Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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On The RED Scarlet-X, Kickstarter And Camera Obsession
I’ve been meaning to post notice of the other big camera announcement this past week — RED’S unveiling of the SCARLET-X. Over at his No Film School, Koo has been all over this camera, writing that instead of the Scarlet being what we once thought the Scarlet would be (“a 3K for $3K camera), “It is very, very close to being the same camera as the $28,000 EPIC-X — it’s the same size and weight, has the same large sensor, takes the same accessories, and maxes out at the same 5K resolution — except the SCARLET-X starts at under $10K.” […]
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HOW — AND WHY — TO OCCUPY
At her Iva Asks blog, Iva Radivojevic looks at how the spreading Occupy Wall Street movement is inspiring a new protest culture at CUNY. “This is a document about the struggle of students and adjunct faculty at Cuny,” she writes. “This local struggle is part of an international student movement against neoliberal dictatorship. This is only the beginning. The time for action is now.” As she often does, Radivojevic writes on her blog the inspirations for her work. For this new video piece, one influence is a film by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin. From the blog: And the latest […]
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KICKSTARTER: GREGORY BAYNE’S “BLOODSWORTH: AN INNOCENT MAN”
In columns like “Platforms, PMDs and Perpetuating Obscurity” and “When Should You Call Bullsh#*t,” filmmaker Gregory Bayne has been one of our most provocative columnists on the site, incorporating the experience of making and distributing his own films into a larger commentary on the independent film business. Now it is time to help him out in the form of donating to the Kickstarter campaign for his new project, Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man.” It’s about the first man on death row to be released by DNA evidence. Bayne writes: Weaving together archival footage, Kirk Bloodsworth’s own compelling re-telling of his ordeal, […]
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MULLING THE INDUSTRIAL POLICY OF STEVE JOBS
One of the interesting tidbits in Walter Isaacson’s underwhelming bio of Steve Jobs is an account of the Apple CEO’s meeting with President Barack Obama. From the book: “You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” Jobs told Obama at the outset. To prevent that, he said, the administration needed to be a lot more business-friendly. He described how easy it was to build a factory in China, and said that it was almost impossible to do so these days in America, largely because of regulations and unnecessary costs. Distressingly, this thread is never picked up again in the book, which ignores […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #38
#1784, 29:46 In what is perhaps Haruki Murakami’s best, most neglected novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun, the narrator recalls the effects of listening to a recording of a Liszt piano concerto: And the music itself was wonderful. At first it struck me as exaggerated, artificial, even incomprehensible. Little by little, though, with repeated listenings, a vague image formed in my mind—an image that had meaning. When I closed my eyes and concentrated, the music came to me as a series of whirlpools. One whirlpool would form, and out of it another would take shape. . . […]
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GUILLERMO DEL TORO DEFENDS GENRE IN TORONTO
The king of Hollywood genre spent his Hallowe’en in Toronto where he held court at the TIFF Bell Lightbox to speak about his career and present five nights of some of his favourite horror films. Guillermo del Toro launched the series last Thursday when he introduced the 1996 Italian flick L’arcano incantatore (The Arcane Enchanter) and answered questions from TIFF’s Artistic Director Noah Cowan. Despite being a bigshot Hollywood director, del Toro remains a film geek, the kind of guy who can rap about Road Warrior for hours. After showing a montage of some of his favourite movies (including Mad Max and Planet of the […]
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DOC NYC: Directors Nara Garber & Betsy Nagler on Flat Daddy
In the corpus of documentaries that have come out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve seen a gradual progression from the outward to the inward — immersive forays into the battlefield giving way to subtler studies of the wartime psyche. Yet the majority of them have focused on the soldier’s experience of war. Flat Daddy, premiering at DOC NYC this Sunday at 4PM and screening again on Nov. 8th at 1:30, sets itself apart by focusing on the people who feel war perhaps the deepest: military families put on hold or torn apart by the absence of their […]
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Data Will Be the Death of Us
The death of film, the evolution of technology, and the days of shrinking budgets have put into question the existence of the 2nd AC. Who needs someone to load and manage film when there is no film? Ironically, the position may be more critical than ever. Whether you’re a sole cameraman, or working on a large production, managing the data coming from the camera remains critical, and is becoming more difficult. Increasing resolution and higher data rates mean that more disk space and more time is being taken up wrangling the data. And if your capture media needs to be […]
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See Videos From Canon’s New EOS C300
At a press event in Los Angeles tonight, Canon announced two new digital cinema cameras aimed at filmmakers, the EOS C300 and the C300 PL (the latter differing by way of a PL mount). Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai said that the company wanted to “leave no story untold” as he unveiled a camera with a small form factor, an 8.3MP 2160 x 3840 Super 35 CMOS sensor with 4K resolution, and new lenses that resolve to this higher resolution. Martin Scorsese was on hand at the event to hail digital cinema and extoll the promise of the cameras. This promise […]
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“MARTHA, MARCY…” PRODUCTION CO., BORDERLINE FILMS, SIGNS FIRST-LOOK DEAL WITH FOX SEARCHLIGHT
Just hitting the wires is the word that Borderline Films, the team of Antonio Campos, Josh Mond and Sean Durkin, have signed a first-look deal with Fox Searchlight. Searchlight is currently distributing Durkin’s Boderline pic, Martha Marcy May Marlene. Both Campos and Durkin are Filmmaker Magazine “25 New Faces” selections, and in the current print issue Mond talks about how the company sustains itself in the independent filmmaking business. They’re a talented team and I’m glad to hear their future projects have a first-look home. The press release follows: LOS ANGELES, CA, November 3, 2011 – Fox Searchlight Pictures Presidents […]
