Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Should Filmmakers Tour Their Work Like Bands Tour Their Albums?
Since I started working in film ten years ago I’ve been fascinated by the creative possibilities of distribution. Filmmakers tend to think of releasing their film primarily as homework: the creative work is over and now the boring part begins: booking theaters, organizing print traffic, getting your film onto the right platforms online, generating press, and perhaps toughest of all — convincing anyone out there to actually care about what you made. It can be a boatload of labor, and a lot of it is administrative and connection-based. It’s no wonder that most filmmakers prefer to outsource distribution to companies […]
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Sony’s Two New Cameras: VENICE and RX0
Sony has announced two new cameras that will be of interest to filmmakers, though because they are so different it’s entirely possible that you might have heard of one and not the other. Sony VENICE At the high-end, Sony has announced its new flagship camera, the VENICE. Note that Sony does the name in all-caps, though it doesn’t appear to be an acronym. Sony first hinted at this camera back in June. It has a newly developed 36x24mm full-frame sensor and is their first CineAlta digital camera to have a full-frame sensor. It has several other notable features including: 15 […]
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L’Argent, The Quiet American, and Charles Bronson: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (1983) is the kind of final film any director would kill to have on his or her resume, a beautifully distilled summation of Bresson’s preoccupations and techniques that nevertheless strikes out in fascinating new directions. It’s simultaneously the director’s most empathetic film and his bleakest, a wrenching study of how a series of slight moral lapses creates a snowball effect of tragedy that leads to imprisonment and mass murder. Using a late Tolstoy novella as his source material, Bresson depicts the path of a counterfeit bill as it changes hands and inexorably alters the lives of those […]
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Transforming Information into Experience: White Sun Screenwriter and Editor David Barker
David Barker is a hard one to put a finger on. He is an American writer and editor who over the past 10 years has gained an international reputation for his analytical ability and open, unconventional approach. Recent collaborations include Deepak Rauniyar’s sensitive exploration of the impact of Nepalese civil war White Sun (opening today at New York’s MOMA and running through September 12) and Josephine Decker’s upcoming feature with Molly Parker, Mirandy July and Helena Howard, Madeline Madeline. Things happen with David differently than you’d expect them to. You walk an entirely other route than you wanted and end […]
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More than Social Media High-Fives: Execs and Creators Talk the New Audiovisual Magazine, Topic
“Making movies is really me feeling like I shouldn’t be writing something on Facebook,” Jim Cummings says. “It’s taking that energy and making a short film that can be a timeless thing.” When Topic commissioned the writer, producer, director, actor to make a short film series for the website’s inaugural launch in July, Cummings knew exactly the ideas he wanted to pitch — all subjects dealing with epidemics happening in America that were “going kind of unnoticed.” Within five weeks after meeting Topic Studio’s Nick Borenstein at his SXSW screening of The Robbery, Cummings had not only sculpted his ideas […]
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Orson Welles’s The Stranger and John Farrow’s The Sea Chase: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video
I’ve always been mystified by the relative lack of attention and acclaim Orson Welles’ 1946 thriller The Stranger has received compared with the director’s better known efforts, since on just about every level it’s top-tier Welles. Perhaps Welles’ own denigration of the picture, which he saw as an impersonal assignment designed to restore his box-office credibility after The Magnificent Ambersons, is to blame. It’s a genre film, sure, but then so is Touch of Evil, which many Welles enthusiasts (myself included) consider to be every bit as important in the director’s oeuvre as Citizen Kane. The Stranger is actually a […]
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When Life Becomes a Movie
The man in the white fedora is photographing his fettuccine. Later, he’ll put a filter on it and post it to Instagram while he’s on the toilet. Girls from Tokyo line up against a mural of Malcom X, then turn around, asses out, Kardashian style. A young man on the corner is videoing himself and addresses his followers with a “Hi guys.” He points his phone at a chihuahua on the corner and says, “This is everything!” He reaches down, the chihuahua bares its teeth. That last part will be edited out. Mark Zuckerberg is in his lab again, this […]
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David Lynch and the Nightmarish Meanings of his Hollywood Star Casting
In episode four of Twin Peaks: The Return, an older gentleman has an obscure conversation with Gordon Cole (David Lynch) as he escorts him to the office of FBI Chief of Staff, Denise Bryson (David Duchovny). Their scene together is short but just by his brief appearance Richard Chamberlain evokes a mass of associations in the viewers who recognizes him, maybe as Cannon Films’ Allen Quartermain, maybe as the ambitious priest with impure thoughts of Rachel Ward in The Thornbirds, or maybe as Julie Christie’s husband in Petulia. An icon of classic television thanks to his performance in the prime-time […]
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First Reformed: Paul Schrader vs. Slow Cinema
In an interview in March, Paul Schrader questioned the ongoing usefulness of Slow Cinema. “It had a real interesting moment in the last 10 years, but now the novelty has worn off, and people are not as mesmerized as they were when the slowness was really being used as a new concept of film time,” he said. “It’s a dead end. […] There are still bits of transcendental style. It was a precursor to slow cinema, but it’s not really that slow. A terrific film like Silent Light is closer to transcendental style than slow cinema, but they lump it in […]
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SFFILM Announces Major New Suite of Artist Development Programs
SFFILM, the presenter of the San Francisco International Film Festival, has announced two new artist development programs as well other grants and partnerships. Supporting producers will be the New American Producer Fellowship, a program for a producer who has recently immigrated to the United States. Supported by the Flora Family Foundation and intended to “provide a stage for the perspectives of underrepresented filmmakers and to enrich the understanding, empathy, and curiosity of the general public,” the Fellowship will provide a $25,000 cash grant as well as an artist residency at SFFILM’s FilmHouse. The new Women, Peace and Security Fellowship, supported […]
