Features
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Cash Back: How Film Tax Incentives Work
Let’s assume you got into filmmaking because you wanted nothing to do with business school. Well, tough. Movies are the most expensive art form; even ones they call “no-budget” aren’t. You need to learn about business eventually, and in today’s world, even independent filmmakers need to understand terms like “transferable rebates,” “soft money” and “100 percent deductibility.” In fact, there’s one financing term both Hollywood and independent producers must know: “tax credits.” The studio world is continually on the lookout for states offering production rebates that will reduce the cost of their movies and TV shows, while independent producers scout […]
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The Irish Way
The way writer/director Michael Tully and producer George Rush tell it, Don’t Leave Home, Tully’s new feature, started with the idea of a place and a vibe. The vibe was sophisticated art house horror — something in the vein of Nicolas Roeg’s classic ghost story, Don’t Look Now — where things just feel off. And the place would be Ireland — specifically, Dublin and the spectacular mountains and eerie bogs of County Wicklow, about 40 miles south of the city. But, as Austin-based Tully — whose last feature was the Ocean City, Md.–set Ping Pong Summer — explains, there wasn’t […]
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The Explosions Within: Lynne Ramsay on You Were Never Really Here
Joe uses a hammer. A tough guy for hire — one who specializes in cases involving pedophilia and child trafficking — Joe owns a gun, of course, and he uses that, too. But for the jobs that truly matter, ones triggering the dark memories that clank painfully around inside his brain, he prefers the brutal simplicity of a simple hammer that can fell an adversary with one silent, well-timed swoop. Arrestingly embodied by Joaquin Phoenix in Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s fleet, impressionistic work of hardcore noir, You Were Never Really Here, winner of the Best Screenplay prize at last year’s […]
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Paris By Night: Making a Nathan Silver American Independent Film in Paris
Foreign productions shooting in France have two options to obtain tax rebates. One is to officially become a French production, which requires a co-production treaty and going through the French Ministry of Culture’s CNC agency. For Nathan Silver’s Thirst Street, that wasn’t a practical option: the United States is one of the few countries to have no co-production treaty with France. (The United States has no coproduction treaties with any country, in fact, but that’s another story.) According to Thirst co-writer/producer C. Mason Wells, the production had to go the more common Tax Rebate for International Productions (TRIP) route. The […]
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So You Didn’t Get Into Sundance, Redux
“So you didn’t get into Sundance.” That’s the title of a 2009 blog post I wrote for Filmmaker’s website that gets a flurry of hits each December as, yes, a lot of people don’t get into Sundance. My post was written with a tone of plucky defiance — that mixture of self-care and can-do-ism that is the stuff of so much online film advice writing these days. I started by recommending filmmakers change their headspace by going to a museum or walking in the park, and then, a week or two later, dive back into their films by critically rewatching […]
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At Bydgoszcz, Bigger Was Better — A Glimpse at Our 8K Future
DPs, not directors, are the rock stars at Camerimage, the film festival in Bydgoszcz, Poland, devoted to the foundational art of the motion picture camera. The world’s best cinematographers, if not working, flock there each autumn.The 25th edition, which wrapped several months ago in November 2017, proved no exception. The festival hub is a modernist opera house, perched above The Brda, the narrow river that bisects picturesque Bydgoszcz (once known as “Little Berlin”). Centrally located, Opera Nova hosts two theaters, including the festival’s main venue. A long, ground-floor lobby and second-floor hallway, curved thanks to the building’s cylindrical shape, house […]
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The Politics of Waiting: Lucrecia Martel on Zama
Lucrecia Martel’s ambitious historical drama Zama opens with a decidedly muted image. The film’s eponymous protagonist stands alone at a river’s edge staring into space with a look of quiet expectation. The water faintly laps at his feet, and a pale sky provides an indifferent light. Suited in full colonial regalia, he appears small and lonely against the rugged landscape, a man lost at the edge of the world. Moments later, he is seen hiding in the grass like a naughty child, spying on a group of naked women bathing in the river. They laugh and call out, “Voyeur! Voyeur!” […]
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Beautiful Abyss: Eliza McNitt on her Visionary VR
Filmmaker Eliza McNitt’s second VR film, SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime, has made history as the first VR film to sell at Sundance. CityLights, a VR financing and distribution company, acquired the project as a three-part series for a significant seven-figure deal. Narrated by Jessica Chastain, SPHERES is inspired by the recent discovery that gravitational waves make their own music, and it visualizes the collision of two black holes that produce these movements. With the Oculus Rift headset and hand controllers, the viewer uses their voice and body to interact with the cosmic landscape, drawing stardust circles while being pulled into […]
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Here Comes the Automation: How AI is Poised to Change Filmmaking
I’d like to start with a disclaimer. This article does not present a dystopian view of the rise of automation. There will be no musings about Skynet or how artificial intelligence (AI) is going to exterminate the human race. While there is no doubt that a ubiquitous and pervasive technology like AI will forever change the way we live, learn and work, many of those stories have been already written and will continue to be. With the rise of AI comes a host of ethical, political, and economical challenges. But for now, let’s focus on how machine intelligence can augment […]
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Rodeo Dream: Chloé Zhao on The Rider
The Rider, Chloé Zhao’s miraculous second feature, possesses a narrative that feels both as old as time and riveting in its newness: A young rodeo star has a tragic accident and must battle adversity on his way to recovery. You know this story. Except, through Zhao’s eyes, “redemption” looks different from what we’ve been conditioned to expect in a culture built on stories of success and celebrity. Every character on screen in The Rider is a real person, playing a version of themselves. But this is not a documentary. The performances in The Rider are exhilarating and deep and true. […]
