Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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IFP ANNOUNCES DISTRIBUTION LAB; NARRATIVE LAB DEADLINE EXTENDED
In a press release sent out today, the IFP has announced that they’ve expanded their Independent Filmmaker Labs to include distribution. In collaboration with Ted Hope and Jon Reiss, the Distribution Lab will take 20 projects (10 docs, 10 narratives) and gives them a year-long fellowship to assist the filmmakers with marketing and distributing their films. Filmmakers will receive, among other things, year-round access to IFP staff and Lab leaders, one-on-one mentorship with working producers and a five-day Completion Lab. To learn more about the Lab and its benefits read the full release below. Also on the IFP front, the […]
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SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND
I don’t post a lot of amateur video on the site… but I’m making an exception. Real school play or performance art prank? America’s Funniest Home Video or an homage to George Kuchar? A tribute to the imagination of today’s youth or a disturbing wake-up call about the next generation? The video claims to be posted by Bartonville, IL homemaker Cindy S., who lists her favorite movie as The Passion of the Christ, her favorite book as Going Rogue, and who may have filmed her son Jaydon in his school play doing… Scarface.
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TIME MACHINING GOOD MACHINE
Last week when I intro’d a piece on Don Hahn and Peter Schneider’s Waking Sleeping Beauty, I wrote that every mid-career filmmaker must desire at some point a better record of his or her early days. In that vein, I came across on Ted Hope’s blog this little excerpt of a TV profile on his production company with James Schamus, Good Machine. It’s a great blast from the past, especially watching Good Machine staffers bustle through their office, stacked with papers and scripts and lined with posters, on West 25th. Needless to say, while this may be almost two decades […]
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KICKSTARTING “BAD FEVER”
Here’s how writer/director/producer Dustin Guy Defa describes his new film, Bad Fever: Bad Fever is a film about loneliness. It’s about being alone and hating being alone and then finding somebody to be with but hating that too because it doesn’t feel any different or at least any less lonely. Do you ever feel shitty and wonder why everyone thinks you’re okay, and then when you do finally feel good about yourself everyone else starts to ask what’s wrong with you? It’s about that too. It’s about Eddie, who lives with his mother, and it’s about all of his hopeless […]
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Kenneth Turan Crosses The Line
One basic rule of film directing that any beginner is taught is to “not cross the line.” I’m referring to what is sometimes called “the director’s line,” the imaginary boundary that demarcates where the camera can be in a given scene. Simply put, when shooting a scene the camera should be somewhere within180 degrees of a line bisecting the space being shot. If the camera stays on one side of the line, editing continuity is preserved. Actors stay on the same side of the screen as opposed to jumping all over the place with every edit, and the audience is […]
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Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void Opening Credits
While checking out the Lovely Machine website because I’m doing a panel with filmmaker Gregory Bayne today at The Conversation I came across his blog, which has some very tastefully curated links. To wit: the opening credit sequence of Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void. This has been floating around the web but it’s the first time I caught up with it online. These credits are pretty amazing — check them out. Related: Michele Civetta on Enter the Void here at Filmmaker.
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HOW COULD CHRIS DODD’S BANKING BILL AFFECT YOUR FILM START-UP?
At his blog A VC, Fred Wilson examines a few provisions of the banking reform bill currently being debated in Congress and highlights a couple of provisions that could affect filmmakers. From his blog: 1) Changing the definition of a “qualified investor” in angel and venture deals. Not just anyone can invest in a startup company. You have to be a qualified investor. A qualified investor is currently defined as anyone with a net worth of over $1mm or net income of over $250k. Dodd’s bill would increase that to $2.3mm and $450k respectively. And then index those numbers to […]
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TRAILERING CATHERINE BREILLAT’S “BLUEBEARD”
On my list to see if Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard, in which the iconoclastic French director takes on the classic tale from the point of view of two modern-day young girls. It opens today at the IFC Center. The trailer is below.
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Don Hahn, Peter Schneider on Waking Sleeping Beauty
As filmmakers, we are genetically programmed to look to the future. The next script, the next movie, the next deal. After all, the films — on DVD, on hard drives, in canisters stacked in our closets — are their own memories. Except, of course, that a film only tells part of the story. They are the ends of their tales, not the beginnings, and they only tell their own stories, and not the dramas of their making. If at all, those stories that circle around a film are only sometimes relayed in magazine profiles or in books written by people […]
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Zacuto’s DSLR Shootout
Zacuto, which rents HD cameras and DSLR camera accessories, gathered professional DPs and colorists for a “DSRL Shootout.” They compared the Canon 7D, 5D Mark 2, ID, the Panasonic GH1 and Nikon D3s and compared them to footage shot on Kodak and Fuji stock. The results were evaluated by a range of DPs, including indie cinematographers and ASC members, at AFI and Skywalker Ranch. The results are pretty astonishing. The first episode, a 35-minute piece in which all of these camera’s latitude are examined, is up but it’s not embeddable. See it at the link above. The trailer, however, is […]
