Following the filming of The Mandalorian, accelerated interest grew in the emerging technologies utilized to create this visually stunning epic. Outside of the creation of the green screen, the virtual production technology behind The Mandalorian is one the most cutting-edge recent creations impacting the industry. In fact, according to Technavio, 46% of the projected USD $1.85B global growth, is expected to come from North America exclusively. The recent popularity and capabilities of virtual production technology could not have come at a more opportune time. Virtual production technology permits film crews and productions to be anywhere in the world with the […]
Saturday, March 5th marks the centennial of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s birth, and numerous retrospectives are being held worldwide commemorating the late Italian filmmaker. Tragically murdered at the age of 53, weeks before his infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, was set to premiere, Pasolini’s output continues to attract cinephile appreciation, political discourse, cultural reevaluation and a fair share of controversy. “His movies, influenced by his struggle to reconcile his concerns with Marx, Freud and Christ, often drew him into conflict with the Roman Catholic church and with secular authorities,” reflected The New York Times in 1990. Currently running […]
The last two years have prompted much contemplation and reconsideration of the reasons why we make our films as well as the ways in which we make them. What aspect of your filmmaking—whether in your creative process, the way you finance your films, your production methodology or the way you relate to your audience—did you have to reinvent in order to make and complete the film you are bringing to the festival this year? Personally, I feel that the pandemic just exaggerates all the issues you already face in production to an almost comedic level… you have to laugh so […]
A Love Song depicts the reconnection and the romance of childhood sweethearts, decades removed from their last meeting. Both widowed now, they use the meeting to reflect on life, love, and loss. It all takes place in an American West that is neither rugged like the films of yesteryear nor depleted like more more recent revisionist takes, but quiet and expansive. Cinematographer Herrera Salcedo explains why 16mm was the right format to capture both characters and the landscapes and how he used the camera to bring the characters to life. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
Shot by director of photography Bruno Delbonnel in stark black and white using the Academy aspect ratio, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is an impressively lean (105 minutes total runtime) and stylized take. A reserved Denzel Washington stars in the title role alongside Coen’s wife Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, reprising a performance she gave for the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2016. In his first film without his brother Ethan, Coen eschews halfhearted attempts to “open up the text,” instead choosing to embrace its theatricality by filming the entire production on Warner Brothers’s soundstages in Burbank, California before and, […]
The Southern Documentary Fund has just announced ten projects that will receive $10,000 production grants, unrestricted funds supporting projects in varying stages of productions. Half the grants go with aspiring and emerging makers, while non-first-time filmmakers include Julie Dash, whose highly influential Daughters of the Dust was the first feature directed by an African American woman to receive general theatrical release in the U.S. Says Southern Documentary Fund Executive Director Kristy Garcia Breneman in a press release, “This year’s applicant pool was rich with Southern talent, telling a vast range of powerful stories from across our region – we were […]
I just completed my second feature film, This Is Not a War Story. It’s a narrative hybrid film, complete with combat veterans denouncing war and Tom Waits wailing on the end credits. The film went from a microbudget experiment in 2017 to a Warner Media/HBO release in 2021. The supporting cast is composed entirely of non-actor veterans. We shot for 41 spread-out days, (with no bone-crushing overtime) and with a crew of eight-to-12 dedicated crewmembers functioning as a collective, in the model of a worker co-op. Our schedule was designed around two-week shooting periods, strategically scheduled over a course of […]
Friday, March 13, 2020, two days after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Jamin O’Brien had a check in his hand. The producer was headed to christen a new venture, an adaptation of the nonfiction bestseller The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace to be directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor. “I was literally going to deliver the deposit check for our production offices, which were going to open Monday, when we were shut down,” says O’Brien. Now, a little more than a year later, O’Brien is preparing to navigate the world of post-COVID film production for the first […]
The seven-episode Ouverture of Something That Never Ended has garnered millions of views since it was posted on YouTube in November. Sponsored by Gucci, the series marks the latest collaboration between director Gus van Sant and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, HKSC, following the features Paranoid Park and Psycho. (Overture is co-directed by Van Sant and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele,) Shot on location over a three-week period in the fall, the series was Doyle’s first chance to work under new Covid-19 protocols. Extensive testing and social distancing were among the steps taken during the production. With over 100 films to his […]
Duplicity in all its forms lurks just below the surface in Erin Vassilopoulos’s debut feature, Superior, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival last weekend. Expanded from a short she made in film school, Vassilopoulos’s feature concerns two fraternal twin sisters (Alessandra and Ani Mesa) unexpectedly reuniting after six years apart. The film opens in October of 1987, with Marian (Alessandra), a touring musician on the run from a secretive past, returning to her hometown to spend a few days with her sister, Vivian (Ani). The two sisters haven’t spoken in six years, spending the interim leading […]