Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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How Google Search Drives Moviegoing
When I sit down with a filmmaker to discuss their latest project I almost always discover that in their rush to build an audience and leverage the power of social they have completely forgotten about search. This baffles me — you only have to look to your own browsing habits to know that the major search engines are the portal through which most of us experience the web. Google collects untold amounts of data about our search habits and viewing patterns as we use their sites. They then take this enormous sea of data and analyze it to try and establish links between […]
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40 Days of Dating
40 Days of Dating is a reality-based web piece documenting two good friends’ attempt to get to the bottom of their relationship issues by dating each other for 40 days — and documenting it online. The site is cleverly designed, with gorgeous title treatments for each day, and reports from both — Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman (both designers, ‘natch) — laid out side by side. Interspersed throughout are photos, little videos, etc. Rules include: the two have to see each other every day; no dating or sex with anyone else; and the 40 days have to include at least […]
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Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship Announces Open Call
The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship has announced an Open Call for its 2014 Fellow. In addition to a cash award of $1,000, the Fellowship provides an emerging documentary film editor with mentorship and support from both an established editor as well as a number of film organizations, including Manhattan Edit Workshop and SXSW. The Fellowship honors the career and life of Karen Schmeer, an acclaimed editor who worked on a number of classic films, including many by Errol Morris. She was struck and killed by a car fleeing a robbery on the Upper West Side of New York City […]
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Indiegogo: Ann Marie Bryan on The Shattered Mind
Ann Marie Bryan is the writer-producer-director of the upcoming film, The Shattered Mind, which is currently in postproduction. She’s raising finishing funds for her film so she can submit to 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker invited her to write a guest blog about her film and the campaign, and she submitted the following, in interview form. To learn more and/on contribute, visit the project’s IndieGoGo page: Support The Shattered Mind on IndieGoGo. Q: What is The Shattered Mind about? A: The Shattered Mind, based in New York, is a psychodrama and surreal story about a hard-of-hearing teenager who juggles family, […]
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Andrew Ellard on Writing for Film and Television
This is the first of a three-part series on the independent horror film AfterDeath, which is currently in post-production. The first part is an interview with writer Andrew Ellard, while the following parts will feature an interview with producer and co-director Gez Medinger. In school, Andrew Ellard thought he wanted to be a cartoonist, but it took a long time and a “not very successful A-level art” for him to realize that he actually couldn’t draw. This led him to a second revelation; that he wanted to tell stories — he’d just picked the wrong medium. After finishing school, Ellard […]
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Screenwriter Nick Antosca on Getting In and Getting Out
Writer Nick Antosca was a guest recently on the Other People podcast, and, along with discussion of his literary practice and new short story collection The Girlfriend Game, he talked about screenwriting. Antosca writes film and television scripts with writing partner Ned Vizzini (It’s Kind of a Funny Story), and offers good advice on transitioning from fiction to screenwriting and breaking into television. Towards the end of the conversation Antosca, currently a writer on the NBC show Believe, speaks about how his fiction has changed as a result of screenwriting, citing one specific screenplay maxim: get into scenes late and […]
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Stunning First Images and Video from the RED Epic Dragon
Director and cinematographer Mark Toia at the RED User Forum has his hands on the new 6K RED Epic Dragon, and he calls it “the real deal,” writing, “It’s the first camera ever that I have used that captures exactly what I see with my own eye. Never have I seen this before!” From Toia’s post: The Red Dragon sensor has 3 F STOPS more than before. 1 in the hight lights which rolls over wonderfully !, 2 solid extra stops in the darks…. maybe 3 once the colour science has been perfected. But there is still noise, but nothing […]
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The Terror of Free-Fall: A Filmmaker’s Experience at POV Hackathon 4
When making a documentary the following question tends to arise: what should happen to those extra 238.5 hours of material? After a 90-minute (give or take) cut is locked, what does one do with the pile left on the floor? Do you pick up five or so scenes you’re particularly fond of and put them on a DVD as “extras”? What if you grabbed — or carefully selected, depending on your level of intensity of need to control — a handful of material and constructed an interactive online video explorer or choose-your-own-adventure, allowing people to navigate as they wish, depending […]
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Day 1 of 25: James Ponsoldt and The Spectacular Now
A new, occasional column here at Filmmaker, “The Shooting Schedule” looks at film production through the prism of a single shoot day. I peruse a film’s call sheet and production report and ask the director questions solely based on what I see there. To launch the column, I couldn’t think of anyone better to talk to than my friend James Ponsoldt, whose third feature, The Spectacular Now, opens today. A contributor to Filmmaker — and a director whose first feature, Off the Black, Robin O’Hara and I produced — Ponsoldt has made with The Spectacular Now an indelible teen romance […]
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Doing It in One on Colorless Green
“Hey Ryan, can we talk about the scene we’re shooting tomorrow?” Casey Wilson, the director of photography, was sitting off to the side of the football field when he called me over. We were waiting for the sun to go down so we could get a shot of a football game at magic hour for the opening of my new movie, Colorless Green. It was the first moment all day we’d had to talk about the next day’s work. “What do you think about doing it all in one shot?” I could feel my eyes narrow. For the next two […]
