Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
“A Filmmaker Lives in a Suitcase”: Guillermo del “Toronto” Speaks During TIFF
At the end of a one-hour chat held on the first full day of TIFF, an audience member suggested that the Mexican director of Pan’s Labyrinth be renamed Guillermo del Toronto. The sentiment behind this fanciful idea lay in the fact that del Toro keeps returning to Toronto to film here, most recently the $250-million mega-actioner, Pacific Rim, and is now prepping the horror flick, Crimson Peak, before cameras roll next spring. “I’ve lived in L.A., Madrid, Budapest,” del Toro recalled before an invited audience at the Trump Hotel. “[A filmmaker] lives in a suitcase.” The Canuck version of the […]
-
Low & Outside: Lessons for Indie Filmmakers Pitching to the Studios
Filmmaker is sponsoring this week’s pitch panels at IFP’s Filmmaker Conference. Tomorrow morning at 11:00 AM will be The Art of the Narrative Pitch, Monday the 16th at 11:00AM will be Wild Card New Media pitches, Thursday the 19th at 11:00 AM will be the Art of the Documentary Pitch,. In each session, filmmakers will present short, two-minute pitches, and a panel of experts will dissect them, giving you, the audience, a master class in how to present your material to funders and producers. I’ll be introducing tomorrow’s session, and Nick Dawson will do Monday’s. Thinking about the art of […]
-
David Cronenberg Introduces Body/Mind/Change
Filmmaker scooped the competition this Spring with Lance Weiler’s story about Body/Mind/Change, the West Coast start-up that licensed the IP of David Cronenberg to develop new biotech products. The main project discussed was POD, an implanted personalized consumer recommendation engine that’s also an actual living organism. When this story ran, some wondered whether Weiler’s account was some kind of spoof, but now Cronenberg himself has surfaced to endorse the project, even as other publications — and, um, the press release itself — question its authenticity. (Our friends at Motherboard dubbed Weiler’s piece a “faux profile,” or “fauxfile.”) Regardless, the project […]
-
What Opera and Sharknado Can Teach Independent Film
The other day, Liesl Copland at WME gave a wonderfully frightening talk at the Toronto Film Festival bemoaning the “analytic black holes” of streaming and VOD platforms. She’s absolutely right: filmmakers and even their distributors have no idea how many people are seeing their movies, paying how much money, and barely knowing when and where they’re available. We have more luck knowing how many people are pirating our films on BitTorrent! Theatrical presentation is still the emotional gold standard of independent film: we make movies to be shown in front of audiences. OK, but other than playing at film festivals […]
-
“It’s a Nice Little Movie, But It Isn’t Commercial:” The Theatrical Self-Distribution of Northern Lights
The following is an abridged version of a report on the self-distribution of the 1978 U.S. indie Northern Lights, directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, written shortly after the film’s release by Hanson himself. The winner of the Camera D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, Hanson and Nilsson’s film is being released by Artists Public Domain/Cinema Conservancy and opens at Film Forum on September 2o. The distribution of Northern Lights was both unusual and unique. Instead of opening in New York, getting reviews, moving to the biggest cities in the country and gradually spreading out to the […]
-
Gordon Willis on the Faux Pas of “Dump Truck Directing”
We’re back to legendary cinematographer Gordon Willis in a Craft Truck interview as he cautions against “dump truck directing” — a term he coined to describe the bad habit of directors who aren’t discerning when shooting and overwhelm editors with footage. Willis’ sage advise comes in handy for the digital filmmaker whose temptation to fix everything in post can overshadow the simplicity of doing it right the first time. You can watch the rest of the interview here.
-
Mark Peranson on his Apocalyptic The Last Movie Homage, La última película
Appearing in the Wavelengths section of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival is La última película, an experimental comedy about filmmaking and the apocalypse by two directors joined in collaboration by CPH:DOX’s DOX:LAB program. Filipino director Raya Martin (Independencia) collaborates with Canadian critic and filmmaker Mark Peranson on a crazily cinephilic conceit: remaking Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie as, literally, the last movie. The Color Wheel‘s Alex Ross Perry stars as a “disillusioned and delusional” filmmaker traveling to the Yucatan to make a psychedelic Western in the days leading up to the Mayan Apocalypse. Nicolás Pereda star Gabino Rodriguez plays […]
-
Liesl Copland on the “Analytic Black Holes” of Netflix, iTunes and Amazon
A filmmaker called me the other day, asking if I could think of some comps for his movie. You know, other movies whose marketplace performance would indicate that there is a paying audience for his demographically-similar picture. He named a title he really liked and said he was shocked to see via Box Office Mojo that it had done so poorly. Indeed, its reported box office was in the five figures. The very low five figures. “But that box-office figure is misleading,” I replied. “The film was bought by a company whose strategy is to release on VOD and digital […]
-
12 Steps to Avoid Going Broke Applying to Film Festivals
The author of this guest essay is a filmmaker whose most recent film is Between Us. He is also the co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival. — Editor I recently wrote an article about 12 Steps to a Saner Festival Plan in which I suggested the volume-method of festivals: Get your film into as many festivals as you can, and build momentum from one to the next. Unfortunately, a lot of people read that article. And the one consistent question I’m getting is if we’re broke filmmakers, how can we afford to apply to so many festivals? Chances are you […]
-
Arcade Fire’s Interactive Music Video, “Reflektor”
One could argue that Arcade Fire is an MTV band for the new generation. Content wise, their songs have few similarities with the likes of ’90s hits like “Buddy Holly” or “Virtual Insanity,” but their recognition of the music video as a malleable and significant platform is refreshing in the YouTube age of sex-soused, auto-tuned pop. Harnessing new technology, the Montreal-based collective has pushed the limits of the medium far beyond the capabilities of their predecessors, thanks to frequent collaborations with Vincent Morisset. Mr. Morisset, who describes himself as “a web-friendly director…looking for new ways to tell stories,” has worked […]
