Columns
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The Rumpus Launches Manual Typewriter iPad App, Typing Writer
I grew up on a manual typewriter, the same one my mom used to write articles for Life Magazine in the ’50s and ’60s. It was a small portable in a beat-up canvas case, and you had to hit the keys hard. Later, my dad outfitted his basement home office with an IBM Selectric. I loved that typewriter. It was a brick, a giant slab of molded something, and once you gave the keys a little push the thing would explode. The violence of it was kind of thrilling. Still, I don’t fetishize old-school typewriters, manual or electric. I can’t […]
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Seeing in the Dark with the Sony a7S
When Sony announced the a7S mirrorless camera at NAB everyone was interested in its 4K capabilities, but it’s the low-light power of this camera that may be the true selling point. With the “S” standing for sensitivity, the a7S is the third a7 camera to be released. The a7 and a7R were announced in October of last year and started shipping in December. Those two models record HD video and stills at much higher resolutions than the a7S; the a7 has a 24.3 megapixel sensor capable of 6,000 x 4,000 pixel stills, while the a7R has a 36.4MP sensor capable […]
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The Language of Motion: At Vincent Laforet’s Directing Motion Tour
On a wet Saturday in May, about 100 people gathered in a hotel ballroom for the Boston stop of Vincent Laforet’s Directing Motion tour. This daylong event, with an optional evening session, promised to teach all levels of filmmakers the cinematic language of motion. Laforet started by saying that he was going to ruin cinema for us, and proceeded to show a clip without audio. “It’s never, ever moving the camera because the camera should move,” he said. The event is structured in two parts: a daytime workshop that runs from 9:00 am to 4 pm, and an evening seminar […]
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Paid Friends, Empathy, Inequality, True Detective, Garry Winogrand and the Impossible Stairwell: Sunday Morning Links
Here’s some of what I’ve been reading this week for your Sunday perusing pleasure. At Vulture, producer Gavin Polone has developed into an excellent essayist. Here he is discussing the emotional complexities of a particularly Hollywood-type of relationship, the paid friendship: While I’m sure that paid friends exist in many walks of life, I doubt they are as common anywhere else as they are in the entertainment industry. I’ve encountered many big-deal stars and directors with an entourage of assistants and development executives who have crossed the business-personal line. Some were friends before they were employees. Others drifted the other […]
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A Japanese Sideways, Virginia Woolf, Beth Gibbons Sings Black Sabbath and Denis Johnson’s Artful Sentences: Sunday Morning Links
For your Sunday morning, here’s some of what I’ve been reading this past week. At the Rumpus, filmmaker (and 25 New Face) Astra Taylor is interviewed about her book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, which I can’t wait to read. An excerpt: Also, after Examined Life was finished I found myself thinking about the way creative opportunities and distribution channels were shifting. Should I be showing my films in theaters or just think about getting them out online? There were other issues, too. For example, instead of being asked to write an article, […]
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Why We Are Discontinuing our Apple Newsstand Edition
After almost two years of experimenting with an iPad-only edition in Apple’s Newsstand, we have decided to discontinue this version of Filmmaker. The reason? Relatively few of you are reading it compared to our print magazine and website, and the cost of its production runs us a substantial loss. And that’s money we’ve decided would be better spent on additional editorial content as well as new digital properties serving a platform-agnostic audience. (Meaning, something that can be read by you Android and Kindle readers too.) With this announcement we want to make clear that all Filmmaker content is still available […]
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Welcoming Vadim Rizov as Managing Editor
I’d like to welcome to our Filmmaker staff our new Managing Editor, Vadim Rizov. After an exhaustive job search — thanks to the over 200 of you who applied — we hired Vadim, who previously covered the True/False Film Festival for us. Many of you know Vadim’s bylines from Sight and Sound, Little White Lies and Indiewire, not to mention his posts last year at The Dissolve. Vadim also posts his reviews at Letterboxd and other stuff at his personal blog, Infinite Philistinism. Vadim’s a very smart writer whose interest in culture extends beyond independent film to music and literature. […]
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Advice for Producers, Crowdfunding, the Wu-Tang Clan, Dirty Old New York and More: Sunday Links
Here are some of the articles I’ve read this week that I recommend for your Sunday afternoon reading. “Whose Brooklyn Is It Anyway?” wonders A.O. Scott at the New York Times as he considers Spike Lee’s recent comments on the borough’s gentrification: Every city is simultaneously a seedbed of novelty and a hothouse of nostalgia, and modern New York presents a daily dialectic of progress and loss. As Colson Whitehead notes in “The Colossus of New York,” you become a New Yorker — or perhaps a true resident of any place, whether you were born there or not — when […]
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Novelist and Screenwriter James Salter Ponders Flight 370
In addition to being a novelist (All That Is) and screenwriter (Downhill Racer, The Appointment), James Salter is also a pilot. Over at The New Yorker he, like the rest of the world, is pondering the fate of Flight 370. In particular, he imagines the moment at which sleeping passengers may away during their overseas flight to realize that something is astray…. But the Malaysian airliner was not lost. It was on course on a long, late-night flight to Beijing. I am identifying now with the passengers. An hour after takeoff, some are already asleep. The plane is flying smoothly […]
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Panasonic Commits to 4K, Announces the VariCam 35
For the past couple of years, Panasonic has taken a backseat to Sony and Canon in the cinematography and indie movie world. While Sony and Canon raced to produce new large-sensor cameras in different configurations and prices, Panasonic was content to stick with the low-end AG-AF100, which was released at the end of 2010 and has seen few updates. They have also had some success in ultra low-budget production with the GH2 and GH3, which produce good quality video but are primarily stills cameras. This year Panasonic seems intent on making its move. Or, as a product manager said at […]
