Filmmaking

HUNGRY MEN

I wrote about a couple of this year’s Sundance docs earlier on the blog: Josh Tickell’s Audience Award-winning Fields of Fuel, and Patrick Creadon’s IOUSA. I was positive about the first, enjoying Tickell’s breathless narration and ability to cram a huge amount of info on biodiesel, the alternative fuel source, into his feature. And I was less positive about IOUSA, finding its arguments limited by its focus on one particular contingent of deficit hawks. Another thing: Fields of Fuel is quite direct about what its advocating, coming up with an explicit multi-point plan to harness the power of biodiesel to […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 14, 2008 Filmmaking
OBSESSION PAYS

If you’re in America, there’s a big deadline this week — income tax filing on April 15. But there’s another deadline across the border that filmmakers all over should consider as well. You have until April 18 to submit a film to the Mobile Stories “Obsession” contest. Here’s information from the press release: Obsession can lead to a lot of things….even winning $1,000. The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and iThentic are pleased to announce the launch of Mobile Stories: Obsessions – six three-minute films in which award-winning filmmakers give their “take” on obsession. Made for online, mobile, and […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2008 Filmmaking
THREE SHOTS

Over at Stream, Jamie Stuart has a nice piece up in which he looks at the three most important Hollywood movies of the year — No Country for Old Men, Zodiac and There Will Be Blood — and discusses the very different ways they went about creating their images. An excerpt: The fact that all three of these pictures used technologies in different a manner is ultimately irrelevant to the fact that they are all stories told with pictures, regardless of the chosen workflow. While they may be aesthetically different, each approach is completely legitimate. One similarity between them is […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 11, 2008 Filmmaking
IT’S HARD OUT HERE FOR A PIMP

In Variety, Anne Thompson reports on “post-studio stress disorder” in a remarkably frank piece about the tough job of producing, especially for those studio castaways who are now trying to downside their operations to fit the current economic climate. Here are three graphs: Arguably hardest hit are producers who grew up on big-studio largess and now find the gravy train has moved on without them. Producers and directors once accustomed to pitching a project at a studio and getting easy development money are stymied. Now they need to build muscles and an arsenal of skills they never exercised at the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
COME TO PITCHFORK

Our friends (well, we don’t know them, but we like to think of them as friends) at Pitchfork, the best music website, have launched their online music channel, Pitchfork.tv. Today, they have a choice offering; the brilliant Chris Cunningham video for Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy.” And here’s what the site launched with on Monday: Radiohead performing “Bangers and Mash” in producer Nigel Godrich’s home studio.

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
SIX DAY WEEK

Eugene Hernandez at Indiewire has the scoop on some rebranding at the IFP. The IFP Market has been rechristened Independent Film Week. The works-in-progress section will now be called the Project Forum. And, the event, which takes place September 14 – 19, will move to F.I.T. in Chelsea. No word on whether Tim Gunn will be moderating any of the filmmaker workshops. IFP Executive Director Michelle Byrd is quoted in Eugene’s piece: “In the film industry, the word ‘Market’ suggests business transactions, but IFP’s commitment to filmmakers and their projects extends long beyond the six days of Independent Film Week,” […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
THREE TIMES IS THE CHARM

Dade Hayes in Variety reports on the big news coming out of the NYC Governor’s Office: the state is tripling it’s 10% tax credit for below-the-line production costs, taking it to 30%. The State Legislature approved the bill, and now it awaits Governor Patterson’s signature. Add in the New York City rebate and you wind up with 35% against below-the-line costs associated with shooting in New York. The increased rebate is designed to make New York more competitive with Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of which have large rebate programs. Just as significant is a change made to the structure of […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
IFP ROUGH CUT LAB DEADLINE TOMORROW!

Just a quick reminder if you were planning to submit your project to the IFP Rough Cut Lab, which I’ll be mentoring this year with Gretchen McGowan. The deadline is tomorrow, Friday, April 11. You can read more about the program here, along with info on submitting your project. If selected, you’ll join some very good company. Past Rough Cut Lab films include two big films on this year’s fest circuit, Jennifer Phang’s Gen Art Grand Prize winning Half Life and Tom Quinn’s Slamdance Grand Prize-winning The New Year’s Parade.

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
SHANE CARRUTH, PHONE HOME

Over at the Onion A.V. Club, Scott Tobias inducts a worthy feature into what he calls “The New Cult Canon”: Primer, Shane Carruth’s no-budget, intellectually forceful and narratively complex Sundance Grand Prize-winning sci-fi movie. Here’s Tobias: The genius of Primer is that form matches content: Carruth is telling a story about a couple of young inventors working out of a garage, so it follows that he’d take a similarly analog approach to filmmaking. An autodidact with an engineering background, Carruth shot the film in his native Dallas, with his parents’ house serving as a primary location. From the very first […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
CATCH-UP BLOGGING

We just put the new Spring issue of Filmmaker to bed, so that’s why there hasn’t been much blogging here. Really, I was going to try to burn the midnight oil and throw some postings up, but then I read the now infamous New York Times “Death by Blogging” article and thought better of it. So, here are a few things I would have posted about in greater detail if I had the time. First, as you know from reading this blog, we try to keep up with and promote the work of our annual “25 New Faces” filmmakers. I […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2008 Filmmaking

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