Filmmaking

WHAT’S YOUR NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION?

FilmInFocus has asked a number of filmmakers about theirs. I love Azazel Jacobs’, think I’m going to adapt Michael Tully’s as one of my own, and feel that Astra Taylor somehow channeled my own thoughts about the book we are both reading right now. Check out the lists here.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 13, 2009 Filmmaking
SOME THOUGHTS ON THE KEVIN LEE/YOUTUBE SITUATION

Let me weigh in quickly on the imbroglio surrounding the deletion of Kevin Lee’s YouTube account. On the account Lee had posted his series of critical video essays on a number of recent and classic films, and in the course of arguing the aesthetic merits of each picture the videos included clips from the movies themselves. Apparently, YouTube received a complaint from the copyright holder of one of the clips and deleted his entire account. Matt Zoller Seitz has the complete story along with a comments thread that is also a must read, and Karina Longworth originally covered the story […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 13, 2009 Filmmaking
INDIEWIRE: RELAUNCHED AND RE-IMAGINED

I like the nice, clean look of the new Indiewire along with a number of its user-friendly interactive features. It’s just gone live so I’ll spend some time exploring it, but for now, here’s a piece of editor Eugene Hernandez’s introductory letter: As I revealed last week, we have spent over a year developing this new site, but it’s actually taken us twelve years to get here. We’ve not only re-designed indieWIRE, but completely re-imagined it. Understanding that indieWIRE has emerged as a hub for filmmakers, the industry, and movie lovers alike over the past twelve years, we have developed […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2009 Filmmaking
WHAT WILL THE FUTURE HOLD?

At the of Barack Obama’s election-night speech, he had a beautiful bit of oratory in which he remembered an elderly woman and spoke of all the things that she saw in her lifetime. What will we see if we live as long as her, he wondered. That, in essence was the question posed to a distinguished group of artists, writers and thinkers at The Edge. The responses here are of the quality that you want to bookmark the page and read one a day for the next month or so. Formally, the question posed by editor and publisher John Brockman […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 10, 2009 Filmmaking
REVISITING I.O.U.S.A.

Here Roger Ebert reprints his review of the deficit documentary I.O.U.S.A., which CNN airs this weekend. From Ebert’s blog post: I’m reprinting my review of the nonpartisan doc I.O.U.S.A. again because it will be televised on CNN at 1 p.m. CST Saturday, Jan. 10, and 2 p.m. CST Sunday, Jan 11. Co-hosts will be CNN financial experts Ali Velshi and Christine Romans. Their panelists will include Pete Peterson, ormer U.S. Commerce Secretary; Dave Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General; Alice Rivlin, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Bill Bradley, former U.S. Senator. Okay, I’m going to reprint […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009 Filmmaking
SCOTT KIRSNER AT CES

I was hoping to find someone to cover CES this year but struck out. (If you are a Filmmaker reader attending and would like to send some comments from the point-of-view of an independent filmmaker, you can email me at editor.filmmaker AT gmail.com.) However, discovering Scott Kirsner’s CES blog at Variety is, for me, the next best thing to having a correspondent there. I interviewed Scott in the last issue of the magazine, and over at the Variety blog he files commentary in his own patented fusion of tech coverage and industry business analysis. Among the topics: a predicted explosion […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009 Filmmaking
THE WHOPPER AS A UNIT OF CURRENCY

I am empowering Burger King’s pernicious viral marketing campaign, which I linked to below, even further by quoting this blog from Kottke.org, in which Jason Kottke uses the mathematics behind the campaign to come up with a valuation for Facebook that is lower than the valuation Microsoft used when they invested in the company. (Getting people like me to blog about a fast food product seems to have been the whole point of the campaign.) You see, if each Whopper costs $2.40, and there are 150 million users on Facebook, but some of them live overseas and are ineligible… well, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009 Filmmaking
FILMMAKER ON FACEBOOK NETWORKED BLOGS

This blog will be broadcast via this new Facebook app… as soon as four more of you confirm that I am indeed one of the authors. Please click here and visit the page if you are on Facebook.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009 Filmmaking
WATCHING THE WATCHMEN

I’ve blogged before about the legal saga surrounding The Watchmen, which is the film news world equivalent of a slow-motion car crash. If you’re a producer, the idea that your film could be held hostage after its completion due to legal issues is the ultimate nightmare. One of the film’s producers, Lloyd Levin, has written an open letter that is posted over at Drew McWeeny’s new blog, Hitfix. An excerpt: One reason the movie was made was because Warner Brothers spent the time, effort and money to engage with and develop the project. If Watchmen was at Fox the decision […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2009 Filmmaking
OUTSIDE THE (WHOPPER) BOX

Now here is outside-the-box, appealingly anti-social advertising. From Burger King comes the Whopper Sacrifice campaign, described here in Ad Week: It’s a common problem for anyone who joined Facebook some time ago. You look at your friend list and wonder who these people are. Burger King wants to help consumers do something about it. The fast-food chain has released the Whopper Sacrifice application on Facebook. The app rewards people with a coupon for BK’s signature burger when they cull 10 friends. Each time a friend is excommunicated, the application sends a notification to the banished party via Facebook’s news feed […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2009 Filmmaking

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