Filmmaking

NOTES ON A REVOLUTION

The blog post, below, titled “Breaking In,” in which filmmaker Marc Maurino discussed the tensions between jobs, job security and filmmaking, inspired several responses. You can find them in the comments section to the original post, but filmmaker David Munro just wrote with a longer reply so I’m posting it here as its own entry. It’s David Munro (New Faces ’98, Full Grown Men). I read Marc Maurino’s reply to your newsletter entry. It got me thinking, too. Unlike Marc, who is just now contemplating his next move as a talented aspiring director, I drank the full jigger of indie […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2008 Filmmaking
GETTING INTO THE SWING OF TORONTO

What’s with the media and indie film these days? I attend my first party in Toronto, eager to catch up with old film friends and see some new movies, but the toxic murk of today’s business environment keeps seeping in. I got a ride in from the airport with a sales agent friend who, while bemoaning the difficult market for auteur films worldwide, said to me, “You have it worse in America. It’s not that the films do any poorer there, but there’s so much focus internationally on the American release that when they do fail everybody around the world […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2008 Filmmaking
NOODLING AT IFC CENTER

Bradley Beesley‘s sequel to his breakout hit Okie Noodling will be screening this Friday and Saturday at the IFC Center in New York. If you’re not familiar with the film, here’s a sum up from the release: In 2001, filmmaker Bradley Beesley brought the strange subculture of barehanded catfishing to the screen in ‘Okie Noodling’, which won the Audience Choice Award and 1st runner-up for Best Documentary at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Now he returns to his home state of Oklahoma to see how the sport has evolved over the last decade in ‘Okie Noodling II’. Revisiting the colorful, […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Sep 4, 2008 Filmmaking
PAUL SCHRADER AND OX GORING

This piece by Karina Longworth discussing a panel discussion at Telluride on the crisis in independent film is essential reading. Ann Thompson, director Danny Boyle, distributor Michael Barker, critic and professor Annette Insdorf and writer/director Paul Schrader all talk about changing models and whether or not independent film as we know it is dead. There’s a lot of great stuff here, but these words by Schrader are choice, and they echo the comments I far less eloquently tried to advance in the Filmmaker magazine panel discussion that we recorded for the next issue. From the piece: “Technology is leaving behind […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 3, 2008 Filmmaking
A BILLION DOLLAR PRODUCTION FUND

In Variety, Ali jafaar reports on a new production company poised to pump a billion dollars into film production. From the piece: Abu Dhabi has set its sights on joining the big leagues of pic production. The Abu Dhabi Media Co., which oversees the emirate’s film, TV and radio outlets, is launching a production shingle with $1 billion to spend on developing, financing and producing feature films over the next five years. Company dubbed Imagenation Abu Dhabi, which will also oversee Abu Dhabi’s existing $1 billion production fund with Warner Bros., has a mandate to produce eight features a year […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 2, 2008 Filmmaking
SCRIPPETS ARE HERE

At his blog John August announces the arrival of Scrippets, a WordPress plug-in that allows for easy script formatting within blogs. Check it out. (Hat tip: Noah Harlan.)

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 2, 2008 Filmmaking
BREAKING IN

In the last weekly newsletter I wrote the following: Last week Filmmaker gathered a small group of producers, sales reps and a distributor to talk about what some are calling a crisis in the funding and distribution of independent film. Our panel mixed generations, comprising veterans who remember independent film in the ’70s and ’80s as well as relative newcomers who have begun producing in the post-Pulp Fiction/Blair Witch era. I won’t go into all the details of our conversation here because the comments will run as a roundtable discussion in the next issue of Filmmaker. One thing was clear, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 1, 2008 Filmmaking
URMAN LEAVES THINKFILM, JOINS SENATOR

As we enter a lazy Labor Day news cycle, Anne Thompson picks up on her Variety blog the press release that THINKfilm CEO Mark Urman is leaving the troubled distributor and will join Senator Entertainment as the head of its new theatrical distribution company. Here’s the press release: Effective October 1, veteran film industry executive Mark Urman will join Marco Weber’s Senator Entertainment US as president of his newly formed distribution company. The teaming with Urman follows Weber’s recent acquisition of all shares in U.S.-based Senator Entertainment Inc. in order to focus solely on the production of English language films […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 29, 2008 Filmmaking
STREAMING NO END IN SIGHT

During this election season I recommend taking a break from the cable talking heads and reviewing some of the independent media that has been produced over the last couple of years about American foreign policy. One of the best documentaries is Charles Ferguson’s Academy Award-nominated No End in Sight. As Ray Pride report at Movie City Indie, Ferguson is streaming the film free on YouTube. Pride reports: No End in Sight is being made available free to the public to reveal the facts about the Bush Administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq to voters concerned with the issues of national […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 28, 2008 Filmmaking
NET NEUTRALITY

I like Aaron Sorkin, but I don’t know what to make of the fact that he’s so loudly publicizing the fact that he knows so little about the online world he’ll be writing about in his Scott Rudin-commissioned script on Facebook. I’ve listened to interviews with Sorkin before in which he’s talked about capturing the rhythms of intelligent speech and about how one doesn’t have to know all the details of a character’s profession in order to write that character. And yes, often an outsider’s eye can be the best when it comes to entering into a world and finding […]

By Scott Macaulay on Aug 28, 2008 Filmmaking

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