Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Sony’s New HXC-D70 HD/SD Studio Camera
Studio cameras aren’t something I usually spend much time looking at, but I just sat in on a demo of Sony’s new HXC-D70 HD/SD System Camera, which has some interesting features. The HXC-D70 only started shipping three weeks ago, and Sony considers it their budget 2/3” sensor studio camera; it sells for about $20,000. While it might have many potential audiences, it’s plain that Sony intended this for studios and corporate environments who are currently shooting SD but plan to move to HD. This camera works happily in either mode, will work with older CCU-D50 camera control units, and it […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #44
Second #2068, 34:28 “I hope you’re careful, Jeffrey,” Sandy whispers to herself, gazing up at Dorothy’s apartment, where Jeffrey has just not-heard her car horn warning because—and there is a strange, haunted reference to Psycho somewhere in this scene—he is in Dorothy’s bathroom and has just flushed the toilet. Laura Dern’s face is made-up in a way that hearkens back to her role in 1982’s Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains, a film which teetered so delicately between the sweet danger of punk and the even sweeter danger of new wave pop that it practically imploded. Lines upon lines could […]
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GOTHAM AWARDS SILENT AUCTION LAUNCHES ON CHARITY BUZZ
IFP has partnered with online auction-house Charity Buzz for their annual Gotham Awards silent auction. Between now and December 7th, you can go here to bid on a variety of film-related items, including one-on-one consultations with industry leaders Ted Hope (Double Hope Films), Sheila Nevins (HBO) and Paul Schnee (Barden / Schnee Casting), as well as a visit to the set of the 3rd season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Also up for auction are tickets to the world premiere of David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Or, if you’re looking for something a bit more indie-centric, you can […]
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CHECK OUT GOTHAMS’ BEST FILM NOT PLAYING AT A THEATER NEAR YOU NOMINEES AT MOMA THIS WEEKEND
Beginning tomorrow night and running until Monday evening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City is the screening series of the films nominated for this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards‘ Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You. One of our favorite events leading up to the Gothams, as the nominees are chosen by the editors of the magazine (as well as MoMA’s associate curator Joshua Siegel), these five films currently do not have theatrical distribution but have received a lot of attention on the festival circuit this year. The hope with this award is that […]
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“TYRANNOSAUR” STAR PETER MULLAN AND DIRECTOR PADDY CONSIDINE
When Jamie Stuart and I shot this video at Sundance this year, our jaws dropped at Peter Mullan spun out an incredibly eloquent, sustained one-take summation of Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur. He’s a great actor, of course, but still we were stunned at how it all just flowed. Here is that video, with Mullan and writer/director Paddy Considine talking about making a movie based on a short, dark characters, and where it all comes from. The film opens tomorrow from Strand Releasing.
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Getting Started in 3D
I had the good fortune of attending a day-long workshop on 3D production this past weekend. It was notable because we had a chance to actually use the Panasonic AG-3DA1 camcorder and to view the results projected using Panasonic’s new home 3D projector, the PT-AE7000U. In the interests of full disclosure; I have previously written at some length about my suspicion and distrust of the whole 3D thing. I blame it on seeing Jaws 3D in 2D at a drive-in movie at a formative age. To me, 3D seems to be an effect that is useful now and again, but […]
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CALVIN LEE REEDER AND LINDSAY PULSIPHER OF “THE OREGONIAN”
Calvin Reeder’s trippy art-horror film The Oregonian lands in New York today for one screening at Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema. When we selected Reeder for our 25 New Faces series, Mike Plante wrote: “I’m not really sure” how he arrived at his alt-horror style, Reeder says. “Just sorta roll the dice. I do love Sleepaway Camp. I just like to make movies all bent up, I guess.” Originally from Portland, Ore., and living in Seattle up until this year, Reeder played extensively with the great art-punk bands the Popular Shapes and the Intelligence. But he got notoriety, for better or worse, […]
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THE RETURN OF MARCEL THE SHELL
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the totally winning animated short that placed writer/director Dean Fleischer Camp and writer/actress Jenny Slate on Filmmaker‘s 2011 25 New Faces list. (Read their profile here.) Now, the couple — and Marcel, the Montaigne of animated seashells — returns in a new short. He seems slightly cheerier than last time, and the production values are a smidgen better while not betraying the short’s lo-fi origins. There is no better way to start your morning.
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The Blue Velvet Project, #43
Second #2021, 33:41 The tension in this sequence—as Jeffrey sneaks around alone in Dorothy’s apartment while half-listening for Sandy’s warning car horn—is sustained by carefully modulated shifts in what we as the audience know in comparison to what Jeffrey knows. While our knowledge of what is happening sometimes equals Jeffrey’s (those moments when we know nothing more or less than he does), at other times we are suddenly thrust ahead of his limited omniscience. In the previous scene, as Jeffrey explores the darkness of Dorothy’s apartment, we know what he knows, and nothing more. But once the film cuts to […]
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TRAILER: DE NIRO AND DANO IN “BEING FLYNN”
Talk about a frame grab to use as the trailer image! Here’s the first trailer from Paul Weitz’s Being Flynn, an adaptation of memoir writer Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. It stars Robert DeNiro, Paul Dano, Julianne Moore and Olivia Thirlby and will be released by Focus Features this coming Spring.
