Issues
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Milk Money: Director Kelly Reichardt on the New World and Nascent Capitalism of First Cow
First Cow marks the fifth film in 14 years on which director Kelly Reichardt has collaborated with screenwriter–novelist Jon Raymond. I can’t think of a director–writer team in America that has produced so much superior work during this time period—Reichardt is one of the talents on whom hope for the creative possibilities of American filmmaking now rests. Like Reichardt and Raymond’s first partnership, the critically lauded, microbudgeted Old Joy (2005), First Cow is a lyrical tragicomic story of male friendship, emerging against the background of the almost intoxicating beauty of the Oregon woods. But this time, Reichardt’s telling a more […]
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Out of the Spotlight: A 2020 Update on Film Tax Incentives in the U.S.
It’s an election year, and film tax incentives are in the news. Among small government types, state government tax dollars in the form of tax credits and rebates for film and television production will always be controversial. A September 2019 report by Michael Thom, associate professor at the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy, adopted a “quasi-experimental” research approach to throw doubt on the role that incentives play in improving a state’s employment rate. The report, noted David Robb in Deadline, was “funded by the Koch Foundation, whose billionaire brothers—Charles and David Koch—virtually destroyed the Florida’s film […]
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Air Rights: Shooting with Drones, the Fine Print
In 2010, Eric Austin made a bold choice. The Texas-based father of three quit his day job as a sales rep to focus solely on his side hustle, flying unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)—commonly known as drones. He had a three-month job lined up on a Disney-produced show in Hawaii piloting his single-rotor helicopter adorned with a Canon 7D. In those few months, he would earn more than in a year at his old job. But before Austin ever spun his blades, he was grounded. Inundated by aerial permit requests and unable to get definitive guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration […]
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Location Shooting and Independent Production: A History of Necessity and Innovation
In the 1910s, movie moguls built the major Hollywood studios to control every aspect of film production. Rather than succumbing to unpredictable weather and transporting an army of workers across the globe, they built massive sets, stages and large backlot settings like Western streets and jungles. Hundreds of employees churned out movies with near assembly-line efficiency. These studios created strong barriers to entry for independent filmmakers, who made do with inferior rental studio lots. However, a dramatic location, creatively captured, could rival any Hollywood construction. On location, low-budget and independent filmmakers sought production value on the cheap. Westerns proved to […]
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Editor’s Letter
Near the start of this issue, after the latest from our stellar trio of columnists, you’ll find an article on microbudget production by producer Mike S. Ryan. Back in the mid-1990s, Filmmaker made its bones by covering the microbudget scene, printing the budgets alongside our customary director deep dives. These pieces were very much about how you make a microbudget film—the tricks, tips, cheats and hacks. But now, with Filmmaker in its 28th year, the topic is less novel. On a purely technical level, anyone can shoot a microbudget film on their phone, cut it on their laptop and post […]
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Two or Three Things They Know About You: Marketing Independent Film with Behavioral Data
Dear filmmakers, surveillance capitalism is your friend. Like every other thing we purchase nowadays, movies have been subsumed into the new digital economy, where behavioral data, influence campaigns and social media marketing are an integral part of doing business. Morally, you might have a problem with Mark Zuckerberg’s corporate practices, but there’s no getting around the fact that Facebook and Instagram hold some of the most powerful tools to reach people and manipulate their decision-making—including their choice of which movie to see on a given weekend. “It’s definitely been a help for smaller filmmakers,” says Stephen Metzger, director of marketing […]
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Air Rights
In 2010, Eric Austin made a bold choice. The Texas-based father of three quit his day job as a sales rep to focus solely on his side hustle, flying unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)—commonly known as drones. He had a three-month job lined up on a Disney-produced show in Hawaii piloting his single-rotor helicopter adorned with a Canon 7D. In those few months, he would earn more than in a year at his old job. But before Austin ever spun his blades, he was grounded. Inundated by aerial permit requests and unable to get definitive guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration […]
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The Right Time to Sell? Pinpointing Trends in Independent Film Sales
Just as the marketplace for independent features is shifting on the distribution side, so is the world of film financing. Since 2009, raising financing for low- to mid-budget films has been in a state of flux, a series of changes now culminating in the dominance of streaming platforms, which are disrupting traditional territory-based sales models while also employing inscrutable algorithmic methods to guide their purchasing decisions. “The middle has dropped out, and budgets are getting smaller,” says Matthew Helderman, partner in BondIt Media, which provides credit financing for film and television productions. Projects that a few years ago might have […]
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Messing With the Medium: On the Textured Pleasures of the Handmade Film
Last summer, filmmaker Jennifer West and I were invited to talk at Femmebit, an LA-based triennial celebration of media made by women. I had been thinking about materiality and mediamaking practices, and Jennifer is known for a stunning body of work centered on physically manipulating strips of film. We decided to call our event “Messing With the Medium: Radical Materiality in Feminist Media” and challenged each other on stage in a battle of clips, each of us presenting a visual example of some sort of feminist creative intervention, along with a two-minute argument for its contributions to an expanded history […]
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Team Building: On Wanda Bershen and Film Safety Nets
On September 28th, 2019, Wanda Bershen died quietly, alone and under fairly tragic circumstances, after being rushed to the hospital from a rehabilitation facility on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was 75 years old, and very few people were aware of her passing. This piece is one part obituary for Wanda—a remarkable woman who certainly deserves to be remembered lovingly in Filmmaker—and one part urgent call-to-action for our industry to have a long-overdue discussion about a difficult and troubling topic: the lack of safety nets, resiliency and end-of-life supports in place for aging independent film professionals. The vast […]
