Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Game Changers Part 4: Planning and Shooting
In this fourth episode of a series on the making of the low-budget independent film, Game Changers, director Rob Imbs and cinematographer Benjamin Eckstien discuss audio recording, communication between director and cinematographer, and how to plan out shooting a multi-day, multi-location project. Earlier parts consisted of an overview and then discussed fundraising, casting, camera and lighting gear. Filmmaker: What is the size of your crew? Eckstein: We typically have two people in our sound department every day, though there were some scenes or times of day where we had one person. We typically had an AC and another PA. On […]
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iPad App Vision Machine Reinvents the Independent Digital Comic
Filmmaker Greg Pak (Robot Stories) has released his graphic novel Vision Machine as an iPad app and, in the process, is pointing the way towards new storytelling formats and new production and distribution partnerships. Set in the year 2061, Vision Machine is a dystopian thriller revolving around augmented reality technology not unlike Google Glass. Touching on issues like privacy and digital rights, Vision Machine was funded by the Ford Foundation as an awareness tool, and after it was completed Pak teamed up with ITVS to reimagine it as an iPad app. After learning about Vision Machine from producer Karin Chien, […]
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Five Questions with Drivers Wanted Director Joshua Z Weinstein
New York City’s taxi drivers are as ubiquitous as they are invisible. In his new documentary Drivers Wanted, Joshua Z Weinstein takes the passenger seat — often literally — and trains his camera on the men at the wheel, as well as the gristly mechanics and staff who work behind the scenes at a Queens-based taxi company. Though this may be a niche community, larger economic forces are clearly at play: many of the drivers are bankrupt, broke, or struggling to support their families. From the bustle of the garage, full of camaraderie and occasional conflict, emerge several key characters […]
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How to Do a Festival Q&A
The credits roll, there is applause, and not too many people walked out. The festival premiere of your debut film is over. You relax, a year’s worth of stress magically departing your body. Sure, there will be tough times ahead; distribution is difficult. But, for the moment, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. But don’t relax too much, warn a trio of festival heads. Your next big job as a director looms sooner than you think. The audience Q&A you’ll lead in just a minute or two is surprisingly important when it comes to your film’s future life. […]
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Sony 4K Camera Pricing and Playback
At special events in Europe and L.A., Sony announced the pricing for their new 4K cameras, the PMW-F5 and the PMW-F55. They also showed the first sample videos shot with the cameras. The suggested U.S. LIST pricing for the new products, planned to be available in February, are: PMW-F5 CineAlta 4K Camera $19,400 PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K Camera $34,900 The AXR-R5 RAW Recorder, which is required to record 4K with the PMW-F5, or to capture RAW 4K with the PMW-F55 will list at $6,300 Sony has also come out with new PL mount lenses for the cameras that will be available […]
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4K is Coming, Ready or Not
When 3D TVs were the rage, I was convinced it was just a cynical push by the electronics manufacturers to sell TVs and nothing else. To me, 3D was a fad that would be used for a few things, but was unlikely to become mainstream. I’d seen the future before; I saw Jaws 3D when it was first released. So when the manufacturers started talking up 4K cameras, with promises of 4K TV sets, I was convinced that this too was a push to sell new TV sets that wouldn’t amount to much. Sure filmmakers with a big budget will […]
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The Yes Men Are Revolting… and Crowdfunding
We’re making a new movie called The Yes Men Are Revolting – and we’re crowdfunding it on Kickstarter. We hit our initial goal of $100,000, but now we’re trying to double that. Why the new goal? Because we’re enacting a super-ambitious transmedia distribution plan that will take advantage of everything we learned so far about filmmaking and making a difference. Releasing our last movie on a shoestring budget was such a monumental task that we swore we would never do it again. But now is never. We endured the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in New York, and now we have […]
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Five Questions with California Solo Director Marshall Lewy
In California Solo, the latest film from writer/director Marshall Lewy (Blue State), Robert Carlyle plays Lachlan MacAldonich, a former Britpop star, now an alcoholic working as a farmhand in California. After he is caught driving drunk one night, MacAldonich’s legal right to remain in the country is challenged, and he is forced to revisit his former life. Carlyle delivers a wonderful performance, quiet, thoughtful and an altogether different alcoholic than Begbie, the Trainspotting role that shot him to stardom. After premiering at Sundance, California Solo played festivals worldwide (including its European premiere, at Edinburgh where one audience member, and Carlyle […]
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Five Questions with Wagner & Me Director Patrick McGrady
Early in Wagner & Me, a new documentary about the music and legacy of Richard Wagner, English actor and writer Stephen Fry says he’d like to time travel to the 19th century. Once there, Fry continues, he would start a letter-writing campaign, urging the composer to rethink his infamously anti-Semitic essay Jewishness in Music: “I say to him, ‘Listen, you’re on the brink of becoming the greatest artist of the 19th century, and future generations will forget that, simply because of this nasty little essay that you’re writing, and because of the effect it’ll have.” Wagner, of course, did not […]
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Producer Robin Klein on Reviving The Rolling Stones’ Charlie Is My Darling
In 1965, a rough-and-tumble band of rock ‘n’ roll upstarts called The Rolling Stones were just beginning to build their legend, when wily manager Andrew Loog Oldham engaged English documentarian Peter Whitehead to follow the band around for a couple of days during a short stint in Ireland. The result was Charlie Is My Darling, a cinéma vérité snapshot of an era when the cultural revolution was only just beginning to crack the façade of the Old World. We see the young Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts (who gives the film its title) brainstorming […]
