Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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THE POSTER AS STREET ART
Okay, I’m weird — I’ll stop and notice a movie poster when I have no idea what it’s advertising. Like this wall of one sheets in Manhattan’s East Village for Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, that makes street art out of giant QR codes. By the way, this controlled and eerie film, which boasts a riveting performance by Elizabeth Olsen, is highly recommended. It comes out October 21 from Fox Searchlight. (If you blow this picture up on your desktop you can scan the codes and go to trailers and clips of the film.) (Post amended after the perceptive […]
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THE KINDS OF WRITERS WE ARE LOOKING FOR
About a year ago I posted a call for new writers, a post that led to amazing folks like Zack Wigon and Nicholas Rombes showing up in these pages. So, as we continue to build out and add content to the website, I thought I’d let any journalists out there know our current needs. I continue to look for people who can write with knowledge and authority about the business side of independent film. And I’m also looking for people who know something about filmmaking itself and are genuinely interested in the below-the-line and production worlds (i.e., film sets and […]
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ON GATEKEEPERS AND “MALKOVICH’S MAIL”
Each week I write an original newsletter that I usually don’t repost to the blog. Here’s this week’s, about a favorite documentary I just found on YouTube. To receive future newsletters, you can sign up for free here. If I ever teach a course in the film business, there’s a documentary I’m going to make required viewing. My guess is that you probably haven’t seen it because it was made for AMC a few years ago as part of a short-lived strand of docs about film. It’s called Malkovich’s Mail, and it was directed by the independent filmmakers Keith Fulton […]
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Raul Ruiz Remembered By James Schamus
The great Chilean filmmaker Raul Ruiz passed away today in Paris. Through his feature The Golden Boat, which was James Schamus’s first as a producer, Raul gave a group of us in New York’s nascent ’80s independent scene (including myself and Robin O’Hara) a wonderful and nearly indescribable introduction to filmmaking. So, I’m grateful here to James for this piece remembering Ruiz and those thrilling and formative days. — Scott Macaulay Raul Ruiz: First Thoughts Raul Ruiz passed away today, age 70, in Paris. He’ll be remembered as one of the truly great, idiosyncratic and visionary voices of world cinema. […]
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ENDING CHANGE FOR LATEST “WEST MEMPHIS 3” DOC
In news that developed Thursday night, Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin, also known as the “West Memphis 3,” could be freed later today after spending over 18 years in prison for the charge of murdering three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993, though strong evidence over the years has pointed to their innocence. UPDATE: “West Memphis 3” have been set free. The subjects of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky‘s landmark Paradise Lost documentaries, the filmmaker’s latest, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, will premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and as its synopsis on the […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #6
Second # 282 An establishing shot of downtown Lumberton/Wilmington, showing the courthouse (from the back) in the mid foreground. In the previous shot, we have just seen Jeffrey for the first time as he walks through the field, wearing black. He stops, picks up a stone, and throws it as some junk. He then keeps walking, his back to the camera. At this point, we don’t know who he is or where he’s going. That shot is followed by this, at second #282, a static shot that lasts three seconds. When I began this project I wondered how frequently frames […]
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Hell and Back Again — A Hammer and Nail Review
(Hell and Back Again premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Its official theatrical run begins at the Film Forum on Wednesday, October 5th. As a selection in the DocuWeeks 2011 program, it opens theatrically in New York City at the IFC Center on Friday, August 19th, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 on Friday, Sept. 2nd. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) In recent years American war docs have largely moved away from exposés on corruption and bad government policy. Instead, the focus has shifted to small, largely apolitical stories about life in the military and the human cost of war. Hell and Back […]
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“MIDNIGHT IN PARIS” SET TO EXPAND
What better way to celebrate the surprising success of Woody Allen‘s latest film, Midnight in Paris, but to take a victory lap. The 75-year-old filmmaker’s highest grossing film in the U.S. with $49.9 million ($83 million worldwide), is getting another go-around in theaters starting Aug. 26. Sony Pictures Classics announced yesterday that the film will play in an additional 500 to 600 theaters from the 400 it’s currently at now. The film opened May 20th. But this is most likely not the swan song for Allen’s nostalgic journey through Paris’ past, as Oscar talk on the film and its writer-director […]
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KOO LAUNCHES “MAN-CHILD” KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN
As a Filmmaker reader, you undoubtedly know Koo from his appearance on our 2008 “25 New Faces” list. Included in the “25” with his partner on The West Side web series, Zack Lieberman, Koo was one of the first filmmakers whose initial medium was the web to be profiled in our round-up. Since The West Side, which remains one of the web’s best narrative series, Koo has developed other projects, including his longest running: NoFilmSchool.com, an invaluable website covering DSRLs, editing software, crowdsourcing, new media, and Web 2.0 in general. One of the site’s best features is the pop-up you […]
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WHEN EVERYONE’S AN ARTIST
This past June I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Fritz Kiersch (Director of Children of the Corn) at the deadCENTER Film Festival in Oklahoma City following a screening of the film PressPausePlay. Our task was to discuss the questions posed in the film which is explores the digital revolution of the last decade and its influence on the creative culture. The film puts forth the notion, as described on the PressPausePlay site, that this “digital revolution has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, in turn unleashing unlimited creative opportunities,” and ponders these fundamental questions, “does democratized […]
