Production
Filmmaking - Production
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Greenslate’s John Finn Talks Rebranding and How Technology Can Revolutionize the Payroll Industry
John Finn, founder and CEO of Greenslate, remembers the good old days — and they weren’t that good. In 1995, when he first got into the independent film industry, he was a freelance production accountant, loaning himself out to productions where every penny counted. The standard practices of production accounting were daunting back then: there were seas of paperwork, year-end production company tax filings were strenuous efforts and, on set, accountants would spend entire days running around just trying to get signatures on start paperwork from producers and crew members. “I realized there was a need for financial acumen,” Finn recalls. […]
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Finding My Filmmaking Community (Or, I Moved from LA to NY to Make Movies — What Was I Thinking?)
Adam Keleman’s humor-laced melodrama Easy Living — about a door-to-door makeup salesman (Hannibal‘s Caroline Dhavernas) — opens tomorrow in New York at the Cinema Village before becoming available on digital platforms Tuesday, September 19. Below, he contributes a guest essay on his path towards becoming a feature filmmaker — a journey that took him from Los Angeles to New York. Los Angeles is an isolating place — and I can say that as a native. I was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, that large, sprawling suburb simply known as “The Valley,” memorably featured in such films as […]
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Shooting From Dock to Dish with the New Canon C200
For the launch of the C200, Canon hired producer Andrew Fried of Boardwalk Pictures to create a short introduction video, From Dock to Dish. Boardwalk Pictures specializes in nonfiction programming, most notably producing the Chef’s Table series for Netflix. The team, including DP Bryant Fisher, shot From Dock To Dish over the course of two days using pre-production units loaned from Canon. In this interview producer Fried and DP Fisher talk about the camera and their experience shooting the video. Filmmaker: How did you become involved in this project? Fried: Canon approached me to see if I had any ideas for a short […]
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Listen to This: Independent Sound Mixers Talk On-Set Production Tips, Career Strategy and Work-Life Balance
Modern cinema, deconstructed to its most basic elements, is the art of combining light and sound to tell stories. If you’re reading this, chances are you can name five cinematographers. But how many production sound mixers can you name? To find out what it’s like to be in this essential line of work — and to hear their hard-earned advice on getting great sound — I spoke with three sound mixers working in independent film about a job that is, by its very nature, the sort of thing audiences only tend to notice if there’s a problem. Gillian Arthur, 30, […]
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Five Questions with Loving Vincent Producer Sean Bobbitt
In 2014 I spoke with Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman, respectively the writer/director and co-director/co-writer/producer of Loving Vincent, an animated film about the final days of Vincent Van Gogh’s life that was then in preproduction. Three and a half years and much blood, sweat and tears later the film is complete and premiered at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival last week. It’s been gaining attention since its initial failed Kickstarter campaign (a second go was more successful) for its production method, with a team of artists creating each frame in the style of Van Gogh with oil paint on canvas, the […]
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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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Now What? How to Move Forward in the World of Serialized Content
On April 27 at the Made in New York Media Center, IFP hosted a panel on serialized content moderated by Kuye Youngblood, Head of Development and Production at BRIC TV, a public access station in Brooklyn. BRIC’s mission is to present and incubate work by artists and mediamakers who reflect the diversity of its borough, and it presents numerous shows via its cable and digital network. At the event, Youngblood was joined onstage by two web series creators, Rae Leone Allen and Christopher Poindexter, who shared the challenges and opportunities they each encountered while making the first season of their […]
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“We’re Looking for People Who Think Weirder and Bloodier”: Eli Roth and Crypt TV Execs on Making Horror Shorts
“What we’re doing is building our own Marvel universe and ecosystem of characters”: Eli Roth on Horror & CryptTV at Tribeca Raise your hand if you’re trying to get a horror film made. I thought so. That’s a lot of us — myself included. It’s been a fantastic year for the genre, too, with Get Out breaking a number of records and becoming the third highest-grossing R-rated horror film of all time — and that’s behind The Exorcist and Hannibal. I was too terrified to finish either, and I saw Get Out twice (and alone) so it wins in my […]
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DP Sherry McCracken on Shooting the Low-Budget Independent Feature, American Gothic
Sherry McCracken, DP for the upcoming independent feature American Gothic, came to cinematography later in life. She grew up taking photographs, operated her own portrait business and worked in local television, but then she turned to IT because she felt she could make a better living. She remained an active still photographer and was asked by a friend to shoot location stills for a movie project. After working on that, and a second picture, she gained experience in film and ended up being asked to DP a project. In this interview she talks about how she made the switch to […]
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Using Interviews and Animation to Bring the Sniper Documentary Tower to Life
The documentary Tower recounts the day in 1966 that a sniper on the University of Texas Tower killed 14 people and wounded dozens more. The film includes archival footage, interviews with those who were present and animated recreations of the event. In this interview, director/producer Keith Maitland and DP Sarah Wilson talk about the making of the film which receives its broadcast premiere on PBS on Tuesday, February 14th. Filmmaker: How did you become filmmakers? Maitland: I started off in narrative filmmaking, working on other people’s movies, and right around the time I met Sarah — we’ve been together 13 years […]
