Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Things That Seem Real, Part 3 : Catfish And Fakery
Editor’s Note: Part one of this essay, “Things That Seem Real: A Three-Part Essay on Catfish and Other Movies,” appeared Tuesday on the site and can be read here. Part Two appeared yesterday and can be read here. These essays contain major spoilers regarding the film Catfish. Catfish and Fakery. Catfish has some major truth-problems. Major. Like, plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. The stirrings of suspicion began instantly after its Sundance 2010 premiere. On January 30th, reporting from Sundance, Indiewire’s Bryce Renninger wrote that “Over the week since its premiere, though, many critics and audience members […]
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DOCUMENTARY HEAVYWEIGHTS TAKE TO THE STAGE
Tuesday was a day dedicated to documentaries at the Independent Filmmaker Conference, starting off with a conversation with Sheila Nevins from HBO, fielded by Toronto Film Festival documentary programmer Thom Powers (also well known in NYC for his Stranger Than Fiction doc series at the IFC Center). Nevins brought the biggest crowd yet to the conference, despite speaking first thing in the morning. She talked cheerfully about how difficult it is to get people to care about tough issues and how documentaries are always a struggle. “We’re very lucky because we’re the Off Off Broadway of HBO. People don’t subscribe […]
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INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK UPDATE
Hello again, Marc here reporting from three days of meetings. It’s been an exciting whirl, and in hopes that some future IFP Emerging Narrative participant might read this (or just the IFP-curious at home), I think I’ll share a bit of what my last three days have been like. As aforementioned, prior to arrival, we received a schedule of meetings, all of which were scheduled between 9 AM and noon in the Emerging Narrative part of the Project Forum space, which is a huge room bisected; one side has a lounge-type area with chairs, wifi, helpful IFP staffers, and lots […]
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“TWELVE WAYS TO SUNDAY” COMES TO ROOFTOP FILMS
In this time of economic peril, many Americans have begun to shed frivolous spending for small but rich pleasures. With less nights of take-out or cineplex movies, they’ve learned that it’s the homemade things that count in this world. Filmmaker Anna Farrell portrays a tight-knit community in her documentary Twelve Ways to Sunday, one that always knew about the basic and organic things in life. Fixing up motorcycles, dishing up meals at the local diner, and canning fruit preserves, the people of Allegany County, New York, have always sustained through the good and bad times. Playing this Wednesday at Rooftop […]
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Things That Seem Real, Part Two: Catfish and Fantasy
Editor’s Note: Part one of this essay, “Things That Seem Real: A Three-Part Essay on Catfish and Other Movies,” appeared yesterday on the site and can be read here. These essays contain major spoilers regarding the film Catfish. Part Two: Catfish and Fantasy Over the course of an eight-month relationship that contained no physicality, Nev and Megan stayed in touch constantly. Using email, Gchat, Facebook walls, text messaging and phone calls, they pushed the boundaries of what are commonly understood to be the limits of an online-only relationship. Megan tells Nev about her family and the horses she takes care […]
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Am I a Filmmaker or a Brand? Why Not Be Both?
A year ago, I brought the preview copies of Think Outside the Box Office to sell at Independent Film Week, straight off the press. This week in addition to being a lab leader and mentor of the new IFP Filmmaker Labs, I have the honor of being paired in a Cage Match on Thursday with Michael Tully from Hammer to Nail, and Michelle Satter from the Sundance Labs on the subject: “Am I A Filmmaker or Brand”. I thought I would throw down some thoughts on the subject. I don’t think that “filmmaker” and “brand” are exclusive of one another. […]
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“ONE HUNDRED MORNINGS” AND GENRE
Here’s the last of our guest blog posts by the makers of One Hundred Mornings, currently running at Los Angeles’s Downtown Independent Theater. This one is by writer/director Conor Horgan on the genre possibilities of his movie. When I finished writing the script for One Hundred Mornings, I wasn’t overly concerned about which genre the film would be — I just wanted to get it made. But most filmmakers have to specify their project’s genre at an early stage — it makes everything nice and neat, and life is a little easier for all involved, except maybe for the writer/director […]
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ZACHARY WIGON EXPLORES THE WORLDS OF “CATFISH”
As I wrote about on our newsletter a few weeks ago (and if you don’t get the weekly newsletter, why not? It’s free), we’ll be adding more new columns and original web content in the days ahead. On Friday we launched “Into the Splice,” Nicholas Rombes’s column on the pleasures of moviegoing. Every two weeks he’ll be going to a movie and writing an essay about the experiences and thoughts it triggers. And today we have the first of a three-part essay by Zachary Wigon on the multiple meanings of Catfish (pictured), examining it within the context of other movies […]
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Things That Seem Real, Part One: A 3-Part Esaay on Catfish and other movies
Editor’s Note: The following essay contains major spoilers about the film Catfish. Part One: Catfish and Reality In the movie, the 14-year-old boy tells the school therapist that he likes to watch “little clips” on the computer, little videos. He describes them as “little clips of things that seem real.” Earlier in the film, we saw a montage of YouTube clips, from a cat playing piano to Saddam Hussein being hung to a baby laughing. Later in the film, the boy sees two girls die from a drug overdose right in front of him. How real that event does — […]
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CHECKING IN
Hi again, Marc here with a report from opening day and the first day of meetings in the Emerging Narrative section for my character driven crime drama “Inside the Machine.” Yesterday started with an orientation with IFP folks, in a room full of other writer/directors looking for producers. Before they got started we all introduced ourselves, and afterwards started trading cards and contact information right away. I know how I felt, and informal chats revealed that I was not alone: having written a script, been selected to Project Forum, and maybe practiced pitching a bit, we didn’t really know what […]
