Filmmaking

DAVID LOWERY POSTS HIS ST. NICK SCREENPLAY

One of the best received narrative films at SXSW this past week was David Lowery’s St. Nick, his subtle tale of two children making their way through their world mysteriously on their own. Alicia Van Couvering interviewed Lowery for Filmmaker here, and David Hudson rounds up reaction from the blogosphere here, but over at his own blog, Drifting, the writer/director posts the screenplay as a PDF download. Writes Lowery: A few weeks ago, I read over the film’s final shooting script for the first time since production, and was surprised to find it even more exiguous than I remembered. It […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 22, 2009 Filmmaking
SPIKE JONZE’S SKATEBOARD APOCALYPSE

Director Spike Jonze has returned to music videos with a clip for UNKLE entitled “Heaven.” It’s a gorgeously shot slo-mo return to Jonze’s skateboarding days that crescendos with… well, I won’t spoil it any more than the below statement from UNKLE’s MySpace page (and the screen grab) already does. “Heaven” was used in the acclaimed skate film Fully Flared directed by Spike Jonze and Ty Evans. The collaboration inspired the directors to take footage and re-edit a sequence of shots that shows the Lakai skateboarding team demonstrating their considerable skills as they navigate through and around various exploding obstacles. With […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 20, 2009 Filmmaking
"25 NEW FACES" PICKS THE NEISTAT BROTHERS SELL SERIES TO HBO

Casey and Van Neistat, who Filmmaker picked as part of our 2006 “25 New Faces” selections of up-and-coming talent, have had their independently produced autobiographical series bought by HBO. According to Variety, which reported the story, the series is exec produced by Tom Scott, founder of the Nantucket Nectars juice company as well as the Plum TV network. In the Filmmaker piece, Matt Ross detailed the brothers’ early career, the full text of which can be found at the link: The Neistats began making films in 2000 with the purchase of two iMac DVs, and their early projects involved reworking […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2009 Filmmaking
SXSW FIRST PERSON: THE EYES OF ME DIRECTOR KEITH MAITLAND

A couple of weeks before the festival, Filmmaker reached out to directors with films in the festival to offer them space to recount the making and mission of their movies. Below is a response we received from Keith Maitland, whose documentary, The Eyes of Me, premieres at the festival today. How do they see the movie, if they can’t see at all? The Eyes of Me follows four blind teens over the course of one dynamic year at the Texas School for the Blind in Austin, TX. I didn’t know much about blind people before I decided to dive into […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2009 Filmmaking
@SXSW: FREE IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR…

Long Tail author and Wired editor Chris Anderson’s new book, Free, isn’t out until June, but SXSW attendees got a taste at Anderson’s closing keynote at this year’s interactive conference. By now, many are familiar with the gist of Anderson’s argument, which is that the internet drives the marginal cost of digital goods to zero, which means that the price of these goods also is driven down to zero. “Free is the animal force of digital economics,” Anderson said. Furthermore, he said, “If you have not made your product free, piracy will do it for you.” However, that doesn’t mean […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2009 Filmmaking
@SXSW: RICK LINKLATER AND TODD HAYNES IN CONVERSATION

Two filmmakers born out of the early ‘80s independent film movement, Todd Haynes and Rick Linklater, shared a casual, free-flowing conversation that ranged from New Queer Cinema to Tarkovsky to strategies for staying creatively alive at SXSW on Tuesday. There was no stated theme, so Linklater briefly discussed the genesis of his Me and Orson Welles, Haynes talked a bit about I’m Not There, but mostly they just shared common experiences of being directors having had early success in what now seems like the boom era of independent moviemaking. Of the New Queer Cinema, Haynes said, “Because I lived in […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2009 Filmmaking
MADE IN CHINA & 45365 TOP SXSW AWARD WINNERS

The winners of the SXSW jury and audience awards were just announced and Judi Krant‘s Made In China (pictured right) was awarded Best Narrative Feature while Bill Ross‘s 45365 took home Best Documentary. Another standout is Scott Teems‘s That Evening Sun which won a Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast and the Narrative Audience Award. The complete list of winners are below. Feature Jury Awards DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Winner – 45365Director: Bill RossAn inquiring look at everyday life in Middle America, the film explores the congruities of daily life in an American town Sidney, Ohio. Honorable Mention – The Way […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Mar 17, 2009 Filmmaking
@SXSW: I PROMISE WE WON’T TELL…

At Scott Kirsner’s SXSW panel on digital downloads and vanishing physical media, he urged his panel members, who included Matt Dentler of Cinetic, Steve Savage of New Video, Rick Allen of Snag Films, and directors Gary Hustwit and Morgan Spurlock to spill the deep dish about digital downloads. Just what are the deal terms at the various outlets and what are the size of the checks filmmakers are receiving? “C’mon,” he said, “there are no journalists here. Nobody’s going to tell.” Not everybody took the bait, but Hustwit and Spurlock were both quite candid. Hustwit said that the digital sales, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 16, 2009 Filmmaking
@SXSW: BEST WORST MOVIE

The most unlikely act of cultural excavation and redemption, Michael Paul Stephenson’s Best Worst Movie is a hilarious and poignant celebration of not only the communal experience of making and watching movies but the sheer randomness of life itself. The doc is Stephenson’s attempt to find out why a seemingly execrable B-movie he made as a child actor, Troll 2, has garnered a cult following of viewers who not only get off on its badness but also find an odd kind of joy in its screwy storytelling. While Stephenson is present in the film, he smartly chooses as the doc’s […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 16, 2009 Filmmaking
@SXSW: FOR THE LOVE OF FAIR USE

Sub-theme for me at SXSW this year: Fair Use. A day after posting my article on Tommy Pallotta about his American Prince, which employs a Fair Use strategy to include film clips illustrating doc subject Steven Prince’s life in the movies and relationship with Martin Scorsese, I run into Gerard Peary, who is here in Austin with his doc For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. His film includes interviews with critics like Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, Harry Knowles, Karina Longworth and Elvis Mitchell, and it also includes clips from the films they talk […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2009 Filmmaking

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