Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Dark Days — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The 10th anniversary of Dark Days will be re-released through Oscilloscope Laboratories beginning Friday.) Things keep happening that make me feel old. No I don’t have any major age-related illnesses. I haven’t been getting copies of AARP magazine in the mail. “Are you even 30 yet?” is still a legitimate question to ask me upon any encounter. For the record, I’m not (yet) 30, but still I can’t help getting the creeping sense that, in the words of LCD Soundsystem, “I’m losing my edge.” Upon learning that the Cinema Village was going to open British documentarian Marc Singer’s seminal 2000 […]
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SUNDANCE DIRECTOR’S LAB BLOG: KASI LEMMONS, PART 2
Filmmaker Kasi Lemmons (Talk to Me, The Caveman’s Valentine, Eve’s Bayou) attended this year’s Sundance Director’s Lab as an advisor, and here is a blog report about her experience. I’ve been back in Manhattan for a few days, but my head is still on the Mountain. I’m thinking about the fellows, who are shooting and editing their final scenes. The progress and maturity of vision that I witnessed while I was there was incredible. I saw the filmmakers grow and stretch and discover themselves in the process. The rigorous shooting schedule taught them how to organize their day so that […]
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TIM HETHERINGTON TRIBUTE AT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH FESTIVAL
I didn’t know Tim Hetherington very well, but like everyone who had encountered the critically acclaimed photojournalist, either in person or through his incredible work, I was stunned when I heard about his death while covering the uprisings in Libya. Last summer I had the great privilege of interviewing Hetherington and his co-director Sebastian Junger for Filmmaker magazine prior to the release of their Academy Award-nominated Restrepo, and the two struck me as polar opposites. Whereas bestselling author and journalist Junger seemed cut from the same passionate, gung-ho cloth as many of the patriotic men and women who serve in […]
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Director Robert Persons on General Orders No. 9
Much can be made of duration. The long stretches of time presaging the releases of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut or, more recently, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, lent each film a preordained measure of value. Yet, those films were helmed by directors with celebrated careers and reputations for being perfectionists. So it comes as an anomaly that General Orders No. 9, premiering at the reRun Gastropub Theater on June 24th, took first-time filmmaker Robert Persons 11 years to make. General Orders No. 9 is a person-less documentary about Georgia’s ongoing process of urbanization. A synthesis of voiceover, music, […]
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General Orders No. 9 — A Hammer to Nail Review
(General Orders No. 9 is being distributed theatrically by Variance Films. It opens at the reRun Gastropub in New York City on June 24, 2011. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes County road. General Orders No. 9 is one of those films where the adjectives used to describe it—dense, meditative, reflective, confounding—are intended as compliments, yet they will be mistaken by many for pejoratives. And while it would be stubborn and ignorant to think that everyone will respond to it with open arms, its refusal to speak to anyone except itself is […]
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FCP X – First Musings
Final Cut Pro X (version 10.0) arrived 8:30 a.m. yesterday morning at the App Store for $299, unleashing torrents of criticism about missing features and a perceived drift from professional product to one that consumers might find friendlier. So far, so good. Let me explain. I, too, had an advance copy (version 9.9.1.77) and wrestled to overcome personal expectations of what a 64-bit next-gen Final Cut should be, given the countless hours of my life spent in front of this revolutionary NLE since it first introduced us to FireWire and DV editing back in 1999. As I wrote last night […]
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The Microbudget Conversation: Perspective
So last week we presented one type of manifesto knowing full well it’s almost impossible to define what this all is. The feedback was wonderful and I want to take a moment before I present the next two manifesto perspectives to comment. I think some people are completely right about the fact that sometimes the point of micro-budget is to NOT be part of a group. However, as humans, we group ourselves, and others, together so that we can quickly categorize and compartmentalize the world around us. Which is the very reason I started thinking about a rule book. Groups […]
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TRAILER WATCH: DAVID CRONENBERG’S “A DANGEROUS METHOD”
The trailer for David Cronenberg’s latest, A Dangerous Method, which is about Carl Jung’s relationship with a female patient and his clash with Sigmund Freud, is online. The film stars Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortenson. According to The Playlist, Knightley has a “lengthy neurotic monlogue” that “steals the show.” Indeed, her extreme physical angularity may never have been used to such good effect as it appears to have been used here.
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SUNDANCE DIRECTOR’S LAB BLOG: KASI LEMMONS
Filmmaker Kasi Lemmons (Talk to Me, The Caveman’s Valentine, Eve’s Bayou) attended this year’s Sundance Director’s Lab as an advisor, and here is a blog report about her experience. It challenging to put into words an almost magical experience, but I’ll try. I’m here at the Sundance Filmmaker’s Lab. I’ve been here since Sunday. I’m happy and energized and exhausted. The feeling is familiar. I always experience it on the mountain. The mountain to me is Sundance and Sundance is the mountain. The mountain is always magical. I’ve been here many times as an advisor. Usually there’s at least three […]
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Apple Releases New Final Cut Pro X; Our Review To Follow
UPDATE: Read David Leitner’s first take on Final Cut Pro X here. This morning Apple released its long awaited, ground-up rethink of its professional editing software, Final Cut Pro. Available for $299 from the Apple Store, the new FCP is both drastically lower in price than the previous version and contains numerous improvements, including, wrote David Leitner at NAB this Spring, a “dramatically revamped interface, 64-bit processor capability, no more RAM ceiling of 4GB, and continual background rendering by means of unused CPU cycles.” Leitner’s takeaway then: With FCP X, Apple is returning to the one-size-fits-all ethos of the […]
