Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Sundance Queer Preview — 2014 Edition
The most exciting film festival in America gets underway next week. The prestigious Sundance Film Festival will unspool more than 120 new features, shorts, documentaries and innovative media projects in Park City, Utah from January 16th to 26th — showcasing, as always, a hefty slate of LGBT films for the edification of the citizens of Utah and the visiting masses. With the Sundance stamp of approval chances are good that you’ll be seeing many of these have some kind of release in 2014 (whether at your own local LGBT film fest, art house theater, digital platform or else on DVD). […]
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Hidden Horror: Larry Fessenden’s Habit
The following essay appears in the new horror-film anthology, Hidden Horror: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks. Click here for an interview with the book’s editor, Dr. AC as well as for links to four other essays published at Filmmaker. “I suspect that the less you know about me, the longer you’ll stay interested.” Habit: [hab-it] noun, 1) an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary; 2) a dominant or regular disposition or tendency; prevailing character or quality; 3) addiction, especially to alcohol or narcotics The vampire of legend is eternal, and its […]
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Pickups for Gondry’s Mood Indigo, Berninger’s Mistaken for Strangers and Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces
In a busy Monday for acquisitions, Michel Gondry’s romance Mood Indigo, Tom Berninger’s doc on The National, Mistaken for Strangers, and Daniel Patrick Carbone’s indie favorite Hide Your Smiling Faces all found homes with theatrical distributors. Drafthouse Films snapped up Indigo, which stars Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris and has a certain Amelie vibe to it. The film premiered at Karlovy Vary last year rather than one of the big fall fests, so it’s maybe not surprising that an emerging distributor like Drafthouse has picked up the film rather than a bigger and more established outfits. Drafthouse boss Tim League said of the purchase, “Not since Amelie have […]
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Garrett Bradley’s IFP Labs Photo Blog
Garrett Bradley (2013 IFP Narrative Lab Fellow) is an independent filmmaker based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her first feature length film, Below Dreams is scheduled for release in 2014. The following is a series of photos taken during the 2013 IFP Distribution Lab held this past year at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP. Follow Garrett on Instagram @garrettgarrettbradleybradley Leaving New Orleans, I took a 9 AM flight to New York for the last of three IFP narrative labs… This happened along the way… New York was cold. The heart of the city was warming though. James sang his heart out […]
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Test Footage from Letus’ GoPro Anamorphic Adapter
Since Leviathan, I’ve been more curious than ever about the functionality of GoPros. Often categorized as toys and far more prevalent on ski slopes than sets, it took Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel strapping the pocket-sized gizmo to the underside of a fishing vessel to illustrate its cinematic advantages. A little while back, Letus announced the release of a 1.33X Anamorphic Adapter for the camera, to be known as the AnamorphX-GP. Scheduled for shipment on January 31st, the first wave of test footage has arrived from Jared Abrams at Wide Open Camera. Though the characteristic fish eye traces remain intact, the wide aspect […]
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Joseph Gordon-Levitt Premieres Collaborative Show “Hit Record on TV”
A streamlined extension of his open collaborative site, Joseph Gordon-Levitt will premiere “Hit Record on TV” on Pivot, next Saturday at 10 pm. The first episode, which is currently available online, promises an amalgam of forms and tastes, as “Regular Joe” and his merry band of global collaborators stitch together short films (featuring Elle Fanning), musical interludes and animated sequences. Being that it is the inaugural affair, the episode centers on the number one, its connotations and translations, as told through said media and its fair share of webcams. The hitRECord address is one well worth visiting, as it encourages artists […]
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Hidden Horror: Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
The following essay appears in the new horror-film anthology, Hidden Horror: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks. Click here for an interview with the book’s editor, Dr. AC as well as for links to four other essays published at Filmmaker. “I’ve come to tell you what I see. There are great darknesses. Farther than time itself. And beyond the darkness, a light that glows, changes…and in the center of the universe…the eye that sees us all.” I sometimes think I learned everything I know about horror movies from Stephen King. I have an old copy of Danse […]
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Amazon Launches Free Storyboarder Tool
Amazon continues its adventures in moviemaking. Amazon Studios, which began as an effort in crowdsourced content is moving towards content produced by professionals, but they still seem to be interested in moviemaking by the masses. They’ve already released a free storyboarding tool, and now they have Amazon Storyboarder, a tool for outlining stories using a corkboard metaphor. It’s free – you just need to create an Amazon Studios account – and it’s reasonably full-featured; you can add cards and move them around, and you can even share your projects with others and get their input. While the formatting of cards […]
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Hidden Horror: The Signal
The following essay appears in the new horror-film anthology, Hidden Horror: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks. Click here for an interview with the book’s editor, Dr. AC as well as for links to four other essays published at Filmmaker. “Do you have the crazy?” Expectations, when great, are seldom met and tend to leave an impression of disappointment. I often find the opposite to also be true; the fewer expectations, the more gratifying when something turns out to be a jewel amidst detritus. With this in mind, it fills me with quiet dread that by cresting […]
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Hidden Horror: An Interview with Dr. AC
“An epic pot-luck movie party where everyone has brought a favorite dish and wants you to give it a try” is how Dr. AC (Aaron Christensen) describes his latest horror-movie anthology, Hidden Horror: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks. And, indeed, anyone looking to scratch past the Rosemary’s Baby‘s and Paranormal Activity‘s to uncover more idiosyncratic, personal and sometimes more terrifying work will find their needs met by the book, which couples great film recommendations with astute commentary by passionate critics. Included are essays on a number of my personal favorites — The Changeling, Dark Water and […]
