Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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2012 TEXAS FILMMAKERS’ PRODUCTION FUND RECIPIENTS ANNOUNCED
Emerging filmmakers got a kick-start today courtesy of the Austin Film Society’s 2012 Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund (TFPF). The AFS backed 16 narrative and documentary (short and feature length) projects with over $89,500 in cash grants in addition to $6,000 of Kodak film stock and $15,000 in productions services. Since its inception in 1996, the AFS has granted $1.3 million to 344 projects. Past winners include Heather Courtney for her award-winning Where Soldiers Come From and Kyle Henry for his Cannes entry Fourplay: Tampa. Here’s a list of this year’s recipients: A FORCE IN NATURE Hayden Yates A biopic of an 89 […]
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IN PRODUCTION: “NYMPHOMANIAC,” “FEED THE DOG,” “THE GREAT BEAUTY” AND “THE RIGHT KIND OF WRONG”
“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 Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac is only two days into filming and has already stirred a great deal of controversy (no surprise there). The film has been described as an erotic drama that, according to star Shia LaBeouf, will feature hard-core pornographic sex scenes (the producers insist that “body doubles and visual effects” will be used). Von Trier plans to release it in two parts – each in a soft-core […]
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How I Rediscovered My Passion for Film with Blood Brother
Once I had a dream to make a documentary in some sort of third world or developing third world country setting. I had no direction, no story and no clear vision, so unfortunately that dream died. Nearly a decade later, I had moved on to building a career in the music video and commercial world. By this time I had no desire to travel to any third world country, but my best friend Rocky Braat did. After sharing an apartment and parallel lives for about seven years, Rocky had gone off on a much different path. He had stumbled upon […]
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OTHER PEOPLE TURNS 100
Congratulations to Brad Listi’s Other People podcast, which reached a centenary today with a big get: author George Saunders. If you read the print edition of Filmmaker, you will have heard about the podcast as I featured it in our Super 8 a while back. (My blurb is embedded here — Brad, thanks for the scan!) Other People is a twice-a-week podcast in which Listi interviews authors about… well, just about anything. Their books are discussed, of course, but also their biographies, their writing processes, their child-raising habits, their obsessions, their quirks… It’s always a deeply human conversation, and the […]
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TIME IN A BOTTLE: “THE GOOD DOCTOR”
After leaving his native Britain for the U.S., Dr. Martin Blake (Orlando Bloom) begins his residency in general medicine in a chaotic, understaffed hospital in an unspecified coastal city. This well-mannered, middle-class young man is vying for a fellowship in infectious diseases. Unfortunately, he is off to a bad start: He falls out with a powerful nurse, Theresa (Taraji P. Henson); and he inadvertently endangers a non-English-speaking patient with a potentially lethal dose of penicillin. Screenwriter John Enbom succeeds in a difficult balancing act: The more events point to Martin’s culpability in two deaths, the greater his superiors’ enthusiasm for his work. […]
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Frontline’s Post-Production Schedule
Episodes of Frontline have an average eight-to-twelve month gestation period from the time they are awarded to the time they go to air. “We might have some programs that go two or five years, and we have some programs that are done in a matter of weeks, but the average is eight to 12 months” explains Tim Mangini, Frontline’s Director of Broadcast. In broad strokes, this translates to four-to-five months of research, a month of shooting, followed by two-to-three months of post-production work. The typical number of shooting days is 20 to 25. Post-production is done offline; Frontline still uses […]
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Tim Mangini on Documentary Production at Frontline
Part Two of our interview with Tim Mangini, the Director of Broadcast for WGBH’s Frontline: (Read part 1 here) Filmmaker: Do you feel like you’re now moving away from DSLRs at Frontline? Mangini: When Canon made the 5D they added the video capability almost as an afterthought. It was not, “Hey, let’s revolutionize filmmaking.” Well little did they know, they revolutionized filmmaking. Along the way, people started asking for things like, “It would be really great to be able to record audio that was worthwhile, or it would be really good if the files could be transferred easily, or it […]
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TRAILER WATCH: BEN WHEATLEY’S “SIGHTSEERS”
Over the past few years, Ben Wheatley has emerged as a distinctive and deliciously dark voice in British cinema, with his first two features, Down Terrace and Kill List, rightly getting excellent reviews. His third film, Sightseers, premiered at Cannes in May, where it was picked up for U.S. distribution by IFC Films, and I’m really looking forward to checking it out. I’m sadly not attending Toronto next month, where Sightseers will play, but look forward to hear the word on it from those attending. For now, this NSFW-ish trailer — via The Guardian‘s website — will have to sate my […]
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PARSING POLITICAL DOC HIT “2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA”
Tuesday’s 10 a.m. showing of 2016: Obama’s America drew about 20 customers to the big AMC theater in Times Square. A modest turnout, to be sure, but part of a larger wave that’s turned this conservative documentary into one of the summer’s independent film success stories. After a small opening in July, the film expanded to almost 1,100 screens last weekend. Over three days, 2016—directed by Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan, and released by Rocky Mountain Pictures, a company that specializes in conservative movies—grossed a reported $6.2 million, with a per-screen average of almost $6,000, “the best of any film […]
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Five Questions with Faces in the Mirror Producer/Writer/Composer Boyd Tinsley
Boyd Tinsley’s name and face are known to millions of admirers all over the globe – but not for his film work. Tinsley has spent the past two decades of his life as the violinist for the Dave Matthews Band, going platinum dozens of times over. But with the release of Faces In The Mirror, Tinsley enters into the world of film for the first time, adding producer and screenwriter to his resume. Though the actors in Faces don’t sing, it’s almost a sort of cinematic opera. The film follows the personal odyssey of Ben (Ryan Orr), a man who […]
