Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
FCP X and the Future of Editing
Editing is older than motion pictures. The ordering and pacing of dialogues, scenes, entrances and exits to build conflict and resolution have long defined Western theater, from Aeschylus’s Oresteia to Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung [Der Ring Des Nibelungen]. It was the insertion of first-person thoughts into dialogue and plot that modernized 18th- and 19th-century novels and clever sequencing of mechanically animated magic lantern glass slides that thrilled Victorian audiences to popular epics like Ben-Hur.
-
B-Side: How a Bunch of First-Timers Made a SAG Ultra-Low Feature Without Blowing Up the Garage
Nine years ago, I walked into Sound One on my first run at my first internship. This summer, I walked out of Sound One having completed post-production on my first feature, B-Side, less than six months after we began pre-production. It wasn’t just a feature debut for me as a director, but also for our producer, DP, editor, 1st AD, and leading lady. Now rest assured, I could tell you dozens of things we would do differently. Free sample: Don’t shoot anything that will go in a movie’s first five minutes on the first day of shooting. And we have […]
-
How to Make Your Own Movie Poster
Every movie deserves a great poster. It’s the visual signature that establishes the world, the stakes and tone of the movie, but is also the familiar and identifiable touchstone that (potential) fans will see as it pops up online, at festivals and while browsing their VOD menu. I want to start by noting that for better or for worse, I kinda get off on “leaping without looking”. Maybe that’s a flaw but I don’t have much patience for formal training. So take this breakdown with the knowledge that there may be better ways to do things, or techniques I’m flat-out […]
-
Spanned Attentions
I’ll make this brief. Attention spans are not what they used to be. Everything I learned in film school failed to include tips on the pitfalls of the digital age of storytelling — because there wasn’t much of one back in 2000. I currently write a lot for youth audiences, and also web series. With web series, it’s basically trying to sum up an entire scene in one page. Or the entire episode in five pages. Trying to bend a whole story arc, pieces of the series arc, plus character motivations, subplots and gods forbid a beat or two — […]
-
In Production: Bad Words, Dom Hemingway, Two Night Stand and Felony
“In Production” is a regular column which focuses on notable independent films that are currently shooting. If you would like your film to be included in this space, please send an email to nick@filmmakermagazine.com Coming off the production of the long-awaited new season of Arrested Development (premiering Spring 2013 on Netflix), Jason Bateman has begun shooting his directorial debut, Bad Words, in Los Angeles. From Andrew Dodge’s blacklisted screenplay, Bad Words stars Bateman as a middle-aged cynic who hustles his way into the children’s National Spelling Bee, much to the dismay of one of its directors (Allison Janney). Rounding out […]
-
Growing Up in an American Commune
The following is a guest blog post from the makers of American Commune, which is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to cover post-production costs. — SM When my sister and I started making our documentary about growing up on America’s largest commune, we honestly didn’t intend for it to be a personal story. At the time, we were both working as directors at MTV in New York City and none of our friends or colleagues had the slightest clue we were born on a commune called The Farm. We had left as kids in the 1980s when […]
-
Five Questions with Chasing Ice Director Jeff Orlowski
After years of shooting in extreme conditions, National Geographic photographer James Balog finally realized he could no longer ignore the slow disappearance of frozen landscapes he’d come to know and love. In Chasing Ice, director and cinematographer Jeff Orlowski documents Balog’s ambitious plan to install 25 separate time-lapse cameras across the globe in order to record receding glaciers and shifting ice, dire omens of a changing climate with no audience to bear witness. All the while Orlowski follows directly behind, shooting in dog sleds and ice crevasses, capturing the troubles that beset the most impassioned plans and what one man is […]
-
Will Comcast Get Disney?
Earlier this month Comcast made an unsolicited bid to buy the Walt Disney Company for $66 billion. Other than acknowledging the offer, neither the Disney board nor management has formally responded to the offer. Over the last decade, Comcast has moved aggressively through a series of mergers and acquisition to become the nation’s largest cable television operator and, potentially, media combine. The Disney bid comes about two years after federal regulators approved Comcast’s $30 billion acquisition of NBC Universal. In 2002, Comcast acquired AT&T’s cable and broadband holdings for $29 billion. In 2004, it made a $48 billion bid for […]
-
A Rogue’s Gallery of Gorgeousness: Charles Atlas and Antony’s Turning
It’s been a banner year for Charles Atlas. In 2012, the filmmaker and video artist was included in the Whitney Biennial, opened his first New York solo show, “The Illusion of Democracy” (the inaugural show of Lurhring Augustine’s brand new Bushwick gallery, no less), had seminal, rarely-screened works revived care of keen programming at local NYC film series’ Dirty Looks and Light Industry, and is now unveiling his long-awaited collaboration with enigmatic singer/musician Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons), which opens today at IFC Center. Turning, which had its New York premiere this past weekend at DOC NYC, is […]
-
Susan Youssef, Habibi
Nearly 10 years in the making, Habibi is the semi-autobiographical first feature from 2010 “25 New Face” Susan Youssef, a tale of forbidden love between two Palestinian students who find it impossible for their affection to overcome the rigid conventions of class in Palestinian life and Israel’s ironclad security regime. With Israelis and Palestinians again in actively violent conflict, the film couldn’t be more newsworthy, but Youssef’s low-budget aesthetic ingenuity (she couldn’t shoot in Gaza, but faked it admirably) and a remarkable performance from Maisa Abd Elhadi, as the young woman at the center of multiple circles of conflict (family […]
