Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Amy Berg on West of Memphis
Amy Berg’s West of Memphis lays out an overwhelmingly strong case for the innocence of the men known as the West Memphis Three. Charged with the 1993 killings of three boys in Arkansas, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley Jr. each spent 18 years in prison. Baldwin, Echols and Misskelley were released in August 2011, but they were forced, under an arcane statute, to accept responsibility for the murders. Now in their mid- and late 30s, Baldwin, Echols and Misskelley are technically still culpable, but Berg’s rigorous, science-based inquiry, should dispel any lingering notion that they were involved in […]
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The Hobbit Arrives with a High Frame Rate, and New Sony Camera Prices
The Hobbit is now in wide release in the US, and everyone agrees: it was shot in 48p (frames per second). Beyond that, things get a little murky. As the first movie in wide release to be shot and shown in 48p, the acceptance – or success – of the movie is being closely tied to the future adoption of 48p. This is, of course, ridiculous. The success or failure of a single film is unlikely to define the future of a format. But we’re still left with the question: Is 48p (or High Frame Rates) a good thing, a […]
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Paper Co-Creator Andrew Allen about his Award-Winning iPad App of the Year
Back in April I published this interview with Andrew Allen, filmmaker and developer with the software company 53, about his newly launched Paper app. This week the app was named by Apple as its #1 app of the year for iPad. Our original conversation about Paper’s development, and Allen’s journey from filmmaker to developer, is detailed below. — SM Andrew Allen, one of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces of 2011,” had a big premiere this month, but it’s not a film. Allen is part of FiftyThree, the company behind Paper, an iPad drawing app that made Apple’s App Store “App of […]
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Made in Bolivia, Short-listed for the Oscars: The Story Behind Salar
We had just lost all of our locations in one fell swoop the day before, and I was walking along the train tracks that cut through the sun-baked adobe village of Chita, pretending to measure the light, but really just trying to re-convince myself that coming all the way to Bolivia to make a short film was a good idea. Since arriving, we had somehow eased our lenses through airport customs, protected our camera from torrential rain and endless sun, teamed up with a film school, and learned to love rice and potatoes with every meal. But that was before […]
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Coogler, Tully, Guerrero, de la Vega and Cretton Among SFFS KRF Grant Winners
In recent weeks, we profiled in three posts on the site, the 13 finalists for the San Francisco Film Society’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grants. (In the current Fall issue of Filmmaker, we also spotlight the SFFS’s Filmmaker360 program, of which the KRF grants are the centerpiece.) Today, the winners of the KRF grants were announced, and five of the six were “25 New Faces” alums. Ryan Coogler, got postproduction funds for his forthcoming first feature, Fruitvale, which will debut at Sundance next month, while Michael Tully got money to finish his current film, Ping Pong Summer, which wrapped a […]
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Jessica Oreck and Murmur Launch Interactive Documentary, The Aatsinki Season
When we last checked in with 25 New Face filmmaker Jessica Oreck, she was attending the POV Hackathon, a two-day event at which the documentary television series paired filmmakers with web developers. There Oreck met Mike Knowlton and Hal Siegel of the hybrid studio/technology company Murmur, and in just over three months the team has created The Aatsinki Season, an online counterpart to Oreck’s forthcoming feature documentary, Aatsinki: The Story Of Arctic Cowboys. Launching today, the work is both hypnotic and thoughtful, comprising text, film and flow charts, and allowing the viewer to initiate debate over the ecological issues facing […]
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Coffee and Celluloid Looks at the Panasonic GH3
At his excellent filmmaking blog Coffee and Celluloid, Joey Daoud posted this short video review of the just-released Panasonic GH3. From the sounds of it, this seems like a great next version of the camera, with better controls, sturdier construction, Quicktime recording instead of just AVCHD, and a better bit rate. You can read Daoud’s quick thoughts on the camera here and watch the video above.
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Second-Time Director: Tze Chun and Cold Comes the Night
At Filmmaker we continuously cover the struggles of first-time directors to make their debut pictures. But the second film comes with its own set of unique challenges, issues that will be explored in this five-part series by Kishori Rajan. Below is the first installment, chronicling Filmmaker 25 New Face Tze Chun’s move from the microbudget character drama Children of Invention to a thriller with stars like Bryan Cranston. Look for further articles in the weeks ahead. — SM The late producer Laura Ziskin once remarked that movies “aren’t made, but forced into existence,” an expression never more apt than when […]
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The Happy Baby Theory of Kickstarter: You Need 800 Supporters
Last month we added Stephen Elliott’s Happy Baby to our curated Kickstarter page and ran here one of his daily Rumpus newsletters where he discussed the film and the goals for his campaign. Now, with hours left, he is tantalizingly within reach of his ambitious $85,000 goal. (You can put him over the top here and score an imaginative reward in the process.) As his campaign nears its close, I thought I’d run with permission today’s newsletter, in which he discusses what will hopefully be his successful “800 backers” strategy. — SM We’re almost at our Kickstarter goal for the […]
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“Blacklists,” Caveh Zahedi and Thom Powers
As one of the three journalists contacted by documentary film programmer Thom Powers last Spring about Caveh Zahedi’s The Sheik and I, I wanted to weigh in on the controversy that erupted this week following Zahedi’s accusation that Powers has “blacklisted” his picture, which opens today from Factory 25. After watching Zahedi’s YouTube video and then reading Powers’ response, I decided to talk to both men to explore the situation in more detail. Then, in the midst of writing this, I noticed Eric Kohn’s post at Indiewire this morning, which exhaustively discusses the film, the timeline of Powers and Zahedi’s […]
