To rhyme with the year, I’ve expanded this year’s roundup of our most popular posts, as determined by Google Analytics, from 10 to 20. It’s full of both expected entries — our 25 New Faces scores highly every year — as well as a few surprises. It also shows the dominance of TV and streaming, or perhaps the ’20 decline in theatrical exhibition. So many of the articles on this list — which aren’t “a best of the year,” although many are indeed that — are the ones that intersected best with search analytics, caught viral waves, or rode along […]
In 1941, a 25-year-old Orson Welles made one of cinema’s most auspicious debuts by directing, co-writing, starring in and producing Citizen Kane. With Mank—David Fincher’s look at the evolution of Kane’s screenplay—cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt makes an impressive feature bow of his own. After working his way up through the ranks of grip and electric and earning DP credits on the shows Legion, Mindhunter and Fargo, Messerschmidt’s very first fiction feature has landed him in the midst of Oscar conversation. With Mank now streaming on Netflix, Messerschmidt spoke with Filmmaker about deep focus, high ISOs and painting in lens flares; and how even […]
Matthew Libatique likes to say that sometimes lighting needs to be the lead guitarist and sometimes it needs to be the drummer. The Prom is definitely a lead guitarist kind of movie. An adaptation of the popular musical, The Prom follows four Broadway personalities (Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells) hoping to boost their careers by descending on small town Indiana as “celebrity activists” in service of the cause of a gay student banned from attending the titular bash with her partner of choice. With the movie now streaming on Netflix, Libatique talked with Filmmaker about working with […]
There’s something circular to the idea of Newton Thomas Sigel shooting firefights in the jungle on 16mm. It’s how Sigel’s career began, hauling gear into Central American combat zones as a photojournalist and documentarian in the 1980s. His first narrative as a cinematographer, Latino, was set during the Contra War in Nicaragua. His first studio break came with a 2nd Unit gig on Oliver Stone’s Platoon. Sigel’s latest, Da 5 Bloods, finds him back in the jungle, 16mm camera in hand. Filmed over three months in Vietnam and Thailand and directed by Spike Lee, Da 5 Bloods follows four of the […]
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 […]
Welcome to Filmmaker’s 28th anniversary edition. If you are reading this editor’s letter, there’s a good chance you are reading it in a print issue that has been delivered to your mailbox or that you purchased at a newsstand or bookstore. After a summer issue break, when Filmmaker went PDF due to bookstores closing and all the uncertainty around the pandemic, we’re grateful to be back with a physical edition—grateful to our advertisers, our publisher, IFP and to you for your continuing readership and support. There’s a reason we pushed hard to return to print with this issue, and it’s partly sentimental: […]
With a list of credits that includes Annabelle, Hush and The Bye Bye Man, cinematographer James Kniest has spent a fair share of his career toiling in horror. “I somehow got into doing all these dark genre films and episodics, which I like a lot,” said Kniest, “but I often times say jokingly, ‘Can’t I just do a romantic comedy?’” The Haunting of Bly Manor fulfills half of that request. The second installment in Netflix’s Haunting Of anthology series, Bly Manor is a gothic romance that leans heavily into the latter. When the horror does arrive, it’s less jump scares and more […]
Laboring in a greenscreen expanse for months on end never seemed like a particularly pleasant way of working. Not for the crew, confined to a windowless stage with walls roughly the same hue as green Tropical Skittles. Not for the actors, performing in a world they can’t see. And not for the cinematographer, surrendering control of the background that will ultimately replace the verdant swath of green. StageCraft, a new technology that employs a vast array of LED video screens, provides an appealing alternative for capturing virtual environments. Created in partnership with Epic Games and Industrial Light & Magic, StageCraft offers […]
Writer-director Scott Wiper’s The Big Ugly is the best kind of genre film, a crime movie aware of the traditions in which it’s working but not beholden to them; combining elements of ’40s and ’50s crime fiction (Jim Thompson seems to be a particular touchstone) with the flavor of ’70s Sam Peckinpah and Walter Hill filtered through the visual grammar of ’90s Tony Scott, The Big Ugly synthesizes its influences into a unique and compelling western noir. Its emotional power comes largely from Wiper’s richly textured script and the performances by his consistently riveting ensemble, which includes Vinnie Jones, Malcolm […]
As previously announced, Filmmaker‘s Summer 2020 issue is being published as a PDF, and it’s now online and available for single-issue purchase. It’s our largest page-count ever (244 pages!), and our designers, Caspar Newbolt and Charlotte Gosch, tweaked the whole design to make it a beautiful and comfortable experience on both a tablet and a laptop in either portrait or landscape view. For the first time, we’ve also enabled the issue to be purchased individually as a PDF for $5.95, and you can do that by clicking here or on the button below using PayPal or your credit card. On […]