Filmmaking

FINAL CALL FOR IFP ROUGH CUT LAB

Last year I ran a new program from the IFP called the Rough Cut Lab. Over a three-day seminar held during the IFP Market, I lectured along with a group of industry consultants on the process of finishing a feature film and bringing it to market or a festival. The lab covered everything from locking picture with a solid cut of a film, negotiating affordable music rights, festival strategy, creating publicity and marketing materials, selling a movie, and delivering a film to a distributor. Folks like music supervisor Tracy McKnight, composer George S. Clinton, BMI’s Doreeen Ringer-Ross, editor Alan Oxman, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 31, 2006 Filmmaking
THE GRAIN OVER MIAMI

I just got back from Miami Vice, and as a huge fan of Michael Mann’s work (including the show on which the movie was based), I was pretty disappointed. The first thirty minutes is fairly strong as Mann throws you smack into the middle of an undercover operation and shoots the various night-time clashes and assignations with a purposefully grainy and quite bold visual style — rooftop meetings against purple night skies, outrageous wheel mounts hovering inches above the Miami causeways, and the grain signifying a dirty reality miles removed from the TV show’s pastel-hued romantic nihilism. And indeed, while […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 30, 2006 Filmmaking
THE BEST LAST MOVIE MINUTES

The folks over at Filmcritic.com have compiled a highly debatable but still fun list: The Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time. Of course, it’s a calvacade of spoilers, but if you’re reasonably film literate you’ll have seen most of these and can see if your take on movie clilmaxes syncs up with the site’s editors. Here’s one I very much agree with (although Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant might have made my list too): King of New York (1990) – After facing the last (and oldest) cop of the four that stalked him, crime lord Christopher Walken sits in a cab, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 29, 2006 Filmmaking
MIAMI VICE QUOTE OF THE DAY

I’ll probably see it tomorrow, but to tide me over, here’s Ray Pride’s unexpected summing up of the film: …The HD process is exploited mostly for a painterly scumble of vivid digital grain in the hardly illuminated night, but in simple summary, Miami Vice is Mann’s foreseeable triangulation of Friedrich Nietzsche, linen-edge designers like Ozwald Boateng and distinguished painters of geometric abstraction, like the great Richard Diebenkorn. Also, Green Cine asked Pride one of their summertime questions: “If you hadn’t become a film critic, what would you have done instead?” Here’s an excerpt from his response: “One night, young, I […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 29, 2006 Filmmaking
"TOTALLY UNCOOL!"

Here’s a look at the work of one of three sets of brothers who appear in our upcoming Filmmaker “25 New Faces” feature. Matt Ross wrote about the Neistat Brothers, who are currently in the (Fox) News for punking the network and causing the on-air reporter to flip out. Guys, next time, work on the blood effects and make the reaction a bit more convincing.

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 29, 2006 Filmmaking
SHORT STORY

I’m really excited about Brian De Palma’s upcoming adaptation of James Ellroy’s classic noir novel The Black Dahlia. I remember discovering Ellroy for the first time with this book, and the read was like a dark fever dream. If De Palma is truly on form, he stands a chance of getting some of Ellroy’s obsessional memory piece on screen with its perversities intact. It’s hard to tell from the trailer, but I have my hopes up.

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 27, 2006 Filmmaking
THE CHECK IS NOT IN THE MAIL

Sharon Waxman in The New York Times has a piece up on another conflict arising about the film Crash — its lack of payments so far to its profit participants. As anyone who works in the film business knows, this is almost par for the course, but in the Crash case, the system’s inequities are highlighted by the film’s extraordinary success. In addition to winning the Academy Award, the $7.5 million film has “taken in” $180 million around the world. The movie’s co-writer and director, Paul Haggis, has so far made less than $300,000 on the film, a pittance by […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 26, 2006 Filmmaking
COMMERCIAL CENSORSHIP AND TRAILER FATIGUE

Now that Caveh Zahedi’s I am a Sex Addict is out of New York, I need to keep reminding myself to continue to go to Zahedi’s blog, which he is keeping up with great posts on any number of topics. Here he is at the Wellington Film festival recounting his thoughts following a meeting with the great Iranian director Jafar Panahi: We are exactly the same age. His English isn’t very good, and my Persian is even worse, so we communicated by means of a translator (note to self: learn Persian). But it was fascinating to hear him talk about […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 26, 2006 Filmmaking
"A SERIES OF TUBES"

Over at Talking Points Memo Cafe, Art Brodsky has a broad-strokes summary of the situation facing the net neutrality bill currently pending in the Senate. Net neutrality is a complicated issue that I’ve been erratic in blogging about, but Brodsky’s piece does bring the issue back down to its core roots. Here’s Brodksy on the political situation: That leads us to the first number today, 60. That’s how many votes Stevens needs to round up before he can bring his bill to the floor. Senate rules require 60 votes to cut off debate on legislation. Otherwise, practically speaking, the bill […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 26, 2006 Filmmaking
COUNTRY LIFE

Over at his blog, Mark K-Punk riffs on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books, their filmed versions, and glam — specifically, Roxy Music: Significantly, Highsmith wrote the first Ripley novel in 1955 and only returned to the character in 1970. Tom Ripley was not a character that could fit into the rock and roll era, with its emphasis on teen desire, social disruption and Dionysiac excess. But Ripley’s‘hedonic conservatism’, his snobbery and his facility with masks and disguise, mean that he would be perfectly at home in the Marienbad-like country estate of Glam. If Sixties rock was characterized, on the one hand, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2006 Filmmaking

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