May 28th. Shooting within the newly furbished space, Carax crafts a cutely subversive portrait of man and woman as nude model (NSFW?) and legendary sculpture. Fed up with his status as gallery poster boy, Rodin’s “The Thinker” airs his grievances to his partner, as Carax animates the bronze with both dialogue and camera movement. The miniature of Rodin’s masterwork is just one of many notable pieces in the gallery that features Dali, Picasso, Kandinsky, Matisse and so forth. Watch it […]
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Win an Alejandro Jodorowsky Prize Pack
Thanks to our friends at ABCKO Films, Filmmaker has a prize pack to give away tied to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Dance of Reality, the cult favorite’s first feature since 1990’s The Rainbow Thief. In this new film, Jodorowsky revisits his ’30s Chilean childhood while producing typically fantastical imagery. The prize pack includes an El Topo Blu-ray, The Holy Mountain Blu-ray, and the El Topo soundtrack on both CD and vinyl. To win, be the first to answer this question: what sci-fi novel did Jodorowsky try and ultimately fail to bring to the screen, as chronicled in a recently released documentary? […]
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Two New Apichatpong Weerasethakul Gallery Shows, Plus a New Journal About His Work
Though it’s no secret that Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives director Apichatpong Weerasethakul is probably even more prolific as a gallery artist than as a director, coverage of his non-film work often gets short shrift. Reviews of two recent exhibitions shed light on the latest developments in this arena of his work. From London, Marco Bohr reports on “Double Visions,” a recently closed exhibit held at the Anthony Reynolds Gallery. Bohr is skeptical of the success of this exhibition, which includes Dilbar, a ten-minute video of a Bangladeshi migrant worker in the UAE, and Teem, three mobile […]
