Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Blue Velvet Project, #20
Second #940, 15:40 “That’s kind of interesting,” Sandy says, laughing, after Jeffrey has—out of the blue—demonstrated the chicken walk. Blue Velvet was the last Lynch film on which Alan Splet designed sound and in this scene, like so many others, it’s as if we are enveloped in an auditory cocoon. “Sound is very important,” Lynch has said, “because it really is half the film. With film, the whole can be greater than the parts if you have the sound, the image, and sequence of scenes right.” At right around second #940, the film cuts to this shot, and the sound […]
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Joe Swanberg, Factory 25 Announce New DVD Subscription Series
Prolific independent director Joe Swanberg announced today a new distribution plan for his next four films. Partnered with Factory 25, Swanberg is offering fans a four-film, one-year subscription to his work. For $99.95 subscribers will receive a box that will fill up each quarter with not only DVDs but also bonus material, including 45rpm records, photo books and posters. “I’m in the nice position right now of having so many [completed] films I’m trying to get out into the world, so I’m taking the plunge and doing something interesting,” says Swanberg.The four films are Silver Bullets and Art History (both […]
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TORONTO 2011: “WAVELENGTHS” PART II
The adventurous Wavelengths experimental film programs at the Toronto International Film Festival, curated first by Susan Oxtoby and then, in recent years, by Andréa Picard, are a true festival highlight. 2011 was exemplary in this regard, its five experimental programs marked by a diverse range of aesthetics and artistic projects. An eerie mood pervades the smart, surprising Sea Series #10 by John Price, one of the only films in the 2011 Wavelengths experimental program at the Toronto International Film Festival explicitly inspired by world events. An intertitle explains that the film was made “10,190 km from Fukushima” on May 21, 2011, two months after the deadly Japanese […]
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The Cooler Bandits
John Lucas grew up in Ohio. When Lucas decided to volunteer for the Big Brother / Big Sister program in Akron he couldn’t have known how much it would change his life, and the lives of the boys he would meet. His little brother was an eleven-year-old named Charlie. Soon after meeting Charlie he met Charlie’s cousin: Poochie. He also met a number of other kids, and started photographing all of them. After Lucas left Ohio, he would return often to the community in Akron, saddened and angered to find the lives of the children that he had known being […]
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TORONTO: WHIT STILLMAN DISCUSSES “DAMSELS IN DISTRESS”
Via The Guardian, here’s a talk with Whit Stillman and clips from his new film, Damsels in Distress.
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PLATFORMS, PMD’S & PERPETUATING OBSCURITY
Our innovation is stagnant. Stagnant and boring. Really. Boring. The movies themselves are one thing having long been locked into a race to the bottom with their Hollywood counterparts in an often times futile effort to just be noticed, but most stagnant and boring is the proliferation of new ‘platforms’ on which filmmakers can ‘launch’ their careers. Everywhere I look there is some new upstart looking to get into the digital distribution realm touting how their platform puts the power in your hands and provides a direct gateway for your film to reach an audience. A claim which, of course, […]
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THOUGHTS ON NETFLIX… QWIKSTER… QWIKFLIX?
Late last night before going to bed I tweeted that I found (soon-to-be-former) Netflix CEO Reed Hasting’s “explanation and reflections” about his company’s pricing change “odd and confusing.” If you haven’t heard, Netflix is splitting in two. Hastings will remain CEO of a streaming video company that will retain the name Netflix. A new CEO, Andy Rendich, has been appointed head of a DVD rental company — formerly Netflix’s core business. The new DVD company will be called Qwikster. Qwikster? It sounds like a new on-the-go breakfast product. (Maybe that’s because I keep flashing back to that little Martian with […]
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ON THE GROUND AT INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK
As one of roughly a dozen full time staffers at IFP, I’ve been working the past six months to help launch the 33rd annual Independent Film Week. It’s our first year at Lincoln Center’s new Elinor Bunin Film Center, and more than a thousand indie filmmakers and industry professionals are in town for the festivities. In commemoration, I’ve dug up my long neglected digital camera, and I’ll be sharing photo highlights from IFW all week long. Here are some snapshots from Day 1: The team behind the upcoming Detroit Unleaded (editor Nathanial Sherfield, director Rola Nashef, producers Marwan Nashef and […]
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IFW: “BEST KEPT SECRET”
A year ago, I was banging my head against the wall of my Brooklyn apartment asking myself “Why?” Why another documentary film I knew would consume my entire life and prevent me from financial stability? Why a film made in the grittiest part of Newark, New Jersey, one of the country’s most problematic urban areas? Why not a film about Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris or cheese making in Rome? The answer was, of course — because I had to tell THIS story. Best Kept Secret is the story of a Newark public high school teacher who struggles to prepare her students with autism to survive […]
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IFW: “OUR NIXON”
Next week, my husband Brian and I will take our first documentary feature (Our Nixon) to Independent Film Week. I’ve never been to this event before, or to anything remotely like it, so I would describe my state of mind as Excited Anticipation, tinged with a slightly lesser amount of Bemused Bafflement. For the uninitiated, here is the little that I know about Independent Film Week (I should say more specifically the Project Forum): if you are selected by IFP to participate, you upload information about your film to a top secret server run by elves, and then various species […]
