Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
On Finding New Screenplay Structures for Independent Films
The below is a guest essay by Jennine Lanouette, Founder and Chief Content Creator at Screentakes Digital Publishing, who is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign for a line of media rich screenplay analysis ebooks. Lanouette has taught screenwriting and lectured on story structure and script analysis for over 20 years, and much of her wisdom can be found at her site. The new ebooks use text, video and interactive graphics to provide a new dimension to screenplay study. For more details, and to donate to the campign, visit its Kickstarter page. — SM It often seems to […]
-
The Independent Screenwriter: Jon Raymond
Portland-based Jon Raymond has four screenplay credits, all in the last decade, to his name, but his iMDB page only tells half the story. Raymond began his career and is still well known as a writer of novels and literary short fiction, and his film career has come not from the usual Black-Listed spec script but from adaptations of his work co-authored by a director/collaborator/friend, Kelly Reichardt. Two stories from his short story collection Livability, “Old Joy” and “Train Choir,” became Reichardt films (Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, respectively), with the two co-authoring their scripts. That work, and the […]
-
VHX Launches Transparency Aggregate “Stats”
Last year, John Sloss volunteered the closely guarded VOD and digital returns on Escape From Tomorrow, daring his competitors to do the same for their release catalogues. Unfortunately, not much came of this Multi-Screen Gross transparency crusade, but VHX, the digital distribution platform, has now launched “Stats,” a regularly updated infographic that details revenues and transactions. “We’re big believers in transparency and knowledge-sharing,” reads the announcement, “and it’s time to put our money revenue stats where our mouth is.” An aggregate in the truest sense as it provides no insight into individual titles, “Stats” nonetheless offers an idea of how to best reach your audience. The page breaks […]
-
“Cinema Needs Good Images”: An Interview with Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC was given the “Pierre Angénieux Excellens in Cinematography” award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It was a fitting tribute to the 83-year-old director of photography, who chronicled the events of the 1956 Hungarian revolution before leaving his country soon afterwards. In 1962 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States, settling in Los Angeles. During the ’70s Zsigmond established himself as one of the world’s great cinematographers, working on Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye, John Boorman’s Deliverance, and Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, […]
-
Vimeo Launches Original Programming with High Maintenance Web Series
Following in the footsteps of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon et al., Vimeo has boarded the original programming train with its acquisition of 25 New Faces’ Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld’s wonderful web series High Maintenance. Sinclair and Blichfeld began posting episodes of the serial, which stars Sinclair as a pot dealer who services a rotating ensemble, on Vimeo last year. In an email, Blichfeld said the following of their decision to join forces with Vimeo, “We have full creative control (writing, casting, etc.) of our work, which is unique. The episodes can vary in length as well. Basically we get to do High Maintenance […]
-
“Good Movies Don’t Get Seen:” Ted Hope at EbertFest
“I don’t actually think it’s worth my time to make movies right now,” said producer and Fandor CEO Ted Hope at an EbertFest panel last month. “If I really want to see a vibrant, ambitious film culture,” he continued, “I can help a lot more by trying to build a better infrastructure.” Keyframe Daily, the blog imprint of Fandor, is running a four part series from this conversation, the first of which was posted yesterday. In this excerpt, Hope puts forth six key issues which he hopes to address for the betterment of the independent film industry: 1. Independent film needs […]
-
Without Frills
As a teenager going into a movie theater, I was looking for some true reflection of the absurd darkness that had come on seemingly overnight. I was looking for a place to rest my pimples from the light and to be told that others had survived similar such onslaughts. For some before me it was James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause. Molly Ringwald in all them John Hughes movies. Then it was Claire Danes on TV in My So Called Life. But for me, it was the actor Liza Weil in Whatever. I was 19, hadn’t graduated high school, […]
-
In Trans(media)ition: the Seattle Transmedia Independent Film Festival
After ten years of being the scrappy little guy to the Seattle International Film Festival’s big kahuna, the Seattle True Independent Film Festival has run its course — which is exactly why I decided to visit the tech-addicted city (as a guest of the fest) to check out the outgoing underdog. Rather than pluck along as second fiddle for another 10 years, STIFF has done what I wish more regional festivals would do: rebrand for the future. As of this year STIFF now stands for the Seattle Transmedia Independent Film Festival, putting the focus squarely on “web series, video game […]
-
Case Studies and How Tos: Selling Your Film Abroad
In navigating the distribution market, many independent filmmakers channel their efforts toward domestic deals. While it is an understandable preoccupation, a new collection from The Film Collaborative entitled Selling Your Film Outside the U.S. offers some substantial insights on how to position your film in the lucrative territory of overseas VOD. In her section Carpe Diem for Indie Filmmakers in the Digital/VOD Sector, Wendy Bernfeld breaks down the differences in transactional vs. subscription vs. ad-supported VOD deals, and determines varying revenue shares for each. She looks at what does well with audiences and ventures how to connect your film to a platform […]
-
“The Unseen Seen”: Reiner Riedler’s Photos of Film Reels
Very neat: Reiner Riedler has come up with a new way to look at the death throes of 35mm. Granted access by the Deutsche Kinemathek to its archives, Riedler photographed a broad cross-section of movies — features and trailers, original negatives and copies, preserved and decayed, nitrate and acetate — in their increasingly-rarely-seen state as coiled reels around a core. “I drew up a list of well-known films and those with unusual titles,” Riedler explained to Design Boom. “I set up a little photo studio inside the cinema of the archive and backlit the film rolls by installing film lights […]
