Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Kaleidoscope Launches New VR Marketplace
In the three years since its founding in 2014, San Francisco-based Kaleidoscope has made itself a major player in the virtual reality landscape. The company began by hosting exhibition events for new VR pieces—like Joost Jordens’ and Mike von Rotz’s Transition (pictured above)—which they’ve done now more than 40 times across the world. Now, with major film festivals like Sundance and Tribeca increasingly filling that need, Kaleidoscope has turned its attention to production. Late last month the company announced the launch of a funding platform to connect independent VR creators with the financing sources that could fund their work and potentially […]
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Twin Peaks: The Return: The Cult of Faith
The original Twin Peaks was some kind of scary dream woven from the psychic residue after a binge of soap operas and donuts. The new episodes are the scary dream after you watch Twin Peaks. I know this because on several occasions during the last quarter century I experienced quite vivid dreams in which I was watching (or inside of) a third season of Twin Peaks, and it always felt pretty remarkably like this new Return does. (I cannot predict what recursive night terrors might follow from these episodes.) But, perhaps because it seems already vetted by my subconscious, I say […]
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The Making is the Dream: A Filmmaker Figures Out What It’s All About
Filmmaker and occasional Filmmaker contributor Eli Daughfrill is raising money for his first feature on Seed & Spark. With four days left he’s a few thousand dollars short of his goal, so please consider donating. Author’s note: There is a sense of privilege that undergirds this whole post. There are a rash of these “just make it” posts and speeches nowadays and they do sometimes feel like classic American bootstrapism. “Pull yourself, up!” etc. Much of what makes my filmmaking possible is middle-class stability. I’m a tenured professor. I have good credit. I have a sabbatical coming up that allows […]
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Like Sand Through the Hourglass: Twin Peaks: The Return
In the 1970s, the experimental filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos wrote a piece called “Towards a Complete Order of the Temenos.” In the years that followed, he began to take all of his previously made films and tear them apart frame by frame, taking the pieces and parts — along with newly shot footage and black and white leader — to create what would be his final project, ENIAIOS. The career-spanning contents of the film were combined and alternated to form an epic flicker film encompassing a lifetime of materials and ideas. The project, an 80-hour cycle of films, was completed but not […]
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Five Ideas Regarding Twin Peaks: The Return (Parts 7-9)
1. The Return of the Dead: Everybody is understandably enjoying the new Twin Peaks’ end credit sequences. In an utterly unexpected twist, David Lynch has decided to take us once a week to either The Road House or the Bang Bang Club to play us out with a musical guest. This is a strange enough maneuver all on its own. How many non-variety shows feature a different musical act each week, enfolding them however lightly into the story-world? (Honestly, The Young Ones is the last comparison I can think of. Any others?) And Lynch and partner Mark Frost have proven […]
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Twin Peaks: A Language More Powerful Than Words
Of all the remarkable aspects of Twin Peaks: The Return, perhaps the strangest is not something that is present, but something that’s absent: the utter lack of any recognizable psychology. Characters simply aren’t motivated by the familiar psychological archetypes and cliches that underpin almost all narrative entertainment, especially series-based television. It’s not so much that the plot is inscrutable or resistant to interpretation, but that characters react to what’s happening around them in ways that look and feel familiar, but which betray little if anything of what’s going on in their heads. As opposed to shows like House of Cards […]
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The First Rule of Twin Peaks Recapping? Write Down the Facts
For the past several months I’ve been privileged to write the weekly reviews of Showtime’s Twin Peaks revival for The New York Times. It’s been rewarding, week after week, to plug into the mind of director David Lynch, explore the skewed universe he’s built with writer Mark Frost and understand how the show’s version of modern life offers its own interpretation of humanity’s majesty and misery. Critics often get asked if scrutinizing art makes it harder to enjoy, but I’ve always found the opposite to be true, especially when it comes to writing regularly about a TV series. When you’re […]
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Blake Edwards’s Pink Panther Series: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
In 1963, Blake Edwards was set to direct The Pink Panther with a cast that consisted of David Niven, Ava Gardner and Peter Ustinov — all big stars at the time. The movie was a comedy about a French detective obsessed with catching a jewel thief — not realizing that the thief was sleeping and collaborating with the detective’s wife the whole time. What looked like a debacle — Gardner and Ustinov backing out of the film just days before production — ended up changing film history and Edwards’ career, not to mention the career of Ustinov’s replacement, Peter Sellers. […]
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From the Ashes: Seeing Coal Clearly
The Tribeca Film Festival selection From the Ashes, a documentary on the U.S. coal industry and the “war on coal,” directed by Michael Bonfiglio, is available for viewing free online this week through July 3. Katherine Oliver, who executive produced along with Jon Kamen, Joe Berlinger, Justin Wilkes and Dave Marcus, pens the following guest essay on the film, its issues, and the reasons why Bloomberg Philanthropies got behind the production. (Oliver is also a board member of IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization.) From the Ashes can be viewed at multiple sites now. If a picture is worth a thousand words, […]
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LumaFusion Ups the iPad Video Editing Game
The iPad is my favorite device of all time, yet, after a brief stab at writing and editing for this site on it when the first iPad came out, I pretty much gave up on it as a productivity device. I’m waiting for iOS 11 to see if that changes — I suspect for me it won’t, actually; I’m too committed to my multi-window writing workflow. But one app I may try to play around with is the new Luma Fusion, which looks like an impressive leap over iMovie and other iPad video editors. Here’s 9 to 5 Mac’s Jeff […]
