Filmmaking

THE YEAR IN SELF-DISTRIBUTION

Over at his Wild Diner Films blog, Sujewa Ekanayake is asking what should be more than a rhetorical question: “So, self-distribution in 2006: how did it go?” He’s requesting that DIY distributing filmmakers share some of their experiences and to start it off, he’s posted the numbers on his own Date Number One.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2007 Filmmaking
UN FILM DE MICHAEL BAY

I’m in Paris for a few days, and there are posters up everywhere for Jonathan Liebesman’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning., but the director’s name can’t be seen on the poster. There is, however, an outside-the-billing-block “Un production de” credit for producer Michael Bay, whose powerful film brand is now validated by this most auteur-centric of film cultures. As recognition, here (via Defamer) is “Bay’s Touch,” a totally nuts tribute to Bay (and be sure to click on the link for the lyrics).

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2007 Filmmaking
UNDER THE INFLUENCE

For those who thought the Internet’s grasp on the creative side of filmmaking ended with the nosedive Snakes on a Plane took, think again. Variety reported yesterday about MySpace Movie MashUp, a competition to choose the director of a movie the site has teamed up to finance with U.K. based Film 4 and Vertigo Films. According to the Variety story, the film is set to begin shooting in October and has a $1.96 million budget. Vertigo will release the film theatrically while MySpace handles the online release and Film 4 will show it on their video-on-demand service. Beginning Wednesday, any […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Feb 6, 2007 Filmmaking
HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE

Two issues ago Chris Campion profiled for Filmmaker the Dutch director Cyrus Frisch, who was in post on his latest feature at the time. Now, that film, Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Me it Would Become this Bad in Afghanistan?, has premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival, and Campion has written another piece on Frisch, this time in The Observer. The film, shot entirely with a mobile phone, is a first-person POV movie about a Dutch soldier returning from Afghanistan who finds his own daily life inflected with the violence he witnessed there. From Campion’s piece: A huge plume of black […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2007 Filmmaking
GUATEMALAN IN THE NORTHWEST

One of the coolest and most original indies of the last year gets its theatrical debut this Friday in Seattle at the Northwest Film Forum. Todd Rohal’s The Guatemalan Handshake runs for a week in Seattle before moving on to Portland where it opens at the Hollywood Theater on February 17. Rohal, who will attend every screening along with producer Megan Griffiths, has organized a series of special events to go along with the screenings. There will be live performances by composer David Wingo (whose new album, recorded under the name Ola Podrida, is released on Plug Research) and Kimya […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2007 Filmmaking
FASCINATING FASCINATION

Steve Loff and Prichard Smith, the filmmakers behind Mr. Fascination, a doc in post-production, have launched a MySpace page full of clips and info about their film, which tells the story of a man obsessed with a vintage boardwalk game. Here’s what they say about it: Mr. Fascination, a feature-length doc currently in post-production, tells the story of Randy Senna, a man obsessed with a dying boardwalk game called Fascination. The film follows him over the course of his 2006 season at Flipper’s Fascination in Wildwood, NJ, as he looks for new ways to make the game more appealing to […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2007 Filmmaking
“AN IMPRESSIVE DEPTH OF FIELD”

Ann Hornaday has a long overdue mainstream media piece on the aesthetic virtues of short-form web video in The Washington Post. It’s a must read as she quite thoughtfully provides some words of wisdom — “Your limitions are your strength,” “You’ve made us laugh, you’ve made us link, now make us think” are two examples — for aspiring web filmmakers. And, among her examples, Jamie Stuart’s White Plastic Flower, his impressionistic reportage from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Here’s what she had to say about his podcast: But a foreshortened, small-box format doesn’t have to limit cinematographic ambition. In White […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2007 Filmmaking
ONCE BOUGHT BY FOX SEARCHLIGHT

Ann Thompson is reporting that Fox Searchlight has bought Sundance audience fave Once. The no-budget Irish musical (it was made for a reported $100,000) features members of the band The Frames, which director John Carney played bass in in the early ’90s. From a Gregg Goldstein interview with Carney contained within Thompson’s piece: Carney, meanwhile, had music junkies in mind when he made his film Once. “I wanted to create a visual album, something you could watch over and over again,” he said. In the process, the filmmaker created one of the most unique musicals in recent memory, telling the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2007 Filmmaking
THE ART OF FILM CRITICISM

One critic who you wont’ see linked on Rotten Tomatoes is Rick Trembles… and, at the least, that’s because his film reviews in the form of graphic art can’t be cut-and-web-pasted. Trembles is a filmmaker, writer and musician — his band, The American Devices, is called “Montreal’s longest-running post-punk band.” He maintains an oddball website that promotes his musical appearances, notes screenings of his short, Goopy Spasms (an “animated cartoon film ode to butt-play”), and runs bits of cultural news, like this memorial to Don Dohler, creator of the fanzine mascot Projunior. His site is also full of his funny, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2007 Filmmaking
FRAME BY FRAME

Previously I linked to David Bordwell’s analysis of Scorsese’s The Departed, in which he traced the average shot length in the director’s films over the years. Now, Bordwell has posted even more fascinating piece on editing and shot length. In a post entitled “My Name is David and I’m a Frame Counter,” Bordwell discusses mathematical relationships within edited sequences: Directors have been counting frames for a long time. Experimental filmmakers like Brakhage did. Ozu had a special stopwatch built to register feet and frames during filming. Hitchcock cared about frame counting too. In Film Art’s chapter on editing (pp. 224-225 […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2007 Filmmaking

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cfmrk_cic		Used by Cloudflare to route user traffic for this Site.
sparrow_id		Installed by Cloudflare. Used to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not store any personal identifiable information.

Cookie	Duration	Description
OAGEO		Installed by the Revive Ad Server. Used to cache geolocation (session, deleted when closing the browser)
OAID		Installed by the Revive Ad Server to distinguish users.