Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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MEDIA CURRENT: THE SHELL GAME
On December 2, 2011, Verizon Wireless announced a $3.6 billion deal with Cablevision, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, three leading cable multi-system operators (MSOs). The deal involves Verizon’s purchase of the cable companies’ interest in SpectrumCo, a holding company controlling 122 high-quality wireless licenses. In addition, it called for a reciprocal marketing-and-sales agreement. If approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), it would make Verizon the nation’s largest holder of wireless spectrum reaching 250 million Americans. The deal will essentially end cable’s efforts to offer wireless services. Sadly, it will likely lead to further telecom industry consolidation, increased […]
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IFP Labs: Ten Things Every Filmmaker Should Know About Distribution Deals
I’ll be blogging this week from the 2011 IFP Filmmaker Labs, which are in their third and final session at 92Y Tribeca. This year’s 21 participating documentary and narrative projects, are nearing completion of the grueling post-production process and are now turning their attention towards the marketplace. Things kicked off this morning with a sobering discussion about sales and rights, led by Jon Reiss, co-author of Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul (presented by PreScreen and Area 23, also written by The Film Collaborative and Sherri Candler). Alongside the other lab leaders, Reiss stressed that filmmakers should always use […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #51
Second #51, 39:57 What is this world? Like piecing together a puzzle over an abyss, we are witnessing the scene of a crime conveyed in secret code. We know, of course, that Dorothy will not kill Jeffrey, but somehow this fact only makes matters worse. The murderers and the murdered. In her never-out-of-date book Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, Anne Friedberg writes that as soon as the photographic negative made possible a standardized image, photography and then cinematography made possible the seeing of exactly the same image(s) over time. Film experiences had an unprecedented repeatability. . . This notion […]
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SUNDANCE 2012 SHORT FILMS LINEUP ANNOUNCED
Below are the titles selected to screen in the Short Film Program at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. See films in competition. See films in the Spotlight, Park City at Midnight, NEXT and New Frontier sections. See films in Premieres section. 64 films have been selected from a record 7,675 submissions (up 16% from last year). This year the shorts program will be presented by Yahoo!. Part of their sponsorship includes featuring a select group of shorts from this year on their premium video destination, Yahoo! Screen during the fest. There you will be able to vote on your favorite […]
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AN OBSERVATION IN MARRAKECH: ON “BLACK GOLD”
Sign of the times: A big-budget internationalist action throwback of sorts, one with some of the goofiest, most downright absurd conceits you’ll find all year, Jean-Jacques Annaud’s both intentionally and unintentionally funny Or Noir (Black Gold) will probably never see the light of day in the States. Relegating it to marginal art-house material because of its odd place on the contemporary film mantle, in which it has been deemed simply too silly and conventional for the American art house crowd and too high minded and not award season-worthy enough for the big leagues, Warners is only handling the U.K., Europe and a […]
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SUNDANCE 2012 ANNOUNCE FILMS IN PREMIERES SECTIONS
Announced today are the titles screening in the out-of-competition Premiers and Documentary Premieres sections of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. The complete list of films are below. See films in competition. See films in the Spotlight, Park City at Midnight, NEXT and New Frontier sections. Highlights include closing night film The Words, starring Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Irons, Dennis Quaid, Olivia Wilde and Zoe Saldana; Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s online arts community hitRECord will be showcased and audiences are invited to interact and contribute to the works; films from Julie Delpy, Nicholas Jarecki, Stephen Frears, Josh Radnor, Spike Lee, James Marsh, Joe Berlinger, […]
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Jonathan Yi Talks About The Canon C300
Last week Jonathan Yi posted a video on the web: “Canon EOS C300 = Awesome”. The video, shot with a prototype of the new Canon C300, pokes fun at camera tests, while also demonstrating many of the capabilities of this camera. Though it was originally produced for Canon’s launch event, the video was not posted at that time because, as Jonathan said “Canon, not thrilled with my sense of humor, does not credit or condone this video.” Canon may have underestimated the charm of the video, or the interest in anything related to the C300; to date, the video has […]
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THE DESIRE TO MAKE THINGS
Brooklyn-based Joel Bukiewicz studied writing and had a hard time selling his fiction. He took a break from writing and found that he still had the desire to create, and that desire turned into a business, Cut Brooklyn. Bukiewicz makes hand-crafted knives, and he is profiled at Made by Hand, a site which brings “a cinematic eye to real-people content for the web while telling inspiring stories.” Made by Hand / No 2 The Knife Maker from Made by Hand on Vimeo.
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Zach Wigon’s Top 20 Films of 2011
Throughout the month of December, Filmmaker‘s writers will be commenting on their favorite films of the year as well as business, tech, and cultural trends. To kick off, here’s Zack Wigon’s Top 20 Films of 2011. 1. Shame. Shame is unquestionably the real deal when it comes to the easily-melodramatic territory of the Addiction Film – the words “searing” and “raw” come to mind without irony – but what makes it the best film of 2011 is the fact that Steve McQueen seems hell-bent on upending everything we know about how stories are supposed to be told in cinema. For […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #50
Second #2350, 39:10 1. Dorothy, the knife dangerously close to Jeffrey’s nose, perhaps unintentionally recalling the infamous nose-slicing moment in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown. 2. Has Jeffrey caused her to act like this, or has Frank? Jeffrey is not Frank, although Dorothy treats him like she might were she to find him hiding, unarmed, in her closet. 3. In the fevered dream of Blue Velvet, what causes what is impossible to untangle, as if concepts like “before” and “after” don’t mean a thing. 4. In Steve Erickson’s novel Zeroville, Vikar—who becomes an editor not just of film but of a version […]
