Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Inside a Three-Minute Film Competition
On the first Sunday of July, a group of filmmakers gathered at the Salem Willows Park in Massachusetts to participate in a Three-Minute Film Challenge. The brainchild of local d.p.s Rick Macomber and Paul Antico, the event was as much a gathering of enthusiasts as it was a competition. “I was watching a 48-hour film fest,” says Rick, “and I had an idea that maybe we could do something like this, with a group of people, and [a film length limit of] three minutes. I’d never tried anything like this, and it was my first narrative attempt.” “We’d talked about […]
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SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES CREATIVE PRODUCING LABS
This week, Sundance Institute announced its 2012 participants in the Creative Producing Initiatives. The week-long program begins with two concurrently-running Creative Producing Labs (July 30-Aug. 3)—the Feature Film Program and the Documentary Film Program and Fund—before capping off with the Creative Producing Summit (Aug. 3-5). Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, said, “Sundance Institute is committed to supporting emerging independent film producers, and our Creative Producing Initiative is a rare opportunity for them to sharpen their creative instincts, evolve their problem-solving skills, and deepen their knowledge of the distribution landscape. In doing so, they are better equipped to successfully […]
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RAMIN BAHRANI’S SIGUR ROS VIDEO
On the heels of Alma Har’el’s wonderful video for Sigur Ros’ “Fjögur Píanó” (which may be the best thing Shia LaBeouf has ever done) comes another entry from an American independent filmmaker in the Icelandic band’s Mystery Film Experiment. After Sigur Ros’ keyboard player Kjartan Sveinsson did the music for Ramin Bahrani’s 2009 short Plastic Bag, the band chose the Man Push Cart director to make a video for ‘Ég Anda,” the fifth entry in the Mystery Film Experiment. Valtari, the group’s new album, is much more understated and less grand in scope than their previous records, and so the videos […]
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ALRICK BROWN MEETS THE “FINAL WITNESS” TOMORROW NIGHT
As we put the finishing touches on our “25 New Faces” list — which comes out this week — I’ll note the latest project of one of last year’s selections, director Alrick Brown. Last fall he had his Sundance hit Kinyarwanda arrive in theaters, and now he’s directed an episode of a new ABC series, Final Witness, that airs tomorrow night, July 18 at 10PM EST on ABC. The Wall Street Journal covered this show this past weekend, describing the style as “Sundance-era poetic indie film”: Over seven Wednesdays each stand-alone true crime story dramatized and documented on “Final Witness,” […]
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The Solar Odyssey: Shooting with the Sony NEX-FS100, Part Two
Todd Mahoney recently spent ten days shooting a documentary project using the Sony NEX-FS100. It was his first experience with the camera. He was documenting the pre-voyage progress of the Solar Odyssey Project, the voyage of a solar powered boat that will be traveling The Great Loop. You can read more about that in the first half of this series [“THE SOLAR ODYSSEY”: TAKING PART IN A DOCUMENTARY, PART ONE] In this interview, conducted after he had returned, Todd talks about his experiences shooting with the Sony NEX-FS100, the Sony NEX-7 and a GoPro Hero. So what happened? The boat […]
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Miranda July and Ira Glass Tell the Future of Storytelling
The Silent History is a fascinating new publishing project that merges app distribution with geolocational storytelling. Launched by former McSweeney’s publisher Eli Horowitz and colleagues, the project will launch next month, downloading stories to readers’ iOS devices and then coaxing them out into the streets of nearly 400 cities for more. Here is the trailer featuring the voices of Miranda July and Ira Glass. Horowitz is interviewed by Reyhan Harmanci at Buzzfeed, and he speaks of the project’s inspirations: “I got to thinking about new storytelling experiences — what can these things do, what can these things lead to,” he […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #139
Second #6533, 108:53 1. Jeffrey’s reaction to the violence that has happened in Dorothy’s apartment shifts gradually in the moments that follow this shot from numbed horror to sorrow, as if what he sees before him (Dorothy’s husband and the Yellow Man, tortured and dead or dying) is in some sense the awful answer to his curiosity. 2. From Charles Musser’s The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907: Sex and violence figured prominently in American motion pictures from the outset. In fact, such subjects were consistent with the individualized, peephole nature of the viewing experience: they showed amusements […]
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CELL PHONE POLICING
On Monday, July 9th, the New York Times published findings from the House’s Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus on how federal, state and local law enforcement agencies made approximately 1.3 million requests to wireless carriers for individual subscriber records in 2011. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), co-chair of the Caucus, released the report, noting, “We cannot allow privacy protections to be swept aside with the sweeping nature of these information requests, especially for innocent consumers.” He added, “Law enforcement agencies are looking for a needle, but what are they doing with the haystack?” A wireless customer’s personal information provided to law enforcement […]
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THE BEAUTY OF “WELCOME TO PINE POINT”
Those looking for a great example of a documentary-film concept successfully realized online should check out Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge’s Welcome to Pine Point, a powerfully melancholic about place, memory and the macro-economic forces that reshape both. The piece was developed in 2010, so I realize I’m quite late to the party on this one, but it’s quite extraordinary and worth your look. Music, Super-8 film clips, text on screen, and plenty of points of interaction allow you to explore the now-vanished Canadian town while feeling the creators’ ineffable nostalgia for it. From an interview with the creators on […]
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The Utility of Disappearing Media
One of the problems of both the physical and non-physical media economies has to do with proof of participation. You can support an artist by buying their DVD or download, but those items can also just sit on your shelves or hard drives, unwatched. Sure, the artist gets some coin but not the word-of-mouth that comes from your spreading the gospel about their work. One publisher tackled this problem in the world of literature by creating The Book that Can’t Wait, an anthology for new authors that literally erases itself if it hasn’t been read in 60 days. Combating the […]
