Columns
-
The Microbudget Conversation: What Are The Festivals Good For ?
Sorry to all for the week off. A little festival called Sundance was happening, and this column would have been lost in the hustle and bustle. PLUS, I’ve become agoraphobic after editing Orphaned for three weeks straight now. I no longer possess social skills and hygiene. (But the movie looks good so far!) After our second article posted, Blake Eckard contacted me and thought I needed to talk to someone ASAP. It could only be one person, Jon Jost (pictured below). Jon is one of Blake’s favorite film directors and he is a legendary indie filmmaker. It was a no-brainer. […]
-
The Microbudget Conversation : Films Too Small To Fail
I first met Zak Mulligan through my DP Sean Donnelly a few years back. After a bit of back and forth on the merits of Kickstarter, I helped him with a little production design on his first feature, and we became fast friends and supporters of each others work. Zak and his directing partner Rodrigo Lopresti were recent participants of IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs with their first feature film I’m not me. Zak also won the Best Cinematography award at Sundance last year for his work on the film Obselidia. He’s here to talk a bit about the advantages of […]
-
The Microbudget Conversation: Blake Eckard Has Questions Without Answers
This week we hear from the Micro-Budget Filmmaker Blake Eckard. After I had put my first feature up on the web for free downloading, Blake contacted me and we began a three-year conversation on the highs and lows of micro-budget filmmaking. I think Blake’s take on the subject is one of importance and it needs to be shared. “Orson Welles, by his own admission, didn’t believe in artists so much as “works.” He also hated (or liked people to believe he hated) talking about himself and his films. Although it may be fashionable to say it, I don’t think there’s […]
-
Into the Splice: Black Swan
Things didn’t bode well from the beginning. The crowd in the theater was restive. People shifted uncomfortably in their seats even before the movie began. I was alone, and sat in the back, the projector whirring somewhere above and behind me. But that was only the beginning. As it turns out, I had been editing Alla Gadassik’s remarkable video-essay for the Requiem // 102 project, and had learned of an obscure Italian Jennifer Connelly film from 1988, Etoile (directed by Peter Del Monte), which also happens to be a nightmarish film about Swan Lake that also features a monstrous black […]
-
The Micro-Budget Conversation : What is Micro ?
Here is the introduction to a series of posts from filmmaker John Yost on today’s micro-budget filmmaking scene. Check back each week for John’s conversations with various filmmakers debating issues related to the making and distribution of ultra-low-budget movies. — S.M. What is micro-budget filmmaking? What makes a film micro-budget? Is it simply the amount of money spent? Is it the quality of the story, image, and sound? Is it a cliché at this point? Where did it come from? What about the word “indie”? Is “indie” just a buzz word now? Is the sky falling? Are we going to […]
-
Into the Splice: After the Flood
Downtown Waterloo, Ontario. At night. A night unfinished. The previous evening I had spoken at a conference about analog nostalgia in the digital age. I brought a turntable with me from Michigan. And one single to play: “You’re Gonna Die” (1978) by the Ann Arbor/Detroit post-punk art band Destroy All Monsters, featuring Ron Asheton on guitar. At the border crossing entering Canada at Port Huron, I was asked a series of questions about the reasons for my visit to Canada. I answered in ways that made the guard skeptical, and I was told to go directly to Immigration. There, a […]
-
Into the Splice: Let Me In
I went to see Let Me In with low expectations. Like so many, I had seen and been awed by the original Swedish version, Let the Right One In (directed by Tomas Alfredson), whose quiet pacing and lonely stretches of relative silence only made the horror more horrible when it came. An American version, surely, would speed up the pace and overload the naturalistic violence with CGI-generated hyper-energy. On the way to the theater I asked Lisa about this. “I don’t know,” she said, “give it a chance.” “But I don’t want to give it a chance. I want to […]
-
Into the Splice: Machete
It was only later that I discovered that I had been charged admission to Machete as a “student.” I am not one, and haven’t been for many, many years. I was glad not only because it saved me two dollars, but also because I didn’t have to resort to the Harvey Korman moment near the end of Blazing Saddles, when he cuts in line to buy a ticket for the film itself, pulls out an I.D., holds it up with a skeptical smile and asks the ticket lady, “Student?” to which she replies flatly, “Are you kidding?” At 9:30 on […]
-
Nicholas Rombes Goes Into the Splice
If you remember my interview with Nicholas Rombes about his “10/40/70” series at The Rumpus a while back, you’ll know that I am a big fan of his original approach to film writing. Over at The Rumpus he looks at film through a deliberately tightened lens — examining a movie by only considering the scenes occurring at the 10, 40 and 70 marks. So, I was thrilled when Nicholas (pictured) subsequently proposed a new column for Filmmaker. It’s called “Into the Splice,” and it debuts today. (And, no, it’s not about editing.) In this series, Nicholas writes about the pleasures […]
-
Into The Splice : Micmacs
The late afternoon is warm, the locusts screaming from the trees. The sun makes everything as golden as the poster for Micmacs, a movie that I’ve avoided because the spell of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s earlier movies (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, and Amélie especially) is so powerful and magical. I didn’t want Micmacs to break that spell, but I needn’t have worried. Some reviews have accused the film of being style over substance but really, when it comes to any form of storytelling—in movies, in literature, in art—is there a difference? Usually when critics accuse a movie or novel of […]
