Filmmaking

DAWSON ON JESSE JAMES

For those of you who don’t regularly check the main page, which is now updated quite often with new content, including Nick Dawson’s “director interviews,” head over there and check out his latest: a lengthy conversation with Andrew Dominic, director of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 25, 2007 Filmmaking
GAYLOR GOES TO THE SOURCE

Here’s a Google link to a conversation that Scott Kirsner from CinemaTech had during the IFP Filmmaker Confernece with Brett Gaylor, a Montreal-based filmmaker who is exploring new modes of collaboration for documentary filmmaking. I’m also embedding below, but if you go to the Google page you can download the 12-minute piece in a format suitable for playing on your iPod or PSP.

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 22, 2007 Filmmaking
DIGITAL DOWNLOAD TALK… DOWNLOADABLE!

Over at his Docs that Inspire, Joel Heller has posted an MP3 download of Scott Kirsner’s IFP Filmmaker Conference panel on digital downloading for filmmakers. Here’s what he has to say about the conference/podcast: Kirsner is arguably the most engaging panel moderator on the new media scene, both because of his knowledge of emerging distribution platforms and the persistence he brings to asking panelists tough questions and keeping things moving along. Panels such as this one are a vital service to filmmakers, who are faced with an overwhelming array of online distribution possibilities in new media landscape that’s evolving at […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 21, 2007 Filmmaking
PROMISCUITY REIGNS

I’ve posted previously about Jonathan Lethem’s “Promiscuous Materials Project,” in which he allows filmmakers, songwriters and playwrights free adaptation rights to some of his short stories. Now, Lethem has a page on his blog in which he notes which artists have taken him up on his offer. An, in the cases of many of the songwriters, he posts streams of their work. Check it out. Among the film news: Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher is making a short fllm from Lethem’s story “Interview with a Crab.” Related: Lethem also announced that he would give the film rights to his latest […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 21, 2007 Filmmaking
WINTER COMES EARLY

If you are in New York this weekend, consider going to see Larry Fessenden’s Iceland-set, environmental/exisentialist horror movie The Last Winter, which is playing at the IFC Center. Manohla Dargis gave the film an amazing review in the New York Times. She wrote, in part: It’s amazing what you can do with a low budget, an expansive imagination and a smooth-moving camera. (A fine cast helps.) An heir to the Val Lewton school of elegantly restrained horror, wherein an atmosphere of dread counts far more than a bucket of blood and some slippery entrails, the director Larry Fessenden is among […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2007 Filmmaking
FREE FAIR USE DISCUSSION

Tomorrow, Friday, is the final day of the IFP Filmmaker Conference, and it’s both free and open to the general public. From 9:00AM until 10:30AM panelists will discuss issues surrounding fair use in documentary film, the limits of, benefits from, and restrictions around E&O insurance, and specific issues that have arisen in various docs having to do with fair use. It’s at the Puck Building in New York at Houston and Lafayette. Anybody working in documentary film today has to know about these issues. Here’s the schedule: FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21st – FAIR USE IN DOCUMENTARY FILM FAIR USE 101 9:00 […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2007 Filmmaking
BLOGGING THE IFP FILMMAKER CONFERENCE

As we pass the half-way point, I want to thank all of our guest bloggers — Pamela, M. Dot, Alicia, and Brandon — who’ve been covering the IFP Filmmaker Conference. But as GreenCine pointed out today, there are other places to get your vicarious Conference fix. The Film Panel Notetaker has several long and detailed accounts of the various panel discussions. And Scott Kirsner has several long posts as well on his CinemaTech blog. In one, while listening to THINKfilm’s Mark Urman discuss the challenge of publicizing a film in the internet age, Kirsner goes web-surfing to the THINKfilm site […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2007 Filmmaking
Winter Chill

In 2005 indie director Larry Fessenden was troubled by the state of the world—specifically, by our leaders’ callow response to the threat of global warming. So he did what he does best: He made a horror movie. The Last Winter, about a skeleton crew of oil-dredge workers afflicted by madness and other disturbing phenomena in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, revisits some of the tropes in Fessenden’s spooky 2001 feature Wendigo, including a fearsome, shape-shifting deer-spirit. The film was overlooked when it premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, later acquired by IFC First Take (releases September 19), and recently […]

By Damon Smith on Sep 18, 2007 Directing
WELCOME BLOGGERS!

The IFP Filmmaker’s Conference is this week at the Puck Building (I’m moderating a talk with Crackel’s Tony Lisano in about an hour) and you’ll see some new and other familiar faces on the blog this week. Several filmmakers and journalists will be reporting in everthing from the various panels and events to their own experience navigating the Conference with their projects. So, check back often this week…

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 17, 2007 Filmmaking
BORDER CROSSINGS

Over at his Variety blog, “The Circuit,” Mike Jones writes in his Toronto wrap-up about an encounter with one of the Canada/U.S. border crossing officials: The border agent at the Toronto airport held me at the desk, studying my business card. He was trying to think up the title of a film he’d seen long ago. He’d scoured the internet for it and come up empty. As the line grew behind me, he described it as a story of a man abused by his wife. It involved drinking, a child, poverty, and more drinking. He leaned forward, pointing his pen, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2007 Filmmaking

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