Filmmaking

THE FIRST SHORT SHOT ON THE CANON REBEL T2i

FEBRUARY – shot on the Canon EOS 550D / Rebel T2i (preprod unit) from Nino Leitner on Vimeo. From filmmaker Nino Leitner. This short film, FEBRUARY, was shot on a pre-production unit of the new Canon EOS 550D / Rebel T2i. This is UNGRADED footage straight off the camera (converted to ProRes LT first for easy editing). I used a “flattened” picture style as outlined by Stu Maschwitz on his blog. Check out his blog for a detailed review of the camera, which comes out next month and is priced at $799.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2010 Filmmaking
KERI PUTNAM NAMED NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SUNDANCE INSTITUTE

Big news out of Sundance tonight: Keri Putnam, former President of Production at Miramax Films and Executive Vice President at HBO Films, has been named the new Executive Director of the Sundance Institute. The position was previously held by Ken Brecher, who left Sundance last April. Keri is well known to many of us in the independent community for her leadership at Miramax and HBO, where she opened the door to both new directors as well as established veterans looking to explore new ideas that wouldn’t fly in the mainstream studio system. Among the films she has been involved with […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2010 Festivals & Events
PHILIPPE GRANDRIEUX HAPPILY BRINGS HIS DARK VISIONS TO LINCOLN CENTER

Of all the people I know — artists, musicians, filmmakers — who make dark, dark things, the French director Philippe Grandrieux is the sunniest. In person, he projects a passionate joy about his filmmaking craft, and the disturbing events contained within his films are not projections of surface-level angst or garden-variety emotional torment but rather philosophical inquiries into our relationship with Nature, our bodies, and our selves. To hear him talk about his work is to realize that he comes from a line that includes De Sade, Blanchot, and Bataille as well as later post-structuralists like Gilles Deleuze. (Grandrieux’s bloody […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2010 Filmmaking
SXSW TRAILER WATCH: “AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE”

Here’s the just-released trailer for Elijah Drenner’s American Grindhouse, which plays SXSW next month.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 23, 2010 Festivals & Events
REDISCOVERING LOST ROCKERS

American Hardcore filmmakers Paul Rachman and Steven Blush have a new project: Lost Rockers, a documentary “about great musicians overlooked by pop culture.” From the project’s Kickstarter page: LOST ROCKERS… offers insight into what it takes to “make it,” and why so many of equal talent to famous stars fall through the cracks. The film tells the life stories of these forgotten artists — of different eras, genres, creeds and orientations — from their doomed paths to fame to their ultimate redemption. You’ll experience amazing music you can’t believe you never heard. LOST ROCKERS has only just begun. We’ve shot […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 23, 2010 Filmmaking
OF VC’S AND THUNDER LIZARDS

The Wall Street Journal-hosted Venture Capital Dispatch blog linked to my article yesterday about the closing of independent film distributor and festival website service business B-Side Entertainment. Scott Austin’s piece focused on comments made in the piece by CEO Chris Hyams and President of Distribution Paola Freccero about the company’s fate at the hands of the VC funding model. The executives said that B-Side was on the road to being profitable but couldn’t deliver large enough returns in the time period desired by financier Valhalla Partners. Austin points to another B-Side investor: original Series A-funder Mike Maples, Jr. and his […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 23, 2010 Filmmaking
Exclusive: B-Side Entertainment Announces Shutdown

B-side Entertainment, the Austin-based tech and distribution company that provides website services to film festivals, is closing. The company, which launched a New York-based distribution arm just 13 months ago, lost its funding from venture capital fund Valhalla Partners in late 2009. “We have spent the last four or five months looking for a [financing] alternative,” B-Side CEO and founder Chris Hyams told Filmmaker. “But we reached the end of our cash before we could secure new investment. We had to shut the company down.” B-Side laid off the majority of its staff last week and throughout the weekend notified […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 22, 2010 Festivals & Events
KATHRYN BIGELOW, THE HURT LOCKER WIN BAFTAS

Congrats to Kathryn Bigelow and the whole team behind The Hurt Locker for winning Best Director and Best Film at this year’s BAFTA Awards.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2010 Filmmaking
THE STRONG VOICE OF ROGER EBERT

The film must-read of the moment is Chris Jones’ beautifully written profile of Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine. Of course the article chronicles Ebert’s recent health problems — cancer operations that have wound up removing much of his lower job and eliminated his ability to eat, drink, and speak. But the piece also succeeds in capturing the strange and inspiring mix of sagacity and serenity that Ebert is projecting in late career through not only his reviews but also his Twitter page and blog. I was talking to a colleague not too long ago about which traditional media types had […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 18, 2010 Filmmaking
JAMIE STUART’S iPHONE WINTER

Filmmaker and frequent Filmmaker contributor Jamie Stuart sent a link to a simply gorgeous suite of 22 photos he shot around Central Park and other locations during New York’s recent snowstorm. Take a moment and head to his site to view the photos, which were all done, astonishingly, on his iPhone camera using the Old Camera app.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 18, 2010 Filmmaking

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