Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“Magical and Terrifying:” Jeremy Xido on Death Metal Angola
The following is a guest post from Jeremy Xido, the director of Death Metal Angola, which screens at DOC NYC on November 16. A few years ago, I was traveling through Angola researching a film about a railway when I stopped at the only cafe in Huambo, the country’s bombed-out second city, that served a decent cup of coffee. A young man with tiny dreadlocks in a blue button-down Oxford shirt waved me over. I sat with him for a while and chatted. We talked about what I was doing there and I asked him about himself. He said he […]
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The Act of Killing Takes BRITDOC’s Puma Impact Award
Last night at the Times Centre in New York, BRITDOC’s Puma Impact Award was bestowed upon the visibly shell-shocked filmmakers behind the year’s most innovative film, The Act of Killing. Director Joshua Oppenheimer, co-director Christine Cynn, and producer Signe Byrge Sørensen assumed the stage to collect their iridescent trophy – and its accompanying 50,000 Euro prize, to be split between the team and their activist efforts – from jurors Susan Sarandon, Zadie Smith, and Ricken Patel. Absent were two members of the jury, Gael García Bernal and Eric Schlosser, but, perhaps more notably, The Act of Killing’s anonymous co-director and 60 crew […]
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Crowdfunding…For the Most Part
The following is a guest post from filmmaker Bryan Poyser, who is currently crowdfunding the road show for his most recent film, The Bounceback. Bryan’s A.S.A. (Air Sexes As) name is “Lunchmeat.” I am currently in the midst of what must be the longest month and a half of my life. On October 4, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a “Road Show” for my film The Bounceback, which will wrap up this Sunday, Nov. 17th. I’ve barely been sleeping, I’ve had depressive lows and giddy highs, nearly all of my pride has been swallowed and yet […]
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Michael Kleiman on Web, Connectivity, and Social Documentary
Only 32% of the world’s population has access to the Internet. That figure, coming from the organization A Human Right, means that 4.6 billion people are effectively left out of the Information Age that most of us take for granted. Individuals and organizations across the world are working to ameliorate that and spread online connectivity into underdeveloped and rural areas from the U.S. to Kazakhstan. And films like Tiffany Shlain’s Connected (2011) are starting to probe what can happen to global consciousness when the collective wisdom of the world, not just our meager social networks, are finally truly linked together. […]
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Introducing 8K: The Final Frontier?
Keeping apace with camera technology is like running a race where the finish line keeps on moving. Just as the next generation of games consoles go on sale boasting the ability to display 4K images (although for the moment only those with the salary of a pro-footballer can afford screens able to make use of all those pixels) Japanese broadcaster NHK has started to film and broadcast events in 8K. NHK are so excited about the technology that they have commissioned filmmakers to make short films showcasing 8K, which were screened at the recent Tokyo International Film Festival. I went […]
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Prefundia Promotes Crowdfunding Preawareness
Pre-awareness — in studio parlance, it usually refers to viewers' recognition of a film property before its release. In today's crowded landscape, it's considered an important factor when greenlighting Hollywood tentpoles, and it's why you see so many remakes, reboots and franchise films. In the indie world, there's pre-awareness too. It can be created by everything from grassroots publicity before a film's release to the ability of successful crowdfunding campaigns to stoke interest in a project. And, if the folks at Prefundia are right, there's crowdfunding pre-awareness — buzz preceding a project's launch on Kickstarter or Indiegogo that can help […]
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Blackmagic Releases v1.5 with CinemaDNG RAW
Today, Blackmagic Design announced the release of the first and long-awaited software update for their Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. The 1.5 upgrade adds a 12-bit Log CinemaDNG RAW recording file so users can capture extensive dynamic range — the brightest highlights and darkest shadows — in a single file. The new addition will allow for lossless quality when images are decompressed, and greater flexibility in the color grading process. Further, users can begin editing or color correcting directly from an SD card, which will facilitate the post-production workload. A nice function for a camera that runs under $1000. The Blackmagic […]
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Femke Wolting on Submarine Channel and the Online Documentary Unspeak
George Orwell claimed in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” that English was in a bad way: common consensus (which he was satirizing) held “that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes.” His own opinion was more that “the decline of language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.” Thus it could be resisted: “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and […]
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Blast of Silence: Independent Filmmaking, Then and Now
1961 — I drove up to the gate of 20th Century Fox studios and hesitantly gave my name to the guard. I had an uneasy moment watching him look at a pad before he greeted me with “Good morning, Mr. Baron” and waved me forward. I steered my car under the elevated train set of Funny Girl and passed several soundstages to a parking area with my name in large white letters written on it. I got out of my car and paused to look at the surrounding studio activity, and the question. “How the hell did I get here?” […]
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Fifth Column Features Launch Pay-As-You-Wish Model
Filmmaker contributor John Yost recently joined forces with Alexander Berberich to launch Fifth Column Features (FCF), a boutique independent film studio and online distribution company. Though the concept may sound familiar, FCF boasts the industry’s first pay-as-you-wish content model, which Yost likens to a barometer for audience commitment. Filmmaker spoke with Yost about what FCF is doing differently, and how, as filmmakers themselves, they are able to prioritize their colleagues’ best interests. Filmmaker: Why do you feel the industry was lacking a pay-as-you-wish platform? Are you operating from a standpoint that audiences are the most valuable entity to an independent filmmaker? John Yost: Pay […]
