Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
How the Numbers Add Up: The Director of 42 Seconds of Happiness and The Rainbow Experiment Explores the Numerology of Filmmaking
Christina Kallas’ tense ensemble drama 42 Seconds of Happiness received a number of awards last year in regional and international festivals in the U.S. and abroad, granting her, among other accolades, a nomination for the Emerging Director Award in St. Louis. The film will roll out on Amazon Prime in 15 countries tomorrow, while she has just completed her sophomore feature film, The Rainbow Experiment, which was one of five works-in-progress selected this year for the prestigious U.S. in Progress Paris program. Below, in a guest essay, the U.S. independent filmmaker and former Berlin-based screenwriter and producer — whose credits […]
-
The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn’t Working in a Vacuum
Like many others who work in the film business, I find none (zero) of the revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s behavior even remotely surprising. His abusive work style was widely known, and, until two weeks ago, even admired by many of his male colleagues and/or competitors. And as is becoming increasingly clear, he was most definitely not alone. Pretty much everyone within a 1,000-mile radius of the biz is well aware that Sex-for-Work is Standard Operating Procedure in Hollywood. As Quentin Tarantino recently explained, in its treatment of women, Hollywood has been “operating under an almost Jim Crow-like system.” Precisely. Within […]
-
Color Grading Film and Digital for Wonderstruck
Colorist Joe Gawler of Harbor Pictures has worked on a number of films and television shows over the years, including A Most Violent Year, Midnight in Paris and Arrival. For Wonderstruck, Gawler had to work with multiple film stocks. The story takes place in two time periods—the 1920s and the 1970s—and black & white and color film were used to convey the different time periods, while digital material was also shot for both periods. In this interview he talks about working with film and digital and how to become a better colorist. Filmmaker: How did you become involved in this project? Gawler: There’s […]
-
Grappling with Qualms over A Gray State Before Moderating a Festival Q&A
As a film critic who also serves as a festival programmer I sometimes find myself in awkward positions. Such was the case recently at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in October, where A Gray State screened, along with the film’s director Erik Nelson and its executive producer Werner Herzog in attendance. Though I’d seen the film on screener, I didn’t have a strong opinion about it one way or another (and as I was only helping out with the international features this year my indifference didn’t much matter). Of course, asked to moderate the post-screening Q&A I jumped at the […]
-
Why Old School Blockbuster VHS Video Cover Art Beats Netflix Thumbnails
Those who remember the days of the neighborhood video store — whether that was, for you, Kim’s Video or Blockbuster — may attribute their fondness for ineffably sleazy horror film VHS cover art to simple nostalgia, but, proposes Entertain the Elk, there’s more to it than that. In this short video he argues that the videobox designers of the day were using the AIDA marketing methods to draw movie fans’s eyeballs to images of bloody knives, hair shaped into a noose and monsters emerging from the toilet. Of note are the piece’s final moments, when he decries the Get Out […]
-
La Chinoise, Le Gai Savoir, Personal Shopper and Two by John Sturges: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
“How has La Chinoise aged?” asks Amy Taubin in her liner notes to the new Blu-ray edition of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 provocation. Elsewhere in the disc’s accompanying booklet Richard Hell examines how he has shifted positions from seeing La Chinoise as lesser Godard to “a glorious experience” superior to more easily accessible works like Pierrot le fou. Both critics circle around one of the things I find most fascinating about Godard in general, which is the fact that his movies, more than those of any other filmmaker, seem to change the most drastically from one viewing to the next. Of […]
-
Four Years of Access to Whale Hunts: Director Mike Day on The Islands and the Whales
The Islands and the Whales, which recently had its North American theatrical premiere at IFC Center and broadcast premiere on POV, is one of the most innovative documentaries on marine conservation I’ve seen in years. Director Mike Day is carving out a niche for himself by addressing the interstices where traditional cultures butt against modern conservationist ideals, resulting in nuanced interactions that defy expectations. The Islands and the Whales, for instance, shows the people of the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic — Viking descendants who have lived off of the sea for generations — and how they are struggling […]
-
Our Indie Problem: Financiers and Sexual Harassment
I have felt disgusted these last ten days reading the news about Harvey Weinstein as well as the angry and heartfelt outpouring from so many on social media. But like most of my colleagues in independent film, I’ve considered myself a step removed from the A-list parties and Hollywood glitterati that comprised so much of Weinstein’s world. My colleagues and I are making films, I have thought, as a high-minded alterative to the vapidness of Hollywood. But the last ten days has caused me to realize that we are not immune from the same problems that Hollywood is suffering. The […]
-
Color, Crews and Shooting Digitally: Ed Lachman and Vittorio Storaro at NYFF 2017
One of the highlights of the 55th New York Film Festival was the Master Class with Vittorio Storaro and Ed Lachman. Hosted by Kent Jones, the 90-minute presentation covered a wide range of subjects and also included key clips from the work of the two great cinematographers. Storaro and Lachman have been friends for over 40 years. Lachman claims that he was Storaro’s first American fan, after seeing both The Spider’s Stratagem and The Conformist at the 1970 NYFF. He subsequently worked with Storaro on Luna, when the Italian DP began shooting American movies but had not yet secured a […]
-
“As Humans, We Will Never Settle”: Five Questions for Human Flow Director Ai Weiwei
World-renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei makes his feature-length filmmaking debut with Human Flow, an expansive documentary that shines a light on the global refugee crisis. Ai circles the globe to showcase the personal stories behind the sweeping headlines of fallout from war, famine and climate change in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Palestine, Serbia, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand and Turkey. Today 65 million people have been forcibly displaced, more people than in the time period following World War II. Ai manages to show both the massive scale of the […]
