Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Reviews and an NSFW Trailer for Abel Ferrara’s Welcome to New York
Abel Ferrara’s Welcome to New York is set to screen in the Cannes market on the 17th — the same day it will be released on VOD in France. No word yet on the date of the U.S. IFC release, but our appetite is whetted by a new, very NSFW trailer found on Italian television that beats the rather prosaic one that dropped online a few days ago. Watch it below. The trade reviews are out too, which suggest the film revisits the intensity of Ferrara’s classic Bad Lieutenant even as it also explores the actor/role psychodrama of Dangerous Game. […]
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Sound Bleed and Trailers From Hell: Five New(ish) Aspects of the Multiplex Experience
The onset of summer movie season traditionally regularly journalistic notes on the current state of multiplex moviegoing, with a heavy emphasis on the incivility of unrepentant talkers and wielders of mobile devices. Serious consideration of the changing experiential aspects of normal multiplex visits are few and far-between; though my perspective is skewed by the particulars of mostly attending NYC’s multiplexes, some newish norms seem worth noting. Special screenings and parallel tracks are unignorable, even if not attending them According to Dealflicks (a sort of Priceline for discounted movie tickets), 88% of movie theaters are empty. High ticket prices and worry […]
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Economical Storytelling at the MINY Media Center by IFP Demo Day
Given the bullpen of entrepreneurial ventures populating its space, it seemed only fitting that the MINY Media Center by IFP would have an inaugural demo day. At their campus in Dumbo, Brooklyn last Thursday, four of the Media Center’s “incubators” offered a ten-minute pitch before fielding questions from a panel of experts — a first from all two of the demo days I’ve attended, that proved a welcome inclusion. The central undercurrent running across the four startups’ presentations was economical storytelling, or, how to tell stories in the most effective manner possible. Blank on Blank, the brainchild of media producer David Gerlach, […]
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Distributing the Cause of Dam Removal: Patagonia’s Push for DamNation
Arriving in theaters this weekend following its SXSW premiere is DamNation, Ben Knight and Travis Rummel’s ecological advocacy documentary supporting the removal of obsolete dams. Funded and distributed by Patagonia — and the winner of SXSW’s Documentary Spotlight Audience Award — DamNation and its release are a study, says Sub-Genre’s Brian Newman, in “how a brand can use film to create impact.” Newman is the film’s marketing and distribution consultant, and along with the company and other partners he’s implementing an innovative campaign employing Patagonia’s customer base, collapsed release windows, partnerships with affinity groups and the old-fashioned hustling of DVDs. […]
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Share Your Life with a Stranger… for 20 Days
Anonymity is hot at the moment, with Secret gaining followers while anonymity fails — like Snapchat’s recent troubles — make front page news. As always, the key to catching a trend wave is to work the interstices and margins — to find the subtleties that will result in something new. With a particular storytelling flair, MIT Media Lab’s Playful Systems Group appears to have done that with a new app, 20 Day Stranger. Currently seeking beta testers, the app tells a personal story that places you in your own version of films like Hank and Asha or even The Double […]
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Manakamana and Nonfiction’s Power of Contextualization
Yesterday, the upstanding people at Cinema Guild decided to release their catalogue of DVD supplemental essays online. It’s an embarrassment of riches: Amy Taubin on Beaches of Agnès, J. Hoberman on The Turin Horse, Haden Guest on Cousin Jules, to name a few. At my first, tepid perusal, however, it is Robert Koehler’s essay “Sweetgrass and The Future of Nonfiction Cinema,” that merits the most attention. Koehler begins by addressing the myth of the “death” of cinema in the new digital environs, countering that we are in a peculiar renaissance of the documentary. He considers the newfound multiplex popularity of the form, with films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and Super Size […]
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Invisivision: New 3D-And-More Glasses to Allow Multiple Simultaneous POVs
“Have you wondered what your favorite movie looked like from the sidekick’s perspective?” asks the pitch video for Invisivision, a proposed new kind of 3D-and-more glasses being developed by PipeDream Interactive. The basic idea: since 3D already projects two images simultaneously, why not put those two information streams to a use other than creating stereophonic depth? The pitch video below outlines a potential multitude of uses. Would you like to choose which angle you watch a scene from — e.g., to toggle from the hero’s POV to the villain’s? Now you can, and that should be no extra work for […]
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Don’t Read This! 5 Things I Learned about Directing and Shooting a No-Budget Feature Film in an African Village
I’m not writing this for the careerists. For the ones just looking for an edge, for a way in, who think they have an idea that can sell and are poking for a soft spot in the walled city. If that’s you, you can stop reading now. Hell, just stop. I’m writing for the hopeless lot who scramble for meaning. Who care about what’s in the box, not the pretty package. Who care about result, impact, and why people and societies do the things they do. This is why we shot a movie over four months in a remote Ghanaian […]
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The Cost of Being an Independent Filmmaker
Scrolling through Twitter yesterday, I came across an interesting bit of data from the programmer-critic Miriam Bale that extended beyond the usual 140 characters. Linking to an external app, Bale drew up a breakdown of what she calls “the cost to have an indie film career.” Stipulating that most independent filmmakers finance at least a portion of their work, in addition to their basic living expenses, it would take about $119,112 to sustain four years of a “career.” Bale also postulates that working a full time gig at $12/hour, you could save around $3,072 a year, for the next 39 years, before […]
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IFFBoston: How Do You Interview Subjects?
At this year’s Independent Film Festival Boston, the panel “The Art of Documentary Film Editing: Case Studies” featured moderator Jim Hession, editor of Rich Hill, Lucia Small, director and editor of One Cut, One Life and Bryan Storkel, editor of Fight Church. An audience member asked the panel how they interviewed people and whether they prepped them beforehand, adding “Whenever I interview people, they’re always really bad talking to the camera.” Storkel: I try and do as little prep as possible. I try to show up and just start talking and get to know them on camera. I’ll have my questions […]
