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The How-Tos of Grant Writing: A Manifesto of Sorts
The instructions are easy enough: Communicate your project idea in three pages. I think, “Great, I can bang this out in a day or two.” I sit at my desk and wait for the words to pour forth. And this is when my brain likes to take vacation. As 2014 rolls in and I am applying for grants for my new documentary project, I wish I could tell you that it gets easier to pen grant proposals each time I do it. Let me be honest: grant writing is tedious. It’s as much fun as writing a manual on video […]
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The Women of Sundance 2014
Women, this is our year. I don’t say this because I’ve got numbers to back me up (because I don’t), or because I’m generally an overly optimistic cheerleader of life (though I am). I say this because it’s our only choice. This has to be our year. As Sundance kicks off in Park City, a large handful of women are about to debut their new films and fresh voices to the world. And after interviewing almost all of them myself I can say, in my most eloquent terms, that this year’s slate of Sundance female filmmakers is absolutely badass. The […]
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Theatrical’s Not Dead; It Just Smells Like It
This article by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez about the distribution of their Detroit firefighter documentary Burn originally appeared in our Fall, 2013 print edition. It is appearing online for the first time. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain As filmgoers are increasingly flooded with new media options to keep them at home, the prevailing theory is that the days of theatrical releases for independent films are in their last slow throes. We disagree because we just spent the last year filling 300- to 2,000-seat theaters in 170 cities with our firefighter documentary Burn. We […]
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Autodesk Smoke 2013 – Super NLE?
Once life was simple. NLEs were NLEs. They did offline editing of conspicuously compressed picture with unmixed audio tracks and limited titling. Maybe it started with the MiniDV revolution 15 years ago, but over time low-end NLEs competed with high-end NLEs in tools and feature sets, becoming today’s desktop online systems and sealing the fate of many midlevel post facilities. Along the way several NLEs became suites of applications called “studios.” Back in 2005, for instance, Final Cut Studio arrived as FCP bundled with DVD Studio Pro, Motion, LiveType, SoundTrack Pro, Cinema Tools and Compressor. Two years later, Color, for […]
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Sony Vegas
I’ve been editing commercials and longform programs with Sony Vegas Pro since 2005. Our latest feature documentary, They Wore the Red Suit, was edited, color corrected and mixed totally in Vegas. Why Vegas? The editor I brought in for this project was experienced with Avid and FCP but had never used Vegas before. I asked him to try it for a few days, and if he wasn’t happy, I’d bring in the system of his choice. After a week, he said he couldn’t have made as much progress with either of his old “favorites.” My initial decision to use Vegas […]
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Adobe Premiere Pro CC
The first project I used Adobe Premiere Pro on was a short film called “Masterpiece” that I created for Filmmaker Magazine at Sundance 2011. Prior to that, I’d been a Final Cut Pro devotee for a decade — and even reviewed the two previous generations of Final Cut Studio for Filmmaker. My history with digital editing goes back to late 2001. I was working on a short film, shot on 16mm, which I’d initially intended to cut on an old school Steenbeck. But when that fell through, I tracked down and installed a bootleg copy of Final Cut 2 on […]
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Avid Media Composer
For many film editors, including yours truly, Avid’s Media Composer is the preferred software for cutting our work. It’s rock solid, powerful and once you really know how to use it, one of the most versatile tools for getting the job done. However, over the past several years the future of the Media Composer platform has been in doubt. Strong competitors moved into the marketplace, and Avid, once king of digital editing, seemed headed to the sidelines. But as fast as it seemed to fall, Media Composer may be making a comeback, due in part to major enhancements to the […]
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Burn Self-Distribution Resource List
DIGITAL PRINTS Different By Design (Los Angeles) (310) 689-2470 http://www.dxdproductions.com/ Feature film DCP master: $10/minute + $50 setup fee + $150/drive Duplicates (on USB hard drive): $150 each Feature film Blu-ray master: $250 Duplicates: $25 each Trailer DCP master: $10/minute + $50 setup fee + $25/thumb drive Duplicates (on USB thumb drive): $25 each Trailer Blu-ray master: $250 Duplicates: $25 POSTERS & POSTCARDS U Printing www.uprinting.com They’re in Los Angeles, so you can pick up directly from them and avoid shipping costs. Posters (27×39 100-pound glossy) $1070 for 2,000; postcards $420 for 10,000. WEBSTORE Shopify http://www.shopify.com/ Prices vary […]
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The Watergate Theory of Screenwriting
At the 2013 Screenwriting Research Network International Conference, Larry Gross discusses narrative, knowledge and Kurosawa’s Ikiru. I want to begin by expressing my sense of unworthiness at being offered the chance to give this keynote address, given the stature of some of those who proceeded me in performing the task, and I want to express briefly my personal admiration for three of these predecessors. Here in Madison, Wisconsin, I don’t have to explain the importance of David Bordwell as one of the world’s greatest film scholars. I only want to mention that I first became aware of his work in […]
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Too Much of a Good Thing?
Digital cinema has afforded independent filmmakers many benefits, one of which is the ability to achieve something previously only the province of big-budget films: very high shooting ratios. However, the resulting mass of footage can overrun the typical understaffed, underfunded, low-budget edit room. “You’re shooting more footage, and usually with two cameras,” says Paul Frank, editor of the recent Maggie Carey comedy The To Do List. While he notes that there are many pros to this way of shooting — it benefits performance, it allows for more improvisation and, ultimately, more options in the edit room — he also notes […]
