Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Documentary Production at Frontline: An Interview with Tim Mangini
Tim Mangini is the Director of Broadcast for WGBH’s Frontline. His overarching role is to make sure the programs get made and that they get made on time, on budget, and that the quality level meets Frontline’s expectations. Tim began his career working in animation and sound in Hollywood, then came back to Boston and worked in the corporate and broadcast video world before joining WGBH in 1995 as a post-production supervisor. One of his roles as Director of Broadcast is to work with producers to identify the equipment they need to capture their vision. We recently spoke to him […]
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Shooting With John: A Performance Behind The Lens
It was a hazy Saturday afternoon in Berne, New York, and a motley crew of filmmakers holding shotguns, aimed at the sky, surrounded me. My mouth was dry and I felt the mind’s eye going black while gripping my barrel. “What the hell am I doing here and who are these strangers?” Well, I was asked to join a small group of filmmakers to shoot skeet and talk shop (and sadly, not form a militia). This past year was a whirlwind tour with my first feature art/documentary, Convento, which premiered at SXSW, played a bunch of fests and was picked up […]
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Laura Poitras’s Spy Theater
There was a spooky feeling at the Whitney Biennial one Friday night this past April. Visitors to Laura Poitras’s “Surveillance Teach-In” were forcibly detained as they tried to enter the museum, while downstairs a masked man handed out leaflets with lists of addresses (NSA listening posts?), sinister in their nondescription. Slides flashed, of the anonymous desert buildings that house the servers that index our every email, phone call, transaction. And on the dais, an odd couple riffing one acronym after another: “NSA, NARIS, AES….” Hacker Jacob Appelbaum, black clad, with earrings, played something of a straight man, even as the […]
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“25 NEW FACE” IAN HARNARINE PROFILED BY NEW YORK TIMES
Last week, the New York Times published a profile on writer/director (and also nuclear physicist) Ian Harnarine, who is a member of our 2012 “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” The article details Harnarine’s interesting backstory — he is a Trinidadian Canadian, an NYU professor who teaches both film and nuclear physics, a Spike Lee acolyte — but is maybe most interesting in its description of the difficulties the director of the award-winning short Doubles with Slight Pepper had in connecting with an audience and the Indo-Carribbean community in his adopted home city. [F]or all the accolades the film has […]
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GOOGLE FIBER
If you live in Kansas City, MO or Kansas City, KS, you might soon get first-world Internet service courtesy of Google Fiber. As of April 2012, almost two-thirds (66%) of American adults could access some form of broadband connection from their home, whether via DSL, cable or fiber line or via a wireless service. However, about a quarter of local Kansas City residents have no broadband access from home. The Google network will deliver symmetric (i.e., two-way) 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) connectivity to households across the city as well as to schools, libraries and hospitals. The 1 Gbps data […]
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WATCH (AND VOTE FOR) FOUR “25 NEW FACES” SHORTS ONLINE
In case you’re behind in catching up with the work of this year’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” you should head to The ShortList, The Wrap’s online shorts competition. Three of the 12 shorts taking part in the competition are from 2012 “25 New Faces” alums, namely Jonas Carpignano‘s A Chjana, Ornana‘s (notes on) biology, and Cutter Hodierne‘s Fishing Without Nets. Also contention is Love Competition, directed by 2011 “25 New Face” Brent Hoff. You can visit the site to watch the films, and vote for your favorite(s). (The jury prize is $60,000 worth of camera equipment.) As a […]
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My Yoda
I’m still in the midst of being part of the IFP Narrative Labs this year. For those of you who are not familiar with the Labs, it’s an intensive year-long mentorship for first-time filmmakers who are through their rough cut and now onto the business of “finishing.” And they’ve been amazing mentors so far. And they’ve connected my team with so many bright people. But the process has gotten me thinking about how and why I started appreciating films and people who do this and what being a first-timer actually means. So as I’m sitting in color correct this week, […]
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REVISIT IRA GLASS’ HILARIOUS RANT ABOUT PRODUCING “SLEEPWALK WITH ME”
Mike Birbiglia’s feature debut, Sleepwalk With Me, is released tomorrow, so there’s no better time to revisit the wonderful interview This American Life‘s Ira Glass gave to Filmmaker about producing Birbiglia’s movie. And, for good measure, here’s Birbiglia talking to the magazine about his film too.
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MARK RASO’S MICROBUDGET PRODUCTION DIARY: WRAP REFLECTIONS
Director Mark Raso, whose short film Under won a Student Academy Award earlier this year, is writing a series of blog entries about making his feature debut with a microbudget movie shot in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is his second dispatch. After starting principal photography on July 18th, I sat down every Sunday — our one off day per week — with the intention of writing an entry for this blog. It was not my plan to agree to do this and come up lame, but it seemed that despite my best efforts I just couldn’t finish one. Perhaps I was too […]
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NOW ONLINE: TODD ROHAL’S “GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE,” SHORTS AND MORE
I was excited to find out yesterday that Todd Rohal has put his unique feature debut The Guatemalan Handshake (2006) up on Vimeo, in addition to a lot more of his work. Also now online for viewers to enjoy are a bunch of extras (deleted scenes, trailers, etc.) plus Rohal’s equally idiosyncratic shorts, such as Knuckleface Jones (1999) and Hillbilly Robot (2001). When browsing the selection of recently uploaded videos on Rohal’s Vimeo page, I came across this personal favorite, a series of out-takes from Rohal’s second film, The Catechism Cataclysm, featuring Steve Little’s Father Billy screaming and running away […]
