Filmmaking

FREE IS NOT ENOUGH

I’m making my way through Chris Anderson’s Free, which I’d like to finish before posting thoughts on it and the current discussion of free pay models for content creators. (In order to most meaningfully connect with the deep content of the book, I am reading it for free — or, rather, listening to it for free in the downloadable audio book linked to from Anderson’s site.) But Anderson’s colleague at Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, just linked to a great article that’s relevant to filmmakers whether or not you subscribe to all the tenets of Free, so I’m going to link […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 12, 2009 Filmmaking
THE VIEW FROM THE 10TH ROW

Interesting article in The Guardian this week about Tied to a Chair filmmakers Michael Bergmann and Doug Underdahl who obtained a Leica Pradovit D-1200, built a tenth-row rig at New Jersey’s Washington Theater and projected their film off their laptop. From the piece: The picture on the ageing silver screen in front of us is unquestionably of theatrical quality. The independent film-makers Michael Bergmann and Doug Underdahl move around, checking from all angles. It is, as Bergmann has warned, different: not film’s luminous grain nor video’s harsh flatness. This digital image is thrown by a high-end Leica business projector powered […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 11, 2009 Filmmaking
MEETING DMITRY TRAKOVSKY

Over on Filmmaker Videos, Jamie Stuart interviews Dmitry Trakovsky about his film Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, which looks at the late auteur through his collaborators and friends. The film is currently playing at the Lincoln Center as part of their Tarkovsky retrospective. Its final screening is Tuesday, July 14 at 1:15 pm. Learn more about the film here.

By Jason Guerrasio on Jul 10, 2009 Filmmaking
HELLO HURT LOCKER, GOODBYE, FILMMAKER

Kathryn Bigelow’s incredible new film, The Hurt Locker, which is on the current cover of Filmmaker, is just now rolling out to more theaters. And, next week, Filmmaker‘s issue with Bigelow rolls off of newstands. To help confirm your decision to see this film, the distributor has posted the first nine minutes of the movie, which I’ve embedded below. Check it out and if you want to learn more, pick up the current Filmmaker while its still available and read Nick Dawson’s cover story on the director.

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 9, 2009 Filmmaking
MUST SEE IN CHICAGO: RAY PRIDE PHOTO EXHIBITIONS

If you are a regular reader of this site and occasionally venture into areas other than this blog, then you will have seen Filmmaker contributor Ray Pride’s gorgeous photographs in our Festival Ambassador section. In addition to his work at Movie City News and Movie City Indie, Ray has been a contributor to Filmmaker for years, and over that time I’ve watched as his photography has gotten stronger and stronger. There’s stunning work in two new shows that are up in Chicago, and Windy City residents are urged to check them out. The first show is titled you want to […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 9, 2009 Filmmaking
THE DEFILED’S "FIERCELY INDIE" BLOW-BY-BLOW

Filmmaker Julian Grant, who is a tenure-track film professor at Columbia College, Chicago, is making a “fiercely independent” ultra-low-budget, dialogue-less horror film entitled The Defiled, and he’s reporting a very detailed blow-by-blow of its production on his blog. He describes the film as ” a story of love and survival against a horror that is cataclysmic and…entirely possible.” Grant is shooting on the Canon HV20 with a cine-adapter and Nikon 50mm lens. He’s in the middle of week two, so if you’d like to follow from his production, head over there now. You can find footage tests, make-up tests, test […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2009 Filmmaking
ERROL MORRIS DISCUSSES ROBERT McNAMARA IN NEW DOC

The National Film Board of Canada has produced a documentary called Capturing Reality: The Art of the Documentary, and the website is incredible, featuring over 160 interview clips. Here’s their description of the doc: Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary is a film about contemporary documentary cinema and features some rock stars of the genre, including Albert Maysles, Errol Morris, Alanis Obomsawin, Michel Brault, Nick Broomfield, Kim Longinotto and Werner Herzog. Thirty-three filmmakers from 14 countries share their passion for documentary and talk about the artistic and ethical choices they make in their craft. Capturing Reality premiered at the International […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2009 Filmmaking
LOVELY BY SURPRISE’s NEW KIND OF OPENING DAY

Producer Jake Abraham, well known to Filmmaker readers on account of his long tenure at InDigEnt Films, is a producer of Kirt Gunn’s festival charmer Lovely By Surprise. He’s taking the film out in a DIY-sort of way, and I’m going to spoil the closer of the article he’s just written for us over at Web Exclusives by reprinting it here: Our release date is today, July 7th. It feels different than opening days in the past. No premiere party, no box office reports. The effects of our plan will begin to appear over the next few weeks as we […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2009 Filmmaking
A Beacon of Democracy?: Distributing Lovely By Surprise

As I settle back in from a wonderful July 4th get-away, I am reminded of a mantra we used to chant at InDigEnt all the time (we were a spiritual bunch). It was about how the digital revolution in filmmaking truly is a democratizing factor in production and distribution. I believed it then and I believe it now. While that phrase has been thrown around to mean all kinds of things, what it really means to me is that technology is reducing the barriers to entry for the making of films and subsequently for the dissemination of those films to […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jul 6, 2009 Distribution
PINA BAUSCH, R.I.P.

I missed the news that the astonishing German choreographer Pina Bausch died on June 30. From a lovely appreciation by Mark Swed: She became associated with big spectacles that were part-theater, part-dance battles of the sexes and society played out in extravagant environments. She might litter her stage with zillions of carnations or put her company in pools of water. Her highly sexed world-weary women paraded around in high heels, clothed and nude – just like the men. They beat each other up and the men usually ended up worse for the wear. Everything always looked amazing – costumes, sets, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 6, 2009 Filmmaking

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