Filmmaking

WE ARE THE ROBOTS

In another lifetime when I used to produce performance and theater at New York’s The Kitchen I presented the Bay Area-based Survival Research Laboratories in a very noisy and very rainy show in the parking lot of Shea Stadium. Via BoingBoing, the group is still at it and will perform their latest spectacular on August 11 in San Jose, California as part of the 13th Annual Symposium for Electronic Arts. Bre Pettis at Makezine has posted a video blog recounting a visit he took to the group’s S.F. headquarters. (The image at right was shot by A*A*R*O*N at an SRL […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 1, 2006 Filmmaking
MAKING MACHINIMA

Over at the online gaming website Bioware, Hugh Hancock, the Artistic Director of the Strange Company, provides a great “how-to” on the making of his Machinima game BloodSpell. For those interested in making a film using a video game engine, Hancock walks you through concept, script, building sets and characters, creating animatics and more. BloodSpell itself has a site here, and below is a quote from the piece: Around about August 2003, a mad Frenchman named Francoise said that Strange Company needed to “get the punk back.” The day after that the folder on my hard drive called “Gettin The […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jul 1, 2006 Filmmaking
TEENAGE WASTELAND

Filmmaker Michael Kang has taken up a novel and interesting approach to promoting his new film, The Motel. He’s started a blog featuring personal stories sharing the theme of his movie: Puberty Sucks. (Well, that’s not what I’d guess the theme of the movie is, because it’s really a quite winning coming-of-age tale, but then again, stories about people’s rotten childhoods are always entertaining…) Here’s from his first posting: Thanks for stopping by. I’m sorry the place is a bit sparse right now. I started this site not only because of my stunted emtional state but also because of the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 30, 2006 Filmmaking
STUNNING KATE MOSS

I’ve been working on a bunch of stuff, not the least of which is the next issue of Filmmaker, so the blog has been relatively neglected of late. Here then, to nab some quick search engine traffic and boost our Alexa rating, is this “Stunning Nikon” commercial directed by Mark Romanek starring a sinuous Kate Moss. (Click under the tab “provocative.”)

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 30, 2006 Filmmaking
FRIDAY PICKS

Opening this week in New York is one of the boldest and most interesting of recent independent films, Room, written and directed by Kyle Henry. With a stunning lead performance by Cyndi Williams, Room uses the mental breakdown of a lower-class, struggling, unhappily-married-with-kids bingo parlor worker to look at the psychic mindscape of post 9/11 American life. Also opening is Michael Kang’s The Motel, an unusual and interesting coming-of-age tale centered around a 13-year-old Chinese-American boy living with his mother in a downscale Jersey hotel. Finally, in Who Killed the Electric Car, opening around the country from Sony Classics, director […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 30, 2006 Filmmaking
ASSISTANT NEEDED

Spin and Stir runs a post today that purports to be a quiz given to applicants for an assistant position to director Doug Liman (Swingers, Mr. and Mrs. Smith). Among the questions: 1) Doug wants to buy a sheep or a goat as a pet to keep at his farm in Hudson, NY. He wants to buy it this weekend. How would you go about making that happen. Extra points for actually locating a goat. 4) Doug has just found out he needs to introduce Senator Joe Biden. Write a few words for his introduction. The shorter the better. Comedy […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 29, 2006 Filmmaking
MOUKARBEL RESPONDS

In an exchange below, a reader and I have gone back and forth over the art-making strategy of appropriation, a discussion brought up by the lawsuit announced against artist and Yale MFA student Chris Moukarbel, whose World Trade Center was a 12-minute video piece made using portions of the screenplay for the forthcoming Oliver Stone film. He posted this statement to the thread, but I thought I’d bring it up to the main page as it succinctly outlines the specifically political intent behind his piece: Firstly, I wont be able to address all aspects of this issue pending litigation. I […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 27, 2006 Filmmaking
PICK OF THE WEEK

Many filmmakers lately have been interested in blending documentary with drama, mixing real people and places into classically structured stories. Perhaps the best of these recent attempts is also the most timely and vital; Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’s The Road to Guantanamo, which tells the true story of three British Muslims who, traveling to Pakistan for a wedding, haplessly wind up captured by U.S. military and sent to Guantanamo Bay. Winterbottom and Whitecross shoot on DV and blend talking-head interviews with the real “Tipton Three” — who have since been released — with incredibly dramatic scenes with actors that […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 23, 2006 Filmmaking
THE FINAL FRONTIER

Below we linked to The Smoking Gun regarding a lawsuit threatened by Paramount against an artist who created a twelve-minute video piece apparently based on the screenplay for Oliver Stone’s forthcoming World Trade Center. Interestingly, the New York Times ran a piece this weekend about the same studio’s tolerance (so far) of fan-produced Star Trek episodes and movies. The video equivalent of “fan fiction,” some of these not-intended-for-profit works have been downloaded 30 million times! From the article as reprinted in IndyStar.com: Fan films have been around for years, particularly those related to the “Star Wars” movies. But now they […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2006 Filmmaking
THE YOUNG AMERICANS

Writing in Sight and Sound, Amy Taubin surveys the young Americans at Cannes — John Cameron Mitchell, Rick Linklater, and, finally, Richard Kelly: “It’s about how a bunch of teenagers are dying because we don’t have an alternative fuel source,” said Richard Kelly of ‘Southland Tales’, his hallucinatory, media-saturated, apocalyptic, broken-hearted, future/present follow-up to ‘Donnie Darko’ – which has just a ghost of a chance of being shown theatrically in its two-hour 43-minute Cannes version. As oneiric and overwhelming as two memorial films of Cannes past – David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Dr.’ and Wong Kar-Wai’s ‘2046’ – and a lot funnier, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2006 Filmmaking

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