Fall 2020
25 New Faces of Film 2020
Filmmaker is now out with its annual 25 New Faces, our picks of directors, writers, producers, editors and cinematographers who are exciting us right now. Click here to read this year’s list.
Features
Travel Companions: Steven Soderbergh on Cruise-Ship Shooting, Working with Deborah Eisenberg and Meryl Streep, and Let Them All Talk
In August 2019, when Steven Soderbergh shot Let Them All Talk, COVID-19 was not on his mind, except to the degree that his research on Contagion (2011) had convinced him that a pandemic similar to the one depicted in the film was inevitable. And yet, one of the most compelling aspects of the workaholic director’s latest feature (streaming this Fall on HBO Max) is that the eight-day Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2, during which most of the movie is set, now can be read as a metaphor for the necessarily transformational journey from before to after COVID. In […]
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Get Ready to Stream: Delivering a Film in 2020 to a Virtual Festival
Six months ago, I was considering an update to my now biennial guide on how to prepare your film for festival exhibition. The 2018 version of that guide is available on the Filmmaker website and is a good reference if you are showing your film at a drive-in or outdoor screening that has a DCP server or some other file-based playback system. However, the majority of festival screenings happening this fall and into next year will be on virtual festival platforms. Pre-pandemic, I would’ve told you that the widespread adoption of a streaming component to festivals was as likely as […]
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How to Cut a Trailer Redux: The Styles and Trends Reshaping the Art of Film Advertising
The following article was originally published in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2020 print edition. We’re drowning in entertainment. Dozens of streamers, from mainstream catnip like Netflix and Disney+ to niche platforms like the Criterion Channel, each offer hundreds of feature films, limited series and TV shows. National theater chains like AMC and arthouse cinemas like the Alamo Drafthouse—at least before and hopefully after the pandemic—serve up fresh options every week on more than 40,000 screens. And legacy networks on basic cable, from NBC to TBS, continue to deliver a firehose of prerecorded content and live broadcasts every day. How to choose? Simple: […]
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New Authority: The Film Set Job of the COVID-19 Compliance Supervisor
The following article on film-set COVID-19 safety departments was originally published in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2020 print issue. When Heather Drake-Bianchi landed her first job as a COVID-19 compliance supervisor, the New York–based set medic didn’t realize the gravity of the responsibility she’d been given. “At first, I thought I was just going to be like a ’set medic plus,’ Drake-Bianchi said. “Then, on day one of the shoot, when we did the first morning safety briefing, one of the producers said, ’Just so everybody knows, whatever Heather says goes. She has the capacity to shut this entire shoot down.’” Drake-Bianchi’s […]
Get Ready to Stream: Delivering a Film in 2020 to a Virtual Festival
How to Cut a Trailer Redux: The Styles and Trends Reshaping the Art of Film Advertising
New Authority: The Film Set Job of the COVID-19 Compliance Supervisor
Other articles
- Audiences Are Our Biggest Stakeholders, And We Can’t Leave Them Behind
- Viewing Disability
- The Clock is Ticking: Filmmakers on Surviving Through the Pandemic
- The Fear Returns: Fangoria Enters a New Era with New Ownership
- Ballard in the Rear View
- Building the Best Future
- Flipping the Script: Mary Harron Interviews Radha Blank About Her Spirited and Wise New York Comedy, The Forty-Year-Old Version
- Embracing Hybridity
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Crime Family
“We don’t call you ’hun’ or ’sweetheart’ or ’baby,’” says Theresa (Debra Winger) to her daughter Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) late in Miranda July’s new Kajillionaire, the filmmaker’s dreamily eccentric interrogation into the social construct of familial love. “We don’t wrap little birthday presents with ribbons,” she continues, acidly, as Old Dolio looks on in despair. Old Dolio has just brought in $1,575 from an airport luggage scam—the family, which includes dad Robert (Richard Jenkins), makes their living from a succession of convoluted small-time cons that net in the two and three and, only sometimes, four figures—and she’d just […]
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Seeing the Unseen: Charlie Kaufman’s 2020, Antkind and I’m Thinking of Ending Things
“My thinking is silly. My memories are preposterous. My ideas are laughable. I am a pompous clown. I can, on occasion, become aware of this. There are moments of clarity that I find all the more humiliating because I can see myself as others likely do, but I cannot control any of it. The pathetic, comical thought process continues, almost as if a script is playing out. Almost as if I myself am a puppet, defined by some external force, written to be the foil in some strange cosmic entertainment witnessed by someone somewhere. But who or what? And why? […]
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The Noise Inside: Writer/Director Darius Marder on Sound of Metal
The following interview with Darius Marder about Sound of Metal, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, was originally published in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2020 print edition. Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal stars Riz Ahmed as Ruben, the drummer for a two-person heavy metal band who loses his hearing and, for much of the film, his perspective and sense of self as a result. His hearing falters and almost entirely disappears early in the film during the middle of a tour with his girlfriend/bandmate Lou (Olivia Cooke). Both are recovering addicts, and as their world is turned upside down, Lou fears Ruben […]
Crime Family
Seeing the Unseen: Charlie Kaufman’s 2020, Antkind and I’m Thinking of Ending Things
The Noise Inside: Writer/Director Darius Marder on Sound of Metal
