Filmmaking

DIRECTOR TOMMY PALLOTTA ON THE PLEASURES OF LEAVING FACEBOOK

While in Rotterdam for the festival I caught up with director and producer Tommy Pallotta, who recently a) finished a new doc, American Prince, that will premiere at SXSW next month; b) moved to Amsterdam where he is engaged to Femke Wolting of the cross-media production studio Submarine; and c) left Facebook. The first two life events, of course, are far more interesting than the third, but Pallotta’s departure from the world of social networking is what we decided to talk about for the purposes of this short interview for the blog. As a director/producer, Pallotta has always explored the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2009 Filmmaking
REDFORD, PELOSI AND THE STIMULUS BILL

A few posts back I wrote about the Senate’s stripping of $50 million in additional National Endowment for the Arts funding from House-approved stimulus bill. Now, in the House-Senate compromise, that funding has been restored, due in part to a last-minute lobbying push by arts advocates and arts groups nationwide. The New York Times gives detailed info, including word of Robert Redford’s efforts on behalf of the funding. From the piece by Robin Pogrebin: One would be hard pressed to argue that a call from Robert Redford to the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, helped salvage money for the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 16, 2009 Filmmaking
YOUTUBE TRYING OUT PAID DOWNLOADS

Via Scott Kirsner’s CinemaTech blog comes potentially important news for film and video makers interested in distributing their work online: YouTube is enabling paid downloads. From Kirsner: If you want to pull down a high-res, MP4 copy of a video from the site (which will play on an iPod), you can pay to do so. No word on what percentage of the revenue goes to the creator. But the one way to pay for videos is Google Checkout, Google’s own PayPal-like payment system. YouTube is currently only testing this with select partners. Wired News notes that the files aren’t DRM […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 16, 2009 Filmmaking
FACEBOOK TERMS OF SERVICE CHANGE CAUSES UPROAR

Just after I posted a link to Lance Weiler’s article in the current issue in which he discusses data portability and how filmmakers should not aggregate all their social networking content on third-party networks like Facebook, and a day or two before I post my interview with Tommy Pallotta on why he left the popular site comes a series of of postings online about Facebook’s new Terms of Service policy. In a post titled “I’m Done with Facebook,” Edward Champion writes, “I would advise any writers, artists, and photographers to remove their content posthaste, and not give Facebook the right […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 16, 2009 Filmmaking
A MILLION HITS FOR AN ONLINE HALF LIFE SERIES

The Purchase Brothers are a pair of independent filmmakers and commercial directors whose online short, Escape from City 17, premiered this weekend and is the first in a series based on the Half Life computer game. On YouTube the short has already reached almost one million views, and the film’s production values on what they say is a $500 budget are quite impressive. From their website: The Escape From City 17 short film series is an adaptation based on the Half Life computer game saga by Valve Corporation. Originally envisioned as a project to test out numerous post production techniques, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2009 Filmmaking
HEAVY TRAFFIC

Over at his 401st Blow blog, producer Noah Harlan, who has contributed posts to this blog on trends in film viewing and online video, takes his thinking a step further. He runs a bunch of Google Trend comparisons, measuring over the last few years the traffic associated with the terms “independent film,” “online video,” and “streaming video.” After reading the post, I emailed Noah some questions, which he incorporates into an updated version. From the blog: Scott Macaulay makes the very good point about units of comparison: “”Streaming video” and “online video” both refer to delivery mechanisms, whereas independent film […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2009 Filmmaking
GOOGLE BOOK SETTLEMENT NOTIFICATION BEGINS

If you keep up with this blog, you’ll have read a bunch about the Google Book Settlement and its implications for the future of copyright, the information age industry and creators’ rights in the digital realm. (Check out my previous posts.) This week Google issued its official notification to authors in a press release, reprinted below. (Hat tip: Digitization 101.) As Google has already indicated that similar endeavors may be planned using online video, I think filmmakers as well as authors should know something about the search giant’s plans. NEW YORK, Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Court-ordered process of officially […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2009 Filmmaking
REANIMATING KUBRICK — UNFOLDING THE ARYAN PAPERS

Thanks to Jamie Stuart for this link to Unfolding the Aryan Papers, a 17-minute short available online that is a riff on a planned but never made film by the late Stanley Kubrick. As the film is described on the site, “Unfolding the Aryan Papers is as much about a film that never happened as it is a portrait of the chosen lead actress Johanna ter Steege.” It was commissioned by Animate Projects and the BFI with the Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London. From the artists’ statement: It begins with images of Johanna taken in 1993 by […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2009 Filmmaking
THINKING ABOUT (AND LISTENING TO) DATA PORTABILITY

Because our Winter, 2009 issue went up online during the Sundance Film Festival, I think some of what’s in it has been slightly overlooked by the blogosphere. One article I want to point you towards is Lance Weiler’s “Virtual Discovery.” It looks at some of the ways that creators are building audiences by embracing collaborative models of marketing and even production. Weiler also discusses the importance of data portability — the ability for filmmakers to take the aggregated info about their audiences from online platform to online platform. Why is this important? From the piece: The real strength of data […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2009 Filmmaking
GONDRY FANS, SET YOUR TIVO’S

Fans of Michel Gondry should tune in to HBO tonight, February 15, for “Unnatural Love,” the episode of Flight of the Conchords he directed. Calling the show “pure, unadulterated pleasure,” the newsletter Very Short List writes, “The Conchords, of course, are a New Zealand folk band. But the love interest here is Australian, and that allows for endless, over-the-top Aussie jokes (expect plenty of references to the continent’s criminal past). As for Gondry, his distinctive, dreamlike touch turns both of the episode’s musical numbers into surreal showstoppers.”

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2009 Filmmaking

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