Filmmaking

BLOGGING FROM THE SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING LAB: THOMAS WOODROW

We continue with our series of posts from the Sundance Labs, this time with producer Thomas Woodrow, who is attending the Sundance Creative Producing Lab. For some reason, when I think of the role of the producer, I am always reminded of the role George Martin is characterized as having played for the Beatles in a documentary I saw years ago. It’s not exactly the same in music as in film, obviously, but in that documentary, Martin was ever-present: encouraging, discouraging, masterminding, playing politician, literally writing orchestration at times (for Sgt. Pepper) and at all times moving the process toward […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 18, 2009 Filmmaking
ROTTERDAM’S BLIND PIG WHO WANTS TO FLY @ROOFTOP FILMS

The International Film Festival Rotterdam and Rooftop Films has teamed up this weekend for two screenings highlighting titles from the fest. Last night at the American Can Factory in Brooklyn was Edwin’s (yes, first name only) Blind Pig Wants to Fly, which took home the FIPRESCI Prize this year. (Pictured above, left to right: Rotterdam Film Festival topper Rutger Wolfson and directors Eugenio Polgovsky and Edwin.) It was great to see a sold-out house on a rainy night (the screening was moved indoors) for this sweetly unusual film. Brandon Harris was there seeing the film for the third time, and […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 18, 2009 Filmmaking
BIG BROTHER IS DELETING YOU

David Pogue on his New York Times blog wrote today about a disturbing situation regarding Amazon, the Kindle and George Orwell: due to some sort of problem with its U.S. publisher, Amazon zapped the previously purchased e-book from the Kindles of its purchasers, apparently crediting their accounts in the process. Writes Pogue: This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2009 Filmmaking
BLOGGING FROM THE SUNDANCE DOCUMENTARY FILM EDIT AND STORY LAB: CAROL DYSINGER

We continue with our series of guest blog posts from the Sundance Labs with Carol Dysinger, who is a mentor at the Sundance Documentary Film Edit and Story Labs. There is a joke told by the Afghans in Kabul. It goes like this: An American came to Afghanistan. An Afghan asked him “Why have you come?” and the Westerner said, “I am writing a book.” The Afghan said, “Oh, you must have been here for a long time to be writing a book.” and the American said, “No, I just got here yesterday.” “A-ha,” says the Afghan. “Then you must […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 16, 2009 Filmmaking
BLOGGING FROM THE SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING LAB: MYNETTE LOUIE

Over the next few days we’ll have blogs from participants of both the Sundance Documentary and Creative Producing Labs. Up first is producer Mynette Louie. Hello! I’ll try my best to sound coherent here… I’m kinda going nuts right now because I’m packing for the Lab (I leave for it in a few days), prepping for a short film shoot in August, prepping for a feature film shoot starting in October, shepherding a feature through the film festival circuit (and trying to figure out distribution for it), doing post-production duties on another feature, and developing three other features, including my […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2009 Filmmaking
FILMMAKER’S “25 NEW FACES”

Our press release announcing our annual “25 New Faces” feature has just gone up at Indiewire, and you can read our profiles of the selections on our site here. As I wrote in the editor’s letter for the upcoming issue, we looked at a lot of work this year — maybe too much work, actually — and could easily have made a list of “125 New Faces.” Of the people we finally chose, every person on the list was championed passionately within our editorial team, and each person also seemed to us to be approaching their roles as filmmakers, dps, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2009 Filmmaking
POWER TO THE PIXEL’S PIXEL PITCH

Our friends at Power to the Pixel have launched a competitive pitching forum focusing on U.K. and international cross-media projects. From the announcement: We are looking for stories that can span film, TV, online, mobile and gaming to be presented to a select group of financiers, commissioners, tech companies, online portals and media companies in front of an audience of PTTP participants. The selected project teams will compete for the BABELGUM PIXEL PITCH PRIZE of £6,000. Teams will benefit from significant international publicity and be introduced to new international business and partnership opportunities as well as one-to-one consultancies. Last year’s […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 14, 2009 Filmmaking
CHARLES DARWIN BIOPIC TO OPEN TORONTO ’09

Announced this morning, the Toronto International Film Festival will open its 34th edition Sept. 10 with Creation, starring Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly playing his wife. Director is Joe Amiel. The festival describes the film as “part ghost story, part psychological thriller, part heart-wrenching love story. Torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place, Darwin finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth.” TIFF also announced the four Gala Presentations and eighteen Special Presentations. The Boys are Back, […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jul 14, 2009 Filmmaking
THE YOUNG PERSON’S GUIDE TO EMAIL SUBMISSION ETIQUETTE

Since I posted yesterday about the ways in which journalists might learn to pitch in the future, I suppose I should finally commit to the blogosphere this post about how they should pitch in the present. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time, and I haven’t because, frankly, I’ve been afraid to. That’s because the Filmmaker magazine editorial mailbox fills up with about 500 posts a week, and I’ve been hesitant to write something that’s going to increase that in any way. Of course, most of those 500 posts are spam, or press releases that can […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 14, 2009 Filmmaking
HOW TO (MAYBE?) MAKE A LIVING AS FILM JOURNALIST

I took note of Anthony Kaufman’s most recent blog post, “How to Survive the Recession?” for a number of reasons. First, Anthony writes our “Industry Beat” column, which is a place every issue where we survey the broader trends affecting this industry. He’s one of the few writers in our independent sphere who equally understands art and business issues, and he knows how to communicate both in concise and clear prose. But Anthony only does four columns a year for us, and if he’s finding the freelance world in general too forbidding at the moment, that’s awfully sad. He writes: […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 12, 2009 Filmmaking

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