Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The New Digital Storytelling Series: Vivek Bald
In the eighth part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Vivek Bald, filmmaker, Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media at MIT and a member of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, answers our questions. Bald’s ongoing project, Bengali Harlem, documents the history of two little-known groups of South Asian immigrants. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How did you become a digital storyteller? Were there […]
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Zach Braff Fights the Money Guys on Kickstarter
What hath Veronica Mars wrought? When Kickstarter began, it was a place for projects that couldn’t find their money elsewhere. Projects that didn’t fit into easy categories. Projects from people without access to typical funding sources. Over the years, it’s morphed into many other things, including a pre-sale marketplace for new tech gizmos. The latest is a Money Guy Free Zone for Hollywood names. First, Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas turned to Kickstarter to fund what the owner of its IP, Warner Bros, would not. (Aiming for $2 million he raised $5 million). Now, Garden State director Zach Braff is […]
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Terence Nance on An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is such a fine, rare bird: Terence Nance’s Gotham Award-winning debut film is, regardless of its aesthetic pyrotechnics and self-reflexivity (it consists of a series of short experimental films that radically deconstruct Nance’s romantic foibles), wholly, fully, truly accessible to everyone. If Hollis Frampton and Nina Paley had somehow, through the force of magic realism, had a black love child, it would have grown up to direct something like this. It’s altogether unusual strategy for detailing Nance’s obsessive courtship of a young woman named Namik Minter — using reenactments, direct address, doc interviews, stop-motion and traditional animation to […]
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Filmmaker360’s Michele Turnure-Salleo on Latest SFFS/KRF Grant Recipients
We recently ran a series of articles on the filmmakers shortlisted for the San Francisco Film Society’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation grants, and the eight projects which were chosen to receive support were as follows: Jonas Carpignano, writer/director — A Chjana — $45,000 for preproduction Grainger David, writer/director — Nocturne (working title) — $35,000 for screenwriting Ian Hendrie and Jyson McLean, co-writers/directors/producers — Mercy Road — $40,000 for development Maryam Keshavarz and Paolo Marinou-Blanco, cowriters — The Last Harem — $35,000 for screenwriting Richard Levien, writer/director and Chad Burris, producer — La Migra — $20,000 for development Tommy Oliver, writer/director/producer — […]
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“How Do You Get Anybody to See It?” Paul Schrader on Taxi Driver and 21st Century Filmmaking
Paul Schrader presented a screening of Taxi Driver in Toronto last weekend and spoke to the capacity audience of 450 at the Royal Cinema for an hour afterwards about his career and the changing state of filmmaking. As part of the Seventh Art Live Directors Series and presented by The Royal, he also showed a scene from his forthcoming The Canyons, starring Lindsay Lohan. Many in the audience watched Taxi Driver for the first time on the big screen, since many were not even born when the film shocked audiences in 1976. A major critical and box-office success, it launched […]
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Tribeca Film Institute’s Interactive Conference
There’s no good way to summarize the plethora of information presented last Saturday at TFI Interactive, a full-day conference held, for the second time, during the Tribeca Film Festival. Organized by the omnipresent Ingrid Kopp (who was recently interviewed by the MIT Open Documentary Lab), the day took place at the IAC Building in lower Manhattan, not far from most of the festival’s screenings and the Storyscapes interactive exhibits that Kopp also curated. Over 20 presentations covered dozens of individual projects, discussed entities like Kickstarter, the NFB, and IDFA DocLabs, and included panel discussions on creating adventure video games (think The […]
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How to Choose a Crowdsourced Theatrical Platform
Since I co-founded the distribution platform OpenIndie in 2009, the direct-to-fan model has matured into an attractive alternative to traditional distribution deals. Theatrical options in particular have increased dramatically, and success stories have grown from the few to the many. Having moved on from OpenIndie earlier this year, I will be writing a series of articles for Filmmaker on the new ways in which technology can enable distribution for independent filmmakers. In this first post, I’ll reflect on the theatrical space, highlight a range of the available crowdsourced theatrical platforms, and discuss their differences and the opportunities they present for filmmakers. The […]
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U.S. Indies Strong in Directors’ Fortnight
Yesterday, David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was the sole U.S. entry in Critics’ Week, playing in a special screening. However, in the Directors’ Fortnight lineup, there is a more healthy dose of U.S. filmmakers. Magic Magic, one of two films starring Michael Cera that New York-based Chilean director Sebastian Silva premiered at Sundance, makes the leap from Park City to the Croisette, as does Jim Mickle’s cannibal movie We Are What We Are, starring “25 New Face” Julia Garner. Jeremy Saulnier, maybe better known as a stalwart indie cinematographer, premieres his second feature, Blue Ruin, in the strand, while […]
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Financiers Don’t Want to Look Stupid and Other Fundraising Truths
“Looking stupid is more feared than losing money.” That’s one of several truths contained in a blog post by Chris Jones titled, “Who Will Finance Your Film and Why.” When it comes to independent film, where the often lack of upfront distribution makes financial modeling difficult, equity fundraising is more art than science. Many articles that purport to tell you how to raise money ultimately don’t. But Jones’ post is a good one; indeed, I pretty much agree with everything he writes. Like about looking stupid. It sounds crazy but it’s true. Looking stupid is feared more than loosing money. […]
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Storyscapes: Tribeca Goes Interactive
This image is from Empire Uncut, part of the Star Wars Uncut project and one of the five projects at the Tribeca Film Festival’s first juried exhibit of interactive video projects, which ran this week at the Bombay Sapphire House of Imagination on Varick Street. TFI has been supporting digital, transmedia, and multimedia projects for years through programs like its New Media Fund and hackathons, and now TFI’s Director of Digital Initiatives Ingrid Kopp (who was recently interviewed by Filmmaker) has found a way to bring some projects into a physical space to coincide with the film festival in lower […]
