Filmmaking

THE BABY FILMS OF INDIE FILMMAKERS

Leading up to the release this weekend of Thomas Balme’s Babies, FilmInFocus (which, full disclosure, I am a co-editor of) asked four independent filmmakers to make one-minute films about their own babies. The shorts are unexpected and diverse and scope, and I decided to post two here. The first, Dada, is from Caveh Zahedi (I am a Sex Addict), who wrote about his filmmaking experience, “My wife was against it but I prevailed. This said, it was the longest minute of my life.” And second, Untitled, is from experimental filmmaker Jennifer Reeves, who wrote: While capturing the exuberance and wonder […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2010 Filmmaking
ANDREW SARRIS AWARD WINNER SIMON KINBERG’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH

“I can promise you that you are going to fail… but failure is not final.” That’s screenwriter Simon Kinberg in his speech accepting the Columbia University Film School Andrew Sarris award. For all the talk here and elsewhere about the struggles of DIY filmmakers, it’s useful to note that directors and writers targeting the studio system have it tough too. In recounting the five-year-long story of turning his thesis project, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, into the big Hollywood hit it became, Kinberg offers simple but solid inspirational advice for filmmakers of all stripes.

By Scott Macaulay on May 6, 2010 Filmmaking
FILMMAKERS TAKE CHARGE AT THE MARYLAND FILM FESTIVAL

Tomorrow, May 6, through Sunday May 9 runs the Maryland Film Festival, which includes this year a one-day conference on Friday entitled “Filmmakers Taking Charge.” The festival itself has a pretty excellent schedule and then there is the conference, which is described like this: This intimate event is a daylong set of case study roundtables and networking opportunities focused on identifying methods to connect audiences and filmmakers in an increasingly overpopulated (and tech-savvy) market. The conference will bring visiting and local filmmakers together with a variety of distributors, critics, and exhibitors in a spirit of mutual support and cooperation that […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2010 Festivals & Events
GEN ART SHUTS DOWN

Another sad casualty of the current recession: Gen Art is shutting down. Most film programmers worry about how to cultivate new audiences. Gen Art never had that problem. Indeed, “Who are these people?” was always the operative phrase among film industry folk attending Gen Art screenings, which were always packed with hip and enthusiastic twentysomething viewers. Gen Art’s programming was always interesting and their model and audience outreach downright enviable. I’m sorry to see them go. From Gen Art’s website: It is with an extremely heavy heart that we are are posting this. After struggling for the past 18 months […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2010 Festivals & Events
RODRIGUEZ TAKES A MACHETE TO ARIZONA

Cinco de Mayo trailer:

By Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2010 Filmmaking
“PIN GODS” AT STF

It may be hard to imagine, but there was a time when documentaries about off-brand sporting events and competitions were a rare thing. In this pre-Spellbound era, Pin Gods managed to make a small bowling-ball sized splash at the Toronto festival, only to fall through the cracks of the distribution system (a fact bemoaned last night by one of Pin Gods’ biggest fans, Stranger Than Fiction programmer Thom Powers). A film about what its director Larry Locke calls, “the small dream,” Pin Gods is an endearingly humane look at four men, each one trying to make a life out of professional […]

By Mary Anderson Casavant on May 5, 2010 Festivals & Events
“KIDS” OPENS L.A. FILM FEST; LINE-UP ANNOUNCED

Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids are All Right will open the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival, which announced its line-up today. The Focus Features release, due out in July, stars Annette Benning, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Mia Wasikowska in a story of a lesbian couple and their children, who search for their sperm donor father. The closing night film will be Despicable Me, a 3D comedy-fantasy directed by Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin. The festival, organized by Film Independent, will be the first held in downtown L.A.’s L.A. Live complex. Rebecca Yeldham is the Director of the festival and David […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 4, 2010 Festivals & Events
THE iPAD AS AN (NON) COMMUNAL DEVICE

I bought an iPad the day it came out and wrote a couple of times on the blog and in our newsletter that I’d be posting a review of it. Well, the review is 80% done and sitting on my desktop, but I never finished that final 20% because, frankly, I got sick of reading about the iPad and decided that I didn’t want to add any more verbiage about it to the blogosphere. Short version, though: despite various qualms (no Flash, speakers on only one side of the device, the primacy of Apple’s walled-garden app store, a shutter effect […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 3, 2010 Filmmaking
WEEKEND LINKS, 5/2/2010

Most of the time when I come across interesting articles or video on the web I clip them to my Evernote reader and check them out later on my Blackberry or iPad. Here, then, are a few things I’ve clipped that might interest you too. From CNN Money: “One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010.” What are the implications for online content creators? In Spring 2008 I wrote about Alix Lambert’s Crime book for Filmmaker. (The piece is not online, but you can check it out on her site.) Here, at The Graveyard Shift, she discusses […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 2, 2010 Filmmaking
LOW-BUDGET 3D VIDEO STARS… JAMES CAMERON

Joe Corey who posts at A Site Called Fred emailed with this video of James Cameron planting a tree on Earth Day. The kicker is that its in old-school 3D, so if you have some of those blue and red glasses you can slip them on. He also calls this a remake of Les Blank’s film Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe, a comparison which, I have to say, I’m baffled by. No matter — watch Cameron plant a tree in 3D (preceded by a discussion of 3D itself).

By Scott Macaulay on May 2, 2010 Filmmaking

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