Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“UNA NOCHE” PICKED UP BY SUNDANCE SELECTS
Lucy Mulloy’s Una Noche, a big winner at Tribeca last month, has been acquired by Sundance Selects for distribution in North America. The film netted the young director an award for Best New Narrative Director at Tribeca Film Festival in April, as well as accolades for cinematography and acting. Mulloy wrote the screenplay, a story of three disillusioned Cuban teenagers who undertake the tense 90-mile journey from Cuba to Miami. Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects and IFC Films, issued a statement calling Mulloy’s debut feature “a remarkable first film that vividly takes us into the lives of 3 teenagers […]
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A Pregnant Pause Before the Reborn Edinburgh Film Festival
When it comes to Edinburgh, I’m no festival virgin. However, this is the first festival in the 15 years I’ve been attending either as staff, filmmaker or delegate, when I will be seven-and-a-half months pregnant. I will be waddling, Marge Gunderson style, from cinema to cinema, hopefully securing seats on the end of the row (leaving me with the perfect excuse to pop out early). I will NOT be quaffing vats of dry white wine, or even whiskey (sob) but that means I will hopefully remember the names of everyone I meet and won’t be dozing off during the more […]
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How We Financed When Harry Tries to Marry Through Staged Readings
This blog is a result of a comment I posted on Scott’s article, 15 Steps to Take After You Finish Your Script. People have always discouraged “readings” for investors, and I know why. They are usually boring for a number of reasons. Now I’ll lay out how my producing partners and I successfully raised money for our first film by staging readings. First, here’s a little backstory on what led us to this idea that everyone tells you not to do. Our journey started in 1998 when my writing partner Ralph Stein and I first wrote the script for When […]
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Five Questions with Sean Pecknold on Kickstarter Project, “The Internet”
Sean Pecknold originally came to prominence a few years back on the strength of the beautiful stop-motion music videos he created for the retro folk outfit Fleet Foxes, a group fronted by Sean’s brother, Robin Pecknold. He subsequently went on to make promos for other buzz bands such as Beach House and Grizzly Bear, whose music also has a transcendent quality that meshes with his dazzlingly inventive hand-crafted visions. More recently, Pecknold has complemented his animated work with live-action music videos, like Here We Go Magic’s “How Do I Know?”, and is currently in postproduction on a live-action narrative feature […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #119
Second #5593, 93:13 Blue Velvet nears its final act, and still the relationship between Jeffrey and Sandy remains obscured in mystery. “Is Friday still on?” he asks her, loudly enough for her father to hear, in an effort to keep up the façade that their relationship is as innocent as something out of the Andy Hardy films. There are the facts of Sandy, and the beauty of her hands and fingers and knuckles, and her exposed ear (“I hear things…”), and the force of her father Detective Williams invisible for now, but present in the off-screen space implied on this […]
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12 Tips on Networking from the Cannes Film Festival
While the concept of dropping into the world’s largest film event and competing with 999 other short filmmakers for the industry’s attention may seem like a Survivor-like TV show, it’s the reality each year for participants in Cannes’ Short Film Corner. Many of the filmmakers who screen their works in the basement of the Palais are arriving in Cannes for the first time, and the event is a crash course in networking and navigating the business side of film markets. “You can get lost in a sea of films,” admits filmmaker Bradley Montesi (pictured here with producer Elle LaMont), attending […]
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BOB RAY’S AMAZING LEGAL COMMERCIAL
A few days ago we received an email from Austin filmmaker Bob Ray, best known for shorts such as Hillbilly Doomsday and the documentaries Hell on Wheels and Total Badass. His message began as follows: Last week, the criminal defense lawyer who defends Chad Holt in the documentary Total Badass (Adam Reposa, a.k.a. “Bulletproof,” a.k.a. Repo) asked me to help him make a commercial for his law practice here in Austin. As required by law, we submitted it to the State Bar of Texas for approval. The legal community in Texas is going crazy with it right now and the […]
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LCD SOUNDSYSTEM MOVIE “SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS” TO HAVE ONE-DAY RELEASE
Oscilloscope Pictures today announced a unique release strategy for Shut Up and Play the Hits, Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern’s documentary on the last days of LCD Soundsystem, which bowed at Sundance earlier this year. Instead of the usual platform release for a film like this, Shut Up and Play the Hits will open on July 18 at theaters around the United States — and end its theatrical run the same day. In short, this concert movie will, um, play the hits and shut up. (Is this the first time that a film’s title has inspired its release strategy?!) Oscilloscope already […]
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Gary Hustwit’s 10 Web Tips For Doc Filmmakers
I dropped in on the IFP Documentary Labs a couple of times, and one of the highlights for me was the “Web Tools for Documentary” workshop run by guest speaker Gary Hustwit, a filmmaker who used the web to great effect in the production and self-distribution of his “Design trilogy” of Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized. Hustwit, who worked in publishing and distribution before he moved behind the camera, really knows this stuff inside out – and considers his engagement with the web an integral part of what he does now. “I think of all this stuff as filmmaking – […]
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Film Programmer Aaron Hillis Buys Brooklyn Video Store
While in Cannes I bumped into critic and programmer Aaron Hillis, who told me about the new Brooklyn-based endeavor he’ll be starting upon returning home — running a video store. Hillis, who already programs reRun, the independent cinema and gastropub located in Filmmaker’s building in DUMBO (and currently playing Contributing Editor Brandon Harris’s debut feature, Redlegs), recently bought the established Cobble Hill business Video Free Brooklyn. At a time when the independent film world is obsessed with VOD, downloads and streaming, Hillis is time-traveling back to the world of plastic cases, late fees, and, on the more positive side, savvy […]
