Filmmaking

FROZEN RIVER BLU-RAY CONTEST

Today Courtney Hunt‘s Oscar nominated debut feature, Frozen River, is released on DVD and Blu-Ray. We here at the magazine have been big fans of the film since seeing it at Sundance last year. So we’re holding a small contest for a FREE Blu-Ray disc of the film. The first person to e-mail us the correct answer to the question below will get the disc. (DISCLAIMER: Contest is only available for those living in the U.S.). The answer can be found in our cover story of the film in the Summer, 2008 issue. UPDATE: Well, that was quick. Congrats to […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Feb 10, 2009 Filmmaking
WELCOME TO THE BLOGOSPHERE, NOAH

The very smart producer Noah Harlan, who has been responsible for many great tips here on the Filmmaker blog, has just launched his own blog, The 401st Blow. For his inaugural post he argues that The Feature Will Never Die. His lede: There is a depression spreading like a virus in the indie film community and I don’t like it. People are watching the rise of new media and see the four horsemen on the horizon. I want to say to filmmakers out there who want to work in long-form narrative: do not despair! You have a future… I’ll look […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 10, 2009 Filmmaking
SAVE THE NY TAX CREDITS!

As I posted below, New York has run out of money to fund its film and televsion tax credit program. In a New York Post article entitled “TV and Film Tax Credit Program, Hollywood on the Hudson, Runs Out of Money,” Governor Patterson’s office is quoted as saying that the budget due to be presented in April does not include further funds for the program. From the Post: When the program was begun in 2004, the state budgeted $425 million to fund its share of tax credits through 2013. But the funds were used up faster than expected, due in […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 9, 2009 Filmmaking
IS PIRACY THE NEW FIRST WEEKEND?

In a post a couple of weeks ago entitled “Taken and the Piracy Effect,” I wrote about the surprise theatrical success of the French action film Taken, which topped distributor forecasts despite the fact that it has been easily available on the filesharing sites for almost a year. Of course, the film’s killer trailer and TV campaign had something to do with it as well, but the fact that the early word from the downloaders was overwhelmingly positive (see the quotes from the various bulletin boards in my original post) I’m sure had something to do with convincing fanboys that […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 9, 2009 Filmmaking
CONTEXT IS KING

Mentalist and all around social theorizing provocateur Derren Brown posted on his blog a link to an interesting study chronicled in The Washington Post. Brown writes: A wonderful experiment conducted in a Washington DC Metro station. Playing some of the greatest music the human race has created, one of the finest violinists in the world anonymously busks: will his art cut through the rush and bustle of the commuters’ morning? Will a crowd form? I love this article and find it very moving. It’s a splendid modern demonstration of the question of context and presentation in art, and what is […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2009 Filmmaking
WELCOMING ST. NICK

Filmmaker David Lowery keeps one of the most literate film blogs out there, Drifting: A Director’s Log, and one topic that has popped up from time to time is his feature film, St. Nick. The film will be premiering at SXSW next month, and now Lowery has posted the first trailer. Check it out. ST. NICK trailer from ST NICK on Vimeo.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2009 Filmmaking
SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING INITIATIVE DEADLINE THIS WEEK

Emerging U.S. producers have until Friday to put together their application for the Sundance Creative Producing Initiative, perhaps the only non film-school program of its kind. It is described on the web page like this: SUNDANCE CREATIVE PRODUCING INITIATIVE The Sundance Creative Producing Initiative is a year-long creative and strategic fellowship program for emerging American producers with their next project. The program was conceived to develop and support the next generation of American independent producers. For over 27 years, the Sundance Institute has offered in-depth year-round programs for feature screenwriters and directors. In an increasingly competitive and complex marketplace, the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2009 Filmmaking
KIM’S VIDEO, DUBBED

Sophia Hollander in the New York Times has written an excellent recounting of the last days of East Village video institution Kim’s Video and its move to Salemi, Italy. I was having dinner the other night with a director from abroad and one of the first things he asked me was what happened to Kim’s. I just emailed him the piece, which details the blows Mr. Kim’s underground video store suffered from Netflix. Over the years, Mr. Kim, now in his late 40s, built a staff that traveled the world scouring for additional titles — the only way to find […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2009 Filmmaking
A PRIMER ON COLOR CORRECTION

At his Prep Shoot Post blog, filmmaker Eric Escobar links to a free primer he’s created on desktop color correction. If you’ve read the new Filmmaker, you’ll remember that director Barry Jenkins and d.p. James Laxton created Medicine for Melancholy‘s distinctive, desaturated but with splashes of color look by timing the film themselves using Apple’s Color on Final Cut. Escobar’s video tutorial was created for Red Giant Software’s Colorista as used in Final Cut Pro, but, as he notes, the basic theories apply to all the primary color correction tools out there for desktop systems.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2009 Filmmaking
FOCUSING ON THE DEMAND FOR ARTHOUSE CINEMA

Related to the post below, Mike Ryan posts over at Truly Free Film that instead of spending so much time thinking about the future of movies on handheld devices we should be more concerned about making sure that the values of classic arthouse cinema are not allowed to wither and die. An excerpt: For me one of the scariest aspects about the future state of indie film is not the problems connected to distribution (though they are formidable and problematic for other reasons) but instead I am most worried about the future DEMAND for the auteur driven films that I […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2009 Filmmaking

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