Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Canon Surprises With the C200
It’s been two years since Canon announced the Canon C300 Mk II and C100 Mk II, and now, with the announcement of the C200, the company has produced an interesting 4K camera that sort of fits between the two models while at the same time offering new features not currently offered on either of them. First, the price. Canon is offering two models; a body only (B) model that will cost about $5,999 and a more complete version with handle, LCD mount and LCD monitor for $7,499. This is a notable departure from the C100/C300, which are currently only sold with […]
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DP Sean Price Williams on Shooting 2-Perf 35mm for the Cannes Competition Film Good Time
“Hey, it’s me,” said Sean Price Williams as he walked up to me at the after-party for Josh and Benny Safdie’s simply fantastic Good Time in Cannes last week. It did take me a second to recognize Williams — cleanly shaven, in a spiffy tux and strolling around a Dior-sponsored event for a film in the Main Competition of the Cannes Film Festival. If Williams seemed like a bit of a happy anomaly there, it’s because, like Good Time itself, the DP has ascended to cinema’s most revered platform with work that’s wholly of a piece with the raw, street-level […]
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A Cheaper Way to Record Multiple Audio Sources: The Tascam DR-10L
Recording audio on a budget — meaning with few crew and limited equipment — can be a challenge. For interviews I like using lavaliers — life is much easier not having to deal with cables. A good wireless unit will cost you $600 each, and for most documentary work two mics is all you need. But what do you do if you need to record more sound sources? Well, strictly speaking, you should hire a good sound man. He’ll hopefully bring his own mixer/recorder and extra wireless units too. But if that’s not in your budget then things get complicated, […]
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The Accidental Tourist, Seven Days in May, Tough Guys, The Paradine Case: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
One of the best American films of the 1980s, Lawrence Kasdan’s achingly beautiful and delicate The Accidental Tourist is now available on Blu-ray courtesy of the Warner Archive label. Adapted from a novel by Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist tells the story of Macon Leary (William Hurt in one of the great screen performances in history), a travel guide writer whose entire life is geared toward circumventing experience rather than embracing it; his books are for business travelers who want to avoid feeling as if they’ve ever left home. Macon’s insular nature is exacerbated by the tragic death of his son, […]
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IFP Announces Documentary Projects For its Annual IFP Labs
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), announced yesterday the ten documentaries selected for the 2017 IFP Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s annual yearlong fellowship for first-time feature directors. The creative teams of the selected films are currently attending the first week’s sessions – The Time Warner Foundation Completion Labs – taking place through May 26 at the Made in New York Media Center by IFP in DUMBO, Brooklyn. “The wide and continuing success of documentaries on multiple platforms demonstrate they are no longer for niche audiences nor uniform in style or format,” says Joana Vicente, Executive Director of IFP and the Made in NY Media […]
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Five Questions for Nobody’s Watching Director Julia Solomonoff
In Julia Solomonoff’s third narrative feature, Nobody’s Watching, Guillermo Pfening plays Nico, an established Argentine actor in New York who has overstayed his visa in hopes of a promised film role and a new chance at life. But the idea of making it as an actor in New York is even harder for the blond Nico, who is told both that he is too white to play Hispanic and that his accent is too strong to play American. He falls back on odd jobs and light shoplifting, living under the radar until his past in Argentina comes back to haunt […]
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Twin Peaks, Season 3, Episodes 1-4: Sculpting in Time
(Spoilers follow.) It’s not surprising that David Lynch has a lot to get out of his artistic system after, effectively, 11 years of dormancy on the moving-image front. In interviews, Lynch has said that he thinks of this new “season” as an 18-hour movie “shown not in a big theater, but it’s shown as cinema on television.” Having slammed through four episodes in one night, I’d take him at his word: the tonal transition he accomplishes in that time is amplified when absorbed as one unit, and I suspect the final unveiled product will benefit from being viewed in as close to one […]
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After Letting Go: How Walking Away from My First Film Led to Distribution and then Development on my Next
Last November I wrote a piece for Filmmaker about walking away from my debut film. “Just Let Go Already! 12 Takeaways After Making the Microbudget Feature, The Purple Onion” chronicles the five-year process of making my first feature film and sums up whatever wisdom I can impart to anyone making a film. Filmmaking can be likened to many things. It’s rewarding on so many levels. And yet the truth is that what began as a labor of love was becoming a growing burden with no end in sight. Now I’m here to prove why you should keep going anyway. After […]
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Violet: How They Achieved This Stunning 4:3 Film’s Most Stunning Shots
Floating in an ocean of equals parts uncertainty and obscurity after winning the Grand Prix of the Generation 14plus International Jury in 2014, Bas Devos’s feature debut Violet didn’t reach American shores, beyond a handful of festivals, until new distributor Altered Innocence took a chance and set a theatrical date and announced a subsequent physical release. Saved from being forgotten, the film is one of the most striking and pure cinematic works to arrive stateside this year, and exemplifies the importance of betting on unorthodox voices that aim to challenge the medium’s formal conventions. Shot in the 4:3 aspect ratio […]
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Our Man in Havana, Edge of Eternity and Streets of Fire: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Given the (justly) hallowed place that Carol Reed’s 1949 thriller The Third Man occupies in the hearts and minds of most cineastes, I’ve always been a little mystified by the comparative obscurity of his subsequent collaboration with screenwriter Graham Greene, the delightful satire Our Man in Havana (1959). I can only assume that the bleak, wintry setting of postwar Vienna that gives The Third Man its haunting effects also gives it a slight edge in the critical consciousness over Havana’s sunny, tropical effervescence. Yet in Reed and Greene’s skilled hands, the breezy charm of Havana just before the revolution only […]
