Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Kodak Cinema Tools, a Free App for Filmmakers
Kodak has updated their free iOS app Cinema Tools to add a simple Aspect Ratio feature. Using a default picture, or one loaded from your photo library, you can choose from 2-perf, 3-perf, 4-perf and 16mm motion picture film formats and then choose between 2.35:1, 1.85:1, 1.18:1 (16×9) or 1.33:1 (4×3) aspect ratios. The image is then cropped to display the results. Unfortunately, you can’t choose a focal length for the imaginary lens, so the tool is very limited. (For a better web-based example that covers digital cameras, check out AbelCine’s Field of View Comparator.) While several of the tools […]
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Five Questions with Kelly + Victor Director Kieran Evans
The primarily documentary director Keiran Evans was fortunate enough to know writer Niall Griffiths before he wrote Kelly + Victor, which Evans has adapted into a feature film. Evans’ relationship and familiarity with Griffiths and his work facilitated him to adapt the cinematic novel into the screenplay of Kelly + Victor. The gritty drama about a young couple finding themselves in love in Liverpool makes its North American premiere tomorrow at SXSW, after a world premiere at the London Film Festival in October. While Kelly + Victor is Evans’ first narrative film, he approached the movie’s subjects as he would a documentary — as […]
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Su Friedrich on Gut Renovation
“Gentrification is the opposite of the apocalypse. The apocalypse would pause history, level the built world to a pile of trash, and most likely lower rents considerably. Gentrification churns history forward, takes out the trash, carts away rubble, hides the poor, makes you work more and more to manage your rent, and encrypts the past, when you didn’t have to work so many jobs just to fucking live here, behind its glossy surfaces.” – Kristin Dombek, “How to Quit”, n+1 issue 15 Colson Whitehead, in an essay about how his adopted neighborhood of Fort Greene was changing and would continue […]
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Five Questions with Touba Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Touba was seven years in the making: five of shooting, two of post-production. It grew out of her second documentary — 2008’s Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love — which followed the legendary Senegalese musician before and after 2004’s Egypt album, whose religious themes raised the ire of the country’s religious argument. Her newest film began life on vibrantly grainy 16mm, following an annual Senegal trek undertaken by hundreds to the city of Touba to visit the home of Sheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride Brotherhood. Like her last film, Vasarhelyi’s newest focuses on Islam […]
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The New Digital Storytelling Series: Zeega
The first our series of interviews with digital storytellers, realized in collaboration with Filmmaker, here are the team behind the interactive storytelling platform Zeega. From the group’s mission statement: Zeega is revolutionizing web publishing and interactive storytelling for a future beyond blogs. With Zeega, you can use any media in the cloud, transform the entire screen into your playground, and share your interactive creations with the world. We’re living in a unique moment. More media than ever is recorded and shared. But the web today is dominated by a few platforms – all stories start to feel the same, trapped […]
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Should Filmmakers Learn to Code?
“Do filmmakers need to learn to code?” The inspiration for this blog series came from this question. Software is part of our everyday life; in some circles coding is seen as the new literacy and a means of empowerment. At MIT’s Comparative Media Studies, where the MIT Open Documentary Lab is housed, we are confronted with this question on a regular basis as humanists sitting in a land of hackers who marvel at the power and elegance of code. Fluent in many programming languages, some of them believe that we all should be. In an effort to make coding more […]
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Dissecting My Brooklyn’s Success
Over at the IFP website, Filmmaker‘s Associate Editor Dan Schoenbrun has a comprehensive case study of Kelly Anderson’s My Brooklyn. The doc has had unprecedented success at the reRun Theater, selling out countless shows and bringing highly engaged audiences to the theater to both watch the film and discuss the issues it tackles surrounding local gentrification. Here’s a few choice extracts. Firstly, Anderson discussing “event-izing” screenings: I think that it gets at this deep question of – why do you make films? Maybe that’s what people need to do – sit back and think about why they made the film that they made. Do you just […]
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Torrenters, Six Strikes and You’re Out!
Has a peculiar notice popped up on either your TV set or computer reading: “Copyright Alert! #1”? This notice is the first of six that digital communications users will receive as part of the Copyright Alert System (CAS). Having failed to get Congress to adopt the SOPA/PIPA legislation last year, the movie and record industry trade associations, the MPAA and RIAA, respectively, have taken a second bite at the apple in their effort to address the problem of illegal downloading of copyrighted entertainment content. CAS, which went into effect on February 25, ties the major content trade associations to the […]
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Sundance Selects Pick Up Alexandre Moors’ Blue Caprice
IFP Lab film Blue Caprice, a chilling drama about the Beltway sniper starring Isaiah Washington, was today acquired by IFC’s Sundance Selects imprint. The movie is the debut feature by NYC-based French director Alexandre Moors — one of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” of 2012 — and had its world premiere in the NEXT section at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Later this month, it is the opening night selection at New Directors/New Films. Commenting on the pickup, Sundance Selects/IFC Films president Jonathan Sehring said, “Alexandre Moors has made one of the most distinct and haunting American independent films of the year […]
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Sarasota Film Festival Announces Partnership with Factory 25
Today the Sarasota Film Festival announced that it is joining forces with Factory 25 to offer a distribution deal as the prize for one of its competition sections. The winning movie in the Independent Visions strand will get a deal with Matt Grady’s Brooklyn-based boutique label, which has released many Sarasota alumni films from recent years. Here’s the info from the press release: The Sarasota Film Festival today announced that its Independent Visions Award will be presented by Factory 25, heralding a new partnership with Brooklyn-based film distributor. The winner of this prestigious award will also be presented with an unprecedented […]
