Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Changes to Sony S-Log Pricing for the PMW-F3
The last month has been a little confusing for the Sony PMW-F3. When the camera was originally announced, the S-Log Gamma option was an add-on which came on an SxS card and cost $3,800. But a month ago, Sony announced a “temporary” change for the camera that was to run through March 31st. The S-Log upgrade would be available for $899 for those who hadn’t bought it, but Sony said that you’d have to send the camera in to get the upgrade installed. For those who had already purchased the upgrade at full price, they offered a $2,500 rebate if […]
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MORGAN SPURLOCK’S MUSTACHE
Our friends at the National Film Society hit SXSW this week and nabbed this interview with director Morgan Spurlock. Discussion topics include mustaches, Ryan Gosling, Das Racist and more. (And if you think these guys at the National Film Society are a bit silly here, just remember one thing: they’re now PBS hosts!)
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A Conversation with the Dardenne Brothers
The Kid with a Bike, the latest from the Belgian Dardenne Brothers, is opening this Friday, March 16, courtesy of Sundance Selects. The touching story already picked up the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year in addition to being nominated for a Golden Globe and Spirit Award. After his heartbreadking role in the Dardennes’ The Child, actor Jérémie Renier reprises his role as a deadbeat dad, Guy, who abandons his twelve-year-old son, Cyril, to be looked after by the local hairdresser, Samantha. She struggles to fill in the missing holes Cyril’s absent parents left behind while trying to keep him […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #90
Second #4230, 70:30 In Roberto Bolaño’s short story “Days of 1978” (from the collection Last Evenings on Earth) one of the characters, upon hearing the voice of another character, suddenly and frightfully develops an unsettling and inexplicable image in his mind: It [the voice] conjures up a silent black-and-white film in which, all of a sudden, the characters start shouting incomprehensibly at the top of their voices, while a red line appears in the middle of the screen and begins to widen and spread. What to make of this? It’s nightmarish, but why? Perhaps it’s because what’s described is difficult […]
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Ten Tips on Shooting Low-Budget Movies from SXSW
At SXSW a panel titled “The Great Cinematography Shootout” gathered a group of directors and cinematographers to discuss independent film lensing in an age of proliferating formats and lower-cost, high-quality cameras, like the Canon 5D. The directors of photography were Jody Lee Lipes (Girls, Tiny Furniture, and also the director of Opus Jazz), James Laxton (Medicine for Melancholy, Leave Me Like You Found Me), Clay Lifford (Gayby, and also the director of such films as Wuss and Earthling), PJ Raval (Trouble the Water, Sunset Stories, and also the director of Trinidad); and filmmaker, editor and d.p. David Lowery (Pioneer, and, […]
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“GIMME THE LOOT,” “BEWARE OF MR. BAKER” WIN TOP PRIZES AT SXSW
Gimme the Loot (pictured), Adam Leon’s entirely winning story of two young graffiti artists discovering their own relationship as they seek to tag Shea Stadium (er… Citi Field), picked up the top Narrative Jury Prize at tonight’s SXSW awards ceremony. The Documentary Jury prize went to Beware of Mr. Baker, Jay Bulger’s portrait of famed rock drummer Ginger Baker. The jury gave Special Recognitions for three outstanding performances in dramatic features: Jamie Chung’s starring role in Eden; Nico Stone’s in Booster; and Besedka Johnson’s debut in Starlet. The 85-year-old Johnson, who plays a bitter widower forming an unlikely friendship with […]
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SXSW INTERACTIVE: RAIN, SPEED EDITING AND COOLHUNTING BY SARA KIENER
Just hours before the SXSW Interactive Festival began, I found myself stuck in the rain 6 blocks east of the Austin Convention Center in search of Austin’s finest breakfast taco, wearing 3 layers of wet clothing, lugging my laptop on my back, and toting an umbrella that wasn’t doing me any good. As I finally and begrudgingly ate an empanada, because that was all I could find in the midst of a torrential downpour, the restaurant ceiling began to leak and a massive water drop fell on my head, forcing me to rethink everything I’ve ever thought about Austin weather. […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #89
Second #4183, 69:43 In a passage from his 1952 essay “In Defense of Mixed Cinema,” André Bazin seems to predict the future, a future of watching movies in an age of interruptions and distractions. Bazin writes about watching Les Vampires (Louise Feuillade, 1915) during a night full of technical mishaps: That night only one of the two projectors was working. In addition, the print had no subtitles and I imagine that Feuillade would have had difficulty in trying to recognize the murderers. It was even money as to which were the good guys and which the bad. So difficult was […]
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MUSIC BOX PICKS UP IRA SACHS’ KEEP THE LIGHTS ON
Arthouse distrib Music Box Films today announced that they will handle the U.S. and Canadian release of writer-director Ira Sachs’ semi-autobiographical relationship drama Keep the Lights On, which premiered at Sundance back in January and won the Teddy award (for best LGBT film) last month at Berlin. Sachs — best known for his films Forty Shades of Blue, the 2005 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, and The Delta — made headlines when he raised the final $25,000 of his budget for Lights through Kickstarter. Announcing the acquisition of Sachs’ film, Ed Arentz, the Managing Director of Music Box Films, said, […]
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Five Questions with Leave Me Like You Found Me Director Adele Romanski
Producer Adele Romanski has built quite a filmography in a very short time. Last year, she opened David Robert Mitchell’s nostalgia-laced sleeper-hit Myth of the American Sleepover. And less than two months ago, she made a splash at Sundance with Katie Aselton’s Black Rock (which sold to LD Entertainment). Throw in a stint as a Sundance Producer’s Lab Fellow, plus several projects in development (including Mitchell’s Sleepover followup Ella Walks the Beach and Adam Bowers’ We’re A Wasteland) and it should become obvious that Romanski has been, to say the least, busy. So when did she find time to direct […]
