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The Limits of Quality Control: On Sticking with Mini-DV
There are many reasons why people get into making movies, but the fetishizing of gadgets might be my least favorite. Cheaper, higher-end video cameras make “quality” more attainable, but no matter how many pixels there might be in a high-definition image, it can’t make a story clearer. Yet, independent filmmakers are often drawn to the newest, hottest equipment, as if the barrier to making a decent movie can be scaled by stacking the latest and fanciest gear and climbing over. I’ve made four nonfiction features and, like a digital video Luddite, I’ve shot all of them with my trusty Panasonic […]
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Not an Option: The Ins and Outs of Shopping Agreements
The motion picture and television industries have become increasingly informal in recent years. In the past, agents would sign actors and writers before trying to sell their services or material, members of producing teams would sign collaboration agreements with their partners before taking a project to a studio, and producers would enter into written option agreements with writers under which they would pay money to exclusively option the motion picture and television rights to a property. These days, however, many agents will “hip-pocket” new artists and promote them without a contract to avoid commitment; a collaborator will walk a project […]
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Editing Today: Beyond the NLE
David Lean once called editing the soul of filmmaking. Today it’s more like the Mission Control. You’ve got to understand pixel counts, bit rates, bit depth, color sampling, sampling frequencies, frame rates, codecs, RAW files, deBayering, audio channels, waveform displays, vectorscopes, audio levels, LUTs, proxies, file-wrappers, Log gammas, XML, titling, effects — need I go on? Arcane stuff that used to be the domain of video engineers with EE degrees. To ensure a smooth and efficient postproduction “workflow” (term borrowed from I.T.), you must know about cameras too: which frame sizes they capture, which codecs they employ, which gammas they […]
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Graphic Design: Jeff Soyk on Hollow
Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s award-winning interactive documentary Hollow employs a particularly bold use of graphics, using them to provide bursts of information quickly, to frame interview material and to even provoke calls to action. Of her approach, McMillion says, “I would provide photographs and quotes [to designer Jeff Soyk], and we would talk about what ways they would work in the piece. And then he’d do the graphic design. Below, Soyk talks about the above data visualization. Jeff Soyk, co-producer and lead designer: When reviewing the project assets, I came across Elaine’s photo of the abandoned police department in War, W. […]
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Graphic Design: Joshua Ligairi and Darin Anderson on Plan 241
Plan 241 is an in-production, feature-length documentary about the FBI investigation into Alaska militia leader Schaeffer Cox, who was convicted of stockpiling illegal weapons and conspiracy to murder federal agents. From filmmaker Joshua Ligairi, it tells a human story enriched by the copious documentation and statistics generated by a criminal case. Below, Ligairi discusses his decision to incorporate graphics in his documentary, and designer/animator Darin Anderson elaborates upon the specific approach. Joshua Ligairi, director: The people who make the most interesting characters aren’t always the best choice for delivering information in a clear and concise way. Text, when created with […]
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Graphic Design: Miao Wang’s We the Economy
For We the Economy, the 20-part web series collaboration between Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions and Morgan Spurlock’s Cinelan, documentary director Miao Wang tackled the topic of globalization and trade with China. Her short intercuts interviews with elegantly designed yet informationally dense graphics. Below, she and her motion graphic artist discuss challenges and solutions. Miao Wang, director: The biggest challenge of this project from day one has been how to address such an immense topic in such a short five-to-seven minute film. I knew I wanted to make a film driven by poignant human elements and stories, while also providing concrete […]
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“It’s Just a General”: How to Take a General Meeting
At some point in your career, things are going to break your way — you’ll be lucky enough to have your crowdfunded labor of love generate some heat at a big festival. Or your short film will go viral. Or maybe you’ll sell a hot spec or make the Black List. Whatever happens, you’ll land managers and agents, and people in L.A. will want to meet you — and not a minute too soon, because you’re four months behind on rent and need to pay for T-shirts for all your backers. It’s time to meet studio execs looking to hire […]
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Still on the Job: Filmmakers on Their Second Jobs
Here’s the funny thing about an article on second jobs in filmmaking: It’s always relevant. The last piece I wrote for Filmmaker on this topic is still referenced: people continue to call me up to talk about it, and nearly as often as they did when it first appeared. But it’s been five years since I wrote it. So, as part of our ongoing look at the financial lives of artists, we thought it would be a good idea to revisit some of the filmmakers we interviewed in 2009 and see how their relationships with their second jobs have evolved […]
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Note This! How to Successfully — and Thankfully — Receive Notes on Your Film or Screenplay
“I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.” – Bernard Malamud “Relax and take notes, while I take tokes.” – Notorious B.I.G. I was once at a work-in-progress screening of an independent film for which we were asked to give notes. It was a long cut, and we’d all come out in the rain. After the screening, the director sat by himself near us. When someone addressed him directly, he […]
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Memories of Underdevelopment
With a few exceptions, independent movies are rarely developed like studio-produced ones. Certainly for ultra-low and micro-budget independents, the process is much less formal and far less cash-infused. Multiple paid rewrites until a script shines; thinking through all the creative and logistical problems with top-line producers before firing up the camera; packaging the right combination of talent and money that works best for the material at hand — studios and larger production companies have salaried executives responsible for this undeniably crucial work. But in the independent world, when overtaxed producers perform these tasks, it can be unreliable in its timeline […]
