Filmmaking

BALLAST LEADS NOMINATIONS AT THIS YEAR’S GOTHAMS

IFP announced today the nominees for this year’s 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards. Lance Hammer‘s self-distributed first feature Ballast received the most nominations with four, including for Best Feature and Breakthrough Director. The awards will be handed out on Tuesday, Dec. 2 at New York City’s Cipriani Wall Street. Full list of nominees are below. Best Feature BallastLance Hammer, director; Lance Hammer, Nina Parikh, producers (Alluvial Film Company) Frozen RiverCourtney Hunt, director; Heather Rae, Chip Hourihan, producers (Sony Pictures Classics) Synecdoche, New YorkCharlie Kaufman, director; Anthony Bregman, Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze, Sidney Kimmel, producers (Sony Pictures Classics) The VisitorTom […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Oct 20, 2008 Filmmaking
THE POST-FESTIVAL WORLD

After I produced my first feature (Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was…), I imagined what my next year would be like. I’d be flying all over the world going to countless festivals with the film. But I quickly realized two things. One, festivals don’t care much about hosting producers, and, two, I wasn’t flush enough to float myself on a year of globetrotting and had to get back to work. In today’s diminished conventional distribution environment, film festivals are increasingly seen by first-time filmmakers not as tony travel spots but rather as cogs in a new machine that might connect them […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 18, 2008 Filmmaking
THE NAME GAME

Digital Strategist/Consultant Alex Johnson, who writes at, among other places, The Workbook Project (and is one of the professionals featured in its Mindshare Program) has a really interesting essay up on the site discussing the value of a name. No, not a well known actor who is attached to your film, but your name, and how that moniker can help (or hurt) you in the Google-ruled world of online brand recognition. Starting off by discussing her problems of being commonly named, she goes on to detail what she’s done about it while also musing on the pro’s and con’s of […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 18, 2008 Filmmaking
WORDS FROM THE FRONTLINES

In this week’s newsletter I mentioned that I’m trying to put together some thoughts on how the looming recession and current credit crunch will affect independent film production. It’s a bigger issue than just that, however, as these economic troubles are hitting at the same time as the industry — both Hollywood and indie — is rethinking the business model that underpins the feature film business. (If you don’t currently get the newsletter, you can subscribe by typing in your email address at right.) I received the following response from Jane Kosek which raises a lot of good points about […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2008 Filmmaking
MIDWESTERN RHAPSODY

One thing coming up in the new Filmmaker is an interview with Todd Sklar, the director of Box Elder and the head of Range Life, a company embarking on a progressively old-school DIY distribution strategy for four films this Fall. The first is Sklar’s own film, and the other three are Registered Sex Offender, In Memory of My Father, and On the Road with Judas. All four are on the road, working the arthouse and college circuit in a film tour featuring not only screenings but events with the various makers. Visit the websites linked here for more info, and, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2008 Filmmaking
MAN ONLINE

One of the past year’s best shorts is now online, courtesy of New York Magazine’s Vulture. I’m not sure I’d describe Myna Joseph’s Man as the tale of “creepy sisters into the woods,” but it does beautifully capture a particular and not often seen on screen sisterly dynamic having to do with burgeoning sexuality, competition and love. Here’s what Brandon Harris wrote about Joseph when we selected her for our “25 New Faces List”: A simple and startling premise, the rivalry that exists between sisters, especially when a strange, cute boy is involved, grows into an arresting account of female […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 17, 2008 Filmmaking
APPLE: "FIREWIRE, YOU’RE FIRED!" (ON THE MACBOOK, THAT IS…)

Despite a blog post below in which we criticized Apple for some subtly unrealistic threats having to do with a government decision on artist royalties, we are Apple fans. Really. Our magazine is made on Macs, I’m typing on one right now, and Jamie Stuart’s work, which we feature on our home page, is edited with Final Cut on a MacBook Pro. So, like the techies, we look forward to Apple product announcements and the unveiling of what we will be upgrading to soon. The aluminum enclosure of Apple’s new MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s, which were announced this week, looks […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 16, 2008 Filmmaking
MORE ABEL, BAD LIEUTENANT

Check out Evan Louison’s perfect capturing of an evening with Abel Ferrara over at Brandon Harris’s redesigned Cinema Echo Chamber. And here’s one other Abel-related link: at Hollywood Elsewhere Jeffrey Wells passes on info about the way in which that Bad Lieutenant remake came to be.

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 15, 2008 Filmmaking
ABEL FERRARA ON HOLLYWOOD, MARY, RELIGIOUS MOVIES AND BAD LIEUTENANT

In Director Interviews, Nick Dawson talks with Abel Ferrara on the release of Mary at the Anthology Film Archives. I’m a big fan of this film — it’s his best in years. (Although I haven’t seen Go-Go Tales and the Chelsea Hotel doc yet.) Ferrara fans can also dip into the Filmmaker Archives with this interview with the director about R Xmas by Jeremiah Kipp. And, not on the Filmmaker site but on the late Zoe Lund’s site, my cover story on Bad Lieutenant back in 1992.

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 15, 2008 Filmmaking
SASHA GREY REPORTED CAST IN SODERBERGH’S GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE

Over the weekend I read on Ain’t It Cool News about James Gunn and Spike TV’s “PG Porn,” a series of short satiric films starring porn stars but which feature no sex. Here’s Gunn from the AICN piece: My brothers Brian and Sean and I came up with PG PORN years ago. We’d talk about all sorts of scenarios where you take the typical porn set-up and things would somehow go wrong. When I was a kid I’d go see X-rated movies in a theater with my friends. I would rarely get turned on — it was all about laughing […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 14, 2008 Filmmaking

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