Filmmaking

MATT ZOLLER SEITZ ON ZACHARY OBERZAN’S ONE-MAN RAMBO RETHINK

I’ve been hearing about Zachary Oberzan’s no-budget unauthorized adaptation of David Morrell’s First Blood (the basis for the Rambo movie series) from one of our writers, Lauren Wissot, for some time. Staged entirely in Oberzan’s apartment and featuring the director in every part, the film was called by Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice as “the best movie of 2010.” And, over at Hammer to Nail, Brandon Harris has praised the film too. He writes: David Cronenberg once said that as long as you have good sound, movie audiences can be compelled to watch anything. Zachary Oberzan’s Flooding With Love […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2010 Filmmaking
MOVIE ART AND ARCHITECTURE: ALEX ROMAN’S THE THIRD & THE SEVENTH

The online video of the moment is Alex Roman’s The Third & the Seventh — so much so that Roman’s own site, which I was going to link to, is down due to bandwidth excess. (It redirects to the Vimeo video below, but rather than watching here, go to Vimeo and resize to HD and see it full-screen.) The video is described by Roman as “a FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.” In other words, what you are […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2010 Filmmaking
THE RED TAIL LOOKS AT OUTSOURCING

Mike Johnston, who wrote the article here on the site about the indie film Ink and piracy, has started an online video series about indie film. His first episode consists of a phone interview with the makers of The Red Tail, a documentary about job loss and outsourcing. From the film’s website: While 4,400 aircraft mechanics wage a seemingly endless strike to keep their jobs from being outsourced – Mechanic Roy Koch and his daughter Melissa (Director of The Red Tail in collaboration with Dawn Mikkelson) follow the trail of outsourcing to China. The Koch’s journey is a search for […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2010 Filmmaking
CANON’S DSLR LA RONDE

Speaking of the new DSLR cameras, Canon and Vimeo have launched a contest in which filmmakers are being inspired to create episodes of an eight-part narrative based on the old La Ronde structure: each episode starts by following the image that ends the previous episode. Details from PDN Gear Gude: Canon gave Laforet a still image of a cab and then asked him to interpret it into a 2-3 minute short film. Laforet’s film, which was shot with a Canon EOS 7D digital SLR, ends on a still image. Contestants are then asked to take that image and interpret it […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2010 Filmmaking
SXSW TRAILER WATCH: AARON KATZ’S COLD WEATHER

Out of all the films associated with The Film Movement Formerly Known as Mumblecore, Aaron Katz’s Quiet City was perhaps the most visually assured. There was a real poetry and sensitivity to light and locations in that film, and his follow-up, Cold Weather, looks to take his filmmaking to a new level. The film will premiere at SXSW ’10, and the trailer is below.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2010 Filmmaking
ROBINSON DEVOR MAKING DOC ON FORD ATTEMPTED ASSASSIN

In a press release sent out this week, director Robinson Devor (Police Beat, Zoo, which scored on Filmmaker’s Top 25 of the Decade list) is currently underway in San Francisco on a documentary on Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in September 1975 outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Written by Devor, Charles Mudede and shot by d.p. Sean Kirby, Moore (pictured), now 80 and currently on parole after thirty years in prison, returns to San Francisco for the first time since the assassination attempt to be interviewed. The film also chronicles the lead […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 8, 2010 Filmmaking
STRATEGIZING YOUR PARK CITY RELEASE

Jon Reiss has an excellent two-parter up at Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film blog. Titled “25 Points to Consider in Approaching Your Festival Premiere,” it’s broken down in a list of things you should consider in general before arriving at, really, any festival with your film, and then those other things you should think about if you are planning to make the festival premiere some part of your distribution launch. The latter piece in particular hit home as I’ve spoken to a number of filmmakers recently who have asked for DIY distribution advice. They want to know who to partner […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2010 Filmmaking
THE VIRTUAL NEW YORK… OR L.A…. OR TOKYO… OR MOSCOW

I found this link on Twitter (sorry, can’t find the original tweet to attribute to) and it read something like, “Why New York’s new location fees are a bad idea.” Of course, green screen backdrops are nothing new, and all of us probably see a lot more of them in films than we realize. But this demo reel from Stargate Studios points to how ubiquitous they may become. Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2010 Filmmaking
REPORTS FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE DSLR DEBATE

At Filmmaker, we’ve covered the new generation of DSLR cameras, like the Canon 5D and 7D and Nikon D90, quite a bit, and while there’s a huge amount of interest from the indie community about these cameras, there’s also criticism of them as substitutes for professional HD cameras. I came across this morning two blog posts that articulate both sides of the issue. On Philip Johnston’s HD Warrior blog, he’s penned a post titled, “Filming with an HD DSLR: The Things They Don’t Tell You.” Here is his intro: RED Digital Cinema are in the process of producing the worlds […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2010 Filmmaking
SUNDANCE FROM A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Over at Huffington Post, Stewart Nusbaumer previews the upcoming Sundance Film Festival from the point of view of its New York visitors. Thelma Adams, Meira Blaustein, Karina Longworth, Mike Maggiore and I all pick some upcoming pre-favorites from the Sundance selection. Here’s me on Josh and Benny Safdie’s Daddy Long Legs, which, it was announced today at indieWIRE, will be available on VOD right after the festival via Rainbow Media’s Sundance Selects (run by IFC). “One New York film I’m especially keen on is Josh and Benny Safdie’s Daddy Long Legs, which stars Frownland director Ronald Bronstein as a hopeless, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 7, 2010 Filmmaking

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