Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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My Year in Film: A Memoir of Sorts
It was 2012 and there was an election on and it was getting hotter everyday and I didn’t know how much time we had left and it was the end of film (if not the end of cinema) and I knew not what to do, so I did what I always do in situations like this: I went to the movies. Usually for free, at the behest of some publicist or festival. About half the time I went because I had nothing better to do. Often I went alone for no discernible reason other than that I had no one […]
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Dear Artist of 2013: “What If?”
What if, you did it to feel? What if, you did it to learn? What if, you did it to expand? What if, you did it to fly? What if, you did it to explore? What if, you did it to breathe? What if, you did it to connect? What if, you did it to give? What if, you didn’t do it to be liked? What if, you didn’t do it to get accolades? What if, you didn’t do it to get your next job? What if, you didn’t do it to get a date? What if, you didn’t do […]
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An Afternoon Music Video Shoot with the Canon C300
It’s a late fall Sunday afternoon and Rick Macomber is setting up his Canon C300 on a bridge near Harvard Square to shoot some inserts for a music video. The video is for the band Air Traffic Controller, and the plan today is to shoot two sequences of a couple that illustrate “happier times” in their relationship. Rick will first be shooting them crossing the bridge, and then they’ll move to Harvard Square to shoot some additional scenes. With his production company Macomber Productions Rick has been shooting music, promotional and wedding videos since 1995 and has been using DSLRs […]
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In Pursuit of The Purple Onion
When I was a doorman at San Francisco’s Punchline and Cobbs comedy clubs, I never would’ve thought that three years later, I’d be making my first feature film about a comedian. I went to film school in Poland, from where my parents emigrated. While there, I made several short films, which went on to play at international film festivals in France, Albania, Poland, and the U.S. Before I went to Poland, while working with my father in China, I passed on his proposal to expand his furniture-making empire, as he called it, in order to pursue filmmaking. Eventually, back in […]
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Delay in Crowdfunding Rules Stalls Independent Film Investment Options
The Jumpstart our Small Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), passed by Congress earlier this year, promised new investment opportunities for filmmakers. For the first time, entrepreneurs of all stripes could raise equity financing — not just donations — via crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo. The law was signed by President Obama on April 5, and the SEC was given 270 days to draft the regulations required for its implementation. But, as Robb Mandelbaum in the New York Times reports today, that deadline is likely to be missed, and some believe it won’t be until 2014 before a filmmaker can sell an […]
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Going on a Date with the Audience
Something that constantly wins me over is when a movie doesn’t try too hard to thrust its narrative and/or message in my face. We all have seen films that announce, “Here is what the film means! Here is what matters to our protagonist!” in bold-faced, 48-point-type that gauchely screeches across the screen. An example we can all relate to is Paul Haggis’ Crash, which informs us, just in case we didn’t know, that a) RACISM IS BAD; b) some people who seem to be racists aren’t totally terrible; and c) some people who don’t seem to be racist may actually […]
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The Pact: Miguel Gomes on Cinema and Tabu
Part realism and part fantasy, half 35mm and half 16mm, part post-colonial and part colonial, half a swooning love story and half a clear-eyed political assessment, Miguel Gomes’s Tabu functions, as he puts it in this interview, within a structure of oppositions. Simultaneously a rebuke – and vindication – of the concept that “the personal is the political,” Tabu is a carefully constructed film in two halves, each of which comments upon the absences articulated in the other. We start in present-day Portugal, with Pilar (Teresa Madruga), a middle-aged woman who works for an unidentified lefty non-profit. Pilar is of […]
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Our Top 12 Posts of 2012 (or, the Tyranny of the Listicle)
In 2012 we relaunched our website with the new design by Area 17 you’re staring at now, created an iPad edition and dramatically upped the quantity of our web content. A number of these are still works-in-progress; the site will see continued improvements and tweaks; the iPad edition will be enhanced each issue with original video content; and, by Spring all print subscribers should receive the iPad edition free. So, as we march into 2013, we take our annual look back at what — at least from the POV of Google Analytics — stood out on the site these past […]
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Adam Cook’s Ten Best Films of 2012
Leading up to Filmmaker‘s own collective “Ten Best” — always a daunting proposition for us because our staff is skipping the movies in the theaters in order to concentrate on what’s out next year for our Winter issue, which goes to press this week — we are publishing individual entries from our contributors. Adam Cook has contributed festival coverage to the site and print magazine this year and also contributes to Mubi. His favorites are below. – SM In a year when we lost Tony Scott, celebrating the best in cinema is bittersweet — behind every joyous cinematic experience lies […]
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Cameras: 2012 Year In Review
It’s the end of the year and everyone’s doing year-end lists, so why not me? Here’s my top ten camera news and developments in 2012: 1. The end of film Film’s been having a tough time of it, but did anyone in 2011 think that 2012 would be the year that film would roll over and die? This was the year that Kodak went bankrupt, Fuji announced they would cease production of motion picture film, and the major film companies announced the timetable for moving toward 100% digital distribution. It was also the year that a James Bond movie was […]
