Filmmaking

IFP MEMBERSHIP GOES INTERACTIVE

There are a few ways to subscribe to Filmmaker. You can click here from now until December 26 and enter the promo code FMWIN08 and take part in our special holiday promotion: four issues for $9, a 50% savings. Or, you can click here and pay $9 and receive four issues digitally plus all of our back issues through 2005. Or, you can become an IFP Interactive member, pay $35, and still get four issues for a year. Why would you decide to get the magazine by joining the IFP’s new Interactive Membership? Well, because in addition to Filmmaker you […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 19, 2008 Filmmaking
HOW WE’LL WATCH IN 2009

That’s really the question. Should we be adapting our distribution and content to new ways in which our audiences will be watching our work, or is all this new media talk just a wild goose chase? CineVegas’s Roger Trinch has some thoughts in a thoughtful blog post that launches into ’09. An excerpt: Short form content is online kingDuh, right? Then why are companies still trying to push for feature film distribution through widgets and the like? Who wants to watch a two hour movie on a 2-inch by 2-inch size player? Go to what’s this year’s success story, Hulu, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 18, 2008 Filmmaking
BEST COMMENT ON AN ILLNESS EVER

I’m back from the Dubai Film Festival (expect my coverage early next week) and am now rushing to get the next issue of the magazine together, so that’s why there hasn’t been as much material up on the blog. But I had to quickly post this quote from David Mament that appeared in Variety regarding Jeremy Piven, who has left the Broadway production of Speed the Plow due to a “high mercury count.” Piven has informed the producers that he hasn’t been feeling well and that the condition is attributable to a high mercury count. The show’s producers weren’t returning […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 18, 2008 Filmmaking
HARD TIMES KEEP COMING

Over at Variety‘s The Circuit, Mike Jones recaps the latest indie casualties, as last week indie companies First Look, Peace Arch and Yari Film Group reported layoffs (and lawsuits).

By Jason Guerrasio on Dec 14, 2008 Filmmaking
TOUR DE FOURS: EPISODE 5

Apologies for the dearth of posting — I’m in Dubai at the festival, about which I’ll be writing later. For the moment, though, one hot-off-the-servers link for those of you following Todd Sklar and Range Life’s quartet of traveling indie films: the latest in their series of video tour diaries. View it below.

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 14, 2008 Filmmaking
SODERBERGH @ ZIEGFIELD TONIGHT

IFC begins their Roadshow edition of Steven Soderbergh‘s Che tonight in NYC and L.A. Tonight at New York’s Ziegfield Theater Soderbergh will be in attendance to do a Q&A. A special program will also be given out. If you haven’t read our piece on Che‘s Red camera workflow, you may want to check it out if you’re going tonight. You’ll find a new appreciation for the gorgeous images you’ll see on screen. I also chatted with Soderbergh in the Fall issue (which you can read right now by subscribing to our digital issue).

By Jason Guerrasio on Dec 12, 2008 Filmmaking
INDIE FILM IS STILL DYING

Another piece on the demise of our favorite art form, this time titled “The Death of Indie Film as a Business Model” and found at Mike Curtis’s HD for Indies blog. It’s all there — the Gill speech, overcrowded theaters, uninspiring films, the high cost of marketing, piracy, the high cost of film school, the Darwinian acquisitions environment. Curtis’s piece is already generating a nice comments thread with the first poster, sean90291, offering some reasons why he’d rather pay $5 to see Ballast at home than see it at a theater where the screen is “the size of my plasma […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 11, 2008 Filmmaking
THE DAILY GRIND

Daily Routines is an inspiring little blog that reports on the daily routines of various artists, writers, thinkers and public figures. The site culls its short entries from biographies, interviews and printed sources. Here’s the daily routine of writer Haruki Murakami: When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for 10km or swim for 1500m (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 pm. I keep to this routine every day […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2008 Filmmaking
WHAT ONLINE VIDEO SERVICE LOOKS THE BEST?

Okay, you’ve finally gotten around to accepting that something from your film — a trailer, some clips, whatever — should be online. But you’re the kind of person who cringes when the bulb is a little dim in the theater, or when the masking is askew, so you’d like it look good. And, yes, you think a lot of online video looks like crap. This link (hat-tipped to Noah Harlan) is for you. Over at Techvideoblog, Charbax compares the measurements, frame rates and audio qualities of all the sites offering HD video right now, including YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook.

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 8, 2008 Filmmaking
CONTENT, FORM AND CHANGE

Virginia Heffernan’s column in the Sunday Times Magazine this week, titled “Content and its Discontents,” is a must-read, concise summation of the issues facing content creators today. (Yes, that means you, filmmakers.) What I like about the piece is that it deals with not only content but form, and, particularly, how it acknowledges the relationship between the form a piece of content is embodied within and the method by which it is delivered and, particularly, advertised. She discusses how, for example, a magazine article on volunteerism is shaped by not only the perceived reader base of its audience but also […]

By Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2008 Filmmaking

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