Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Unusual Camera Moves With the Alexa M
At NAB this year, ARRI revealed that, at least for the coming year, they’ll be concentrating on anamorphic imaging and the dynamic range of the Alexa rather than trying to compete with high frame rates or 4K. But they did have some interesting new additions to the product line, particularly if you want to get the camera closer to the action. The Alexa M, which will start shipping this month, is essentially an Alexa that’s been cut in two. You have a 12.1 lb body connected to a 6.4 lb head by a cable up to 20 feet long. That […]
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JAMES SCHAMUS ON FOCUS FEATURES AT 10
Focus Features is celebrating its tenth-year anniversary, and the distributor has just placed on its site a suite of videos in which Focus CEO James Schamus discusses the company’s history through its films. After an intro detailing the transition from Good Machine to Focus, Schamus gives us the back story on Focus titles like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Pianist and The Constant Gardner, among others. For the individual videos in the series, visit the 10-year anniversary page here and watch the overview video below.
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NOBUDGE LIVE SCREENING SERIES KICKS OFF TONIGHT
Just a quick heads up to alert you to the fact that the excellent NoBudge film website — run by indie actor/director Kentucker Audley, one of our 25 New Faces in 2007 — is running an innovative “live screening series” featuring filmmaker Q&As, starting tonight. Eight films will screen during the next two weeks, and each night the director of that day’s featured film will do a Q&A online. Programmed for the next two weeks are the shorts Cochran (James Gannon, 2009), Prom Queen (Ben Siler, 2007), Bruno (Sam Goetz, 2007), and Repeat (Donal Foreman, 2009). The features portion includes Seattle-based […]
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IFP ANNOUNCES 2012 DOCUMENTARY LAB SLATE
This morning, the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced the 10 films selected to participate in its 2012 IFP Documentary Lab, which takes place all this week in New York City. The slate for this eighth edition of the doc labs is very geographically diverse, with participants hailing from Washington, Kentucky and Berlin in addition to the usual indie strongholds of Los Angeles and New York City. Each year, 20 indie films with budgets under $1 million — 10 documentary and 10 narrative — are selected for participation in the IFP post-production labs, which gives filmmakers strategic help and guidance regarding […]
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THE GLOBAL HIGH-CONCEPT GROUP FILM
New technology is increasingly opening up filmmaking options to people all around the world, and that’s no more evident than in the upcoming The Owner. The movie is first project of CollabFeature, which is described on its website as “a group of independent filmmakers from all over the world who have come together to create multi-director feature films. Each filmmaker writes and directs a segment of the bigger story in his or her own country. By pooling our talents and resources, we are creating something bigger than the sum of its parts — a kind of film that has never been […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #113
Second #5311, 88:31 1. This frame is from around twelve seconds into a thirteen-second shot, just before the screen goes black. Jeffrey sobs. The unflinching, unmoving camera eye does not look away. There is no soundtrack. There is nothing ironic or postmodern about this moment. 2. Paul Virilio, from his book Open Sky: ‘If anyone thinks I paint too fast, they are watching me too fast,’ Van Gogh wrote. Already, the classic photograph is no more than a freeze frame. With the decline in volumes and in the expanse of landscapes, reality becomes sequential and cinematic unfolding finally gets the […]
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WHAT YOU’LL SEE WHEN YOU DIE
Forget long hallways and white light — in the upcoming Post-Singularity age, death is just another user experience. Welcome to Life is a short film by Tom Scott inspired by the work of Jim Monroe and Rudy Rucker.
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Photos and Notes from the Maryland Film Festival
The Maryland Film Festival, which wrapped its 2012 edition on Sunday, is one of the East Coast’s most intimate and engaging film events. With 40 features, over 70 shorts and an amazingly healthy contingent of loyal filmmakers annually making the trip to Baltimore, Maryland functions as both a discovery festival and friendly pit stop for directors on the independent circuit. John Waters hosts a movie — this year Barbara Loden’s seminal and still influential Wanda — and takes the audience out partying afterwards; the Opening Night consists of shorts, not some star-bloated, sub-standard mini-major feature; and, for the second year […]
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Five Questions with Think of Me Director Bryan Wizemann
Bryan Wizemann’s recommended Think of Me, which boasts an amazing performance by Lauren Ambrose, is tomorrow night’s opening feature for the Rooftop Films 2012 season. The following interview was originally published on the eve of its Toronto Film Festival premiere. One of the more sobering and even painful short films of recent years is Bryan Wizemann’s Film Makes Us Happy. In the 12-minute documentary, Wizemann argues with his wife about his obsession with filmmaking, with her challenging him to give up on his dreams in order to focus on his family — including his new baby. Wizemann’s synopsis simply states, […]
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WHY IS YOUR SCRIPT BORING?
My blog post last week on 15 Things to Do After You Finish Your Script dances around the issue of quality, but my approach was fundamentally affirmational. Over at Script Shadow, Carson Reeves is blunter with his 10 Possible Reasons Your Script is Boring. All ten points are pretty dead-on, meaning that I’ve encountered each one more times than I want to remember. Reeves does a good job of identifying the reasons why a script read could produce just a “meh” reaction, but the short diagnosis is, it all comes down to quality. A script shouldn’t be just good these […]
