Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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@SXSW: Digital Bolex and New Beyond the Bolex Documentary
Sharing a booth at the SXSW trade show were the teams behind the forthcoming Digital Bolex RAW-file camera and Beyond the Bolex, a new documentary film by Alyssa Bolsey, whose great grandfather invented the celebrated and influential camera. I stopped by the booth on the last day of the conference, and spoke very briefly to one of its inventors, Joe Rubinstein, above. In my video, Rubinstein says he expects the release of the camera soon. Red Shark News has reproduced a post from the Digital Bolex forum by member James M, who also stopped by the booth and provides more […]
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Five Questions with Orc Wars Director Kohl Glass
Microbudget film doesn’t venture into the expensive world of science fiction too often, and certainly not the brand that features hordes of orcs and other fantasy creatures. But that’s exactly where Emmy-winning director Kohl Glass, whose short film Der Ostwind played at Sundance in 2007, wanted to go with his debut feature, Orc Wars. The film, which has wrapped and is currently gathering its finishing funds on Kickstarter, features ex-Marine John Norton (Rusty Joiner) who buys an isolated western ranch that turns out to contain a portal to another world; when orcs use it to threaten an elf princess (Masiela Lusha) […]
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Celebrating the Obsolete: Films on Film at SXSW
It’s no secret that the independent film industry has been irrevocably altered by the modern financing and distribution landscapes. With new technologies rendering traditional media — both film itself and releasing platforms — obsolete, filmmakers have managed to weave the presence of such nostalgias and tropes into their work. In Josh Johnson’s Rewind This!, which had its world premiere at SXSW, the effects of the home video revolution are dissected by collectors, fanatics, programmers, and critics alike. Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, which screened at SXSW following its world premiere at Sundance, is a comedic period piece in which programmers and […]
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IFP Masterclass: How to Fund Your Documentary
Louise Rosen is a media executive with more than a quarter-century of experience. She formed Louise Rosen Ltd. in 1996 “to specialize in setting up international television pre-sales and co-productions on behalf of independent documentary and non-fiction producers.” She has done everything from research and budgeting to distribution and management. Among her credits are Oscar, Emmy, Sundance, Prix Italia, and International Emmy award-winning projects. Suffice to say, she knows a thing or two about documentaries and getting your film made. Luckily for filmmakers without Rosen’s breadth of experience (or those who do, but can still learn a thing or two), […]
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Tribeca Announces New All Access Projects
The Tribeca Institute’s artist program Tribeca All Access, now 10 years old, today announced 11 new projects that it is supporting. Two of these are by 2012 “25 New Faces” alums: Long Year Begin, a doc project co-helmed by Malika Zouhali-Worrall (Call Me Kuchu), and Terence Nance’s political thriller The Lobbyists, a very intriguing follow-up to An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Other promising projects already on my radar that TAA is funding include Roots & Webs, a mushroom-themed doc produced by Beasts of the Southern Wild‘s Josh Penn; Obvious Child, Gillian Robespierre’s edgy rom com; and Pilgrim Song director Martha Stevens’ third feature, Papaw Easy. Commenting on Tribeca All Access’ […]
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The New Digital Storytelling Series: Elaine McMillion
Last week, Filmmaker and the MIT Open Documentary Lab kicked off their collaborative series of interviews with digital storytellers with a conversation with Zeega. (For an introduction to this entire series, read “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin.) In the second part in this series, Elaine McMillion talks about her work, mainly focusing on her interactive documentary Hollow, a “hybrid community participatory project and interactive documentary” that uses HTML5 to depict a West Virginia community via video, photography, soundscapes and interactive data. From her website, McMillion describes herself thusly: Elaine McMillion is a documentary storyteller […]
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Second Annual NYU Purple List Announced
Last year, in order to spotlight the talents emerging from NYU’s graduate film program, students Ash Bhalla and Shandor Garrison created the Purple List, the university’s answer to the Blacklist. The notable success of the 2012 Purple List was Shaka King’s stoner comedy Newlyweeds, which premiered this January at Sundance and was picked up for distribution by Phase 4 Films. The 2013 list was announced this morning, and was chosen by a panel of judges including Sundance Labs’ Rachel Chanoff, IFP’s Amy Dotson, actor Peter Dinklage, filmmaker Karyn Kusama and cinematographer Andrij Parekh. The scripts honored by the 2013 Purple […]
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My Journey From Doctor to Actor/Filmmaker: How I Produced, Starred in and Profited from My Indie Films
“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” -Bruce Lee If you are pursuing something as ambitious as acting or filmmaking, you know that one of the most valuable assets you have is your time. I work full-time as a doctor, and if you work full-time like I do and you want to make it big in the film industry, you’ve got to learn how to make sacrifices and budget your time. For instance, I performed surgery this morning, did an interview at noon, and edited some scenes of […]
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Ginger & Rosa Director Sally Potter on Taking Chances
Sally Potter spoke to a sold-out, mostly female audience on a springlike afternoon in Toronto. She was the latest world-renowned director to sit in the interview at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and she discussed with journalist Johanna Schneller her experiences and views on filmmaking while clips of her films burst on the screen including her latest, Ginger & Rosa. The session started with a moment from her little-seen 1979 short, Thriller. It’s an experimental short consisting of grainy black-and-white photos married to the opera La Boheme and Bernard Hermann’s theme from Psycho. “The decisions I made were about trying to bring […]
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How to Raise Seven Grand in Seven Days on Indiegogo
My film partner and I reached our crowdfunding goal for our documentary film project, The Keepers, last month. I previously wrote about some of the issues and questions about crowdfunding and documentary ethics that came up during our long campaign. This piece is a useful follow-up that explains how we were actually able to beat the odds and raise half of our goal in the final week. This was written with the hopes that other indie filmmakers can apply what we have learned to reach their own fundraising goals. What they say is true By now it’s common crowdfunding lore […]
