Premiering in Rotterdam, the disarming and oddly delightful Towheads is the feature debut of artist and experimental filmmaker Shannon Plumb. Exploring and extending aspects of her short-form Super-8 work within a feature context, Towheads is, on the surface, a familiar story of a bored housewife whose creative aspirations are stifled by the pressures of domesticity and the disinterest of a work-obsessed husband. But these frustrations are just the catalyst for a charmingly playful series of episodes in which Plumb’s character adopts various guises — a drag king, a pole dancer and many more — in an attempt to explore alternative […]
Since its release, the Canon C300 has received a lot of praise for its image quality and low-light sensitivity. But some users have reported problems with color fringing: incorrectly colored pixels that appear on in-focus vertical or horizontal borders adjacent to a blown out – or nearly blown out – background. This most commonly appears on man-made objects like railings and window edges, though it can also be seen in specular highlights on ocean waves. The Canon C300 is not unique in suffering problems like this. By all accounts the Sony NEX-FS100 exhibits far stronger fringing. Any single-sensor camera is […]
A genuine meditation on male friendship, the absurdities of indie moviedom and many different kinds of loyalty, Daniel Schechter’s Supporting Characters, a surprise hit at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, sneaks up on you, its seeming limitations becoming its strengths over the course of its easy-going 87 minutes. Despite being shot in a fashion that recalls a comedy you might find on FX, Supporting Characters maintains an old-fashioned, craftsman-like quality about it; it’s written with feeling and humor that rings with truth, offering us characters whose lives are as complicated and full of ambiguity as our own. Alex Karpovsky and newcomer Tarik Lowe have […]
Payment models in the digital film distribution world can be surprisingly confusing once you get past the simple straight cut of a Vimeo or iTunes download. Streaming in particular can raise questions. How much should a filmmaker make when his or her film is only viewed partially? Indieflix CEO Scilla Andreen proposes one answer she calls RPM — “royalty pool minutes.” It’s the new artist payment model for her site, and in an interview at Sundance, she argued for its simplicity and clarity. “We take a percentage of the overall monthly revenue coming to Indieflix,” Andreen explains. “We’ve evolved to […]
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a lover of science. Astronomy especially. I grew up watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and James Burke’s great series Connections. Even today, I am indebted to writers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Sean Carroll for writing about subjects like black holes and the nature of time in ways that a layman like me can understand. I think people like this are imperative to society because many of the subjects they study are critical to us as a race. Two of those subjects are NEOs (Near Earth Objects) and astrobiology. NEOs […]
Outlet and Universal Studios Home Entertainment have teamed up to celebrate the release of End of Watch, the heart-pounding police thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena on Blu-ray™ Combo Pack today. Enter for a chance to win 1 of 5 copies of the pack as well as a cool “dash grip” for your car. To win, be one of the first 5 to answer the below question correctly; send all responses to nick@filmmakermagazine.com: Which actor has appeared in each of director David Ayer’s three features (Harsh Times, Street Kings, and End of Watch) as an FBI agent, pathologist and […]
From the ascension of George Bush (in Journeys with George) to the crash-and-burn of Ted Haggard (The Trials of Ted Haggard), director Alexandra Pelosi has been fascinated with the rise and fall of the men who comprise our political and social landscape. In her latest documentary, Fall to Grace, she finds elements of both narrative arcs in the story of New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, who simultaneously resigned his position and announced his homosexuality in 2004, midway into his term. (McGreevey revealed an affair with a man he appointed as New Jersey homeland security advisor.) Following his resignation, McGreevey divorced […]
In a previous article (An Afternoon Music Video Shoot with the Canon C300) I documented a day shooting scenes for a new music video for the band Air Traffic Controller. The completed video, as well as a making-of piece have now been posted. Director/DP/Editor Rick Macomber explained that he decided to do this video after seeing Dave Munro from ATC perform the song acoustically. Said Rick “I was listening to the lyrics and I knew how close the song was to Dave’s personal life and it touched me. So when he came to me and asked which song I would […]
The challenges I’ve encountered in making this film – my struggles to support myself financially, the physical hardships of filming in extremely hot and humid conditions, getting sick in the middle of production, and the strain of being away from loved ones for extended periods of time – were all difficult. But I never considered any of the challenges as acts of sacrifice. At worst, they were inconveniences. At best, they were experiences that emboldened and strengthened me. On the other hand, the sacrifices made daily by Sari, Khieu, and Sav Samourn for their families are of a depth and nature […]
They came up with a great idea. Within months, they received the highest critical acclaim. They continued to perform and planned to make a movie of it all. It took 13 years. At Sundance 2013, in the New Frontiers section, the 3D film version of the acclaimed performance piece about plane crashes, Charlie Victor Romeo, will have its premiere. A few weeks after the shoot was completed, and as an Associate Producer and behind-the-scenes documentarian of the film, I asked several of the projects principal creators to share an inside account of the transformation. First, Charlie Victor Romeo was a […]