These days, anybody with a film production blog is calling for a revolution. The call to arms takes many forms. Some strident, some prescriptive. All are calling for big, big change. But to my mind, a revolution can be pretty simple. It can start with just a simple change of perspective — or even a mantra. Here’s mine: There’s No Money. I know, I know, this is not news. Thanks to blogs, Twitter feeds, and other social media, we’re inundated with musings about the independent film apocalypse and the poverty of our filmmaking class. But clearly, the individual’s lack of […]
At the end of 2012, Matt Syzmanowski penned a guest post for us on the development of his feature, The Purple Onion. Now, as he’s finishing the final cut of the film, he sends us this follow-up detailing one unusual step along the way: screening the film to a large audience at Cinequest as a work-in-progress. Below are his five pieces of advice for any filmmaker on improving a cut using audience feedback. — SM The Cinequest Film Festival invited us to screen our debut feature film, The Purple Onion, long before it was even completed. We knew we didn’t […]
Take a look at Andrew Disney’s website — with his commercials, music video work et al. neatly assembled in their own sections — and you’ll see a very well-organized director adept at representing himself. An NYU alum, Disney (yes, he’s related, though not closely) made his feature debut with 2011’s Searching for Sonny, shot in his hometown of Fort Worth. Now an Austin resident, Disney returns with Intramural, a comedy of arrested development about a group of friends who get their fifth grade football team back together. Pitched as being in the vein of Wet Hot American Summer and Hot […]
There were two big camera announcements at NAB yesterday. First up AJA is entering the camera market with CION. This is a 4K camera with global shutter that has the ergonomics and connections of a more traditional camera. It’s priced at just under $9000 for the body and a power adapter. However there’s some things to keep in mind. It’s PL mount only so the lens options will be pricier. It also only takes AJA PAk Drives which run about $700 for 256 GB and $1300 for 512 GB, so media will not be cheap. And you’ll need to get […]
Welcome to Filmmaker Magazine’s fourth annual digital cinema camera round-up. Each year for reasons of publishing schedule, this overview is written on the brink of the big NAB show in Las Vegas. By the time some of you read this, journalists and bloggers will have breathlessly uploaded each and every scrap of breaking news from the frenzied show floor, saving you the airfare, sore feet, and those Vegas cab fares calibrated to expense accounts. But what do these splashy product introductions mean? Do we need to trade up our cameras? How soon? Are more resolution, bit depth, frame rates, color […]
Here are some of the articles I’ve read this week that I recommend for your Sunday afternoon reading. “Whose Brooklyn Is It Anyway?” wonders A.O. Scott at the New York Times as he considers Spike Lee’s recent comments on the borough’s gentrification: Every city is simultaneously a seedbed of novelty and a hothouse of nostalgia, and modern New York presents a daily dialectic of progress and loss. As Colson Whitehead notes in “The Colossus of New York,” you become a New Yorker — or perhaps a true resident of any place, whether you were born there or not — when […]
I’m a writer-director/producer with a couple of features under my belt. Since the last one was released (Burning Annie), the world’s economy collapsed, half of the studios’ arthouse labels folded, and the audiences for music, books, and film splintered into a million fragments. At the same time, smartphones and app-culture rose to dominance. My new film Laundry Day is in post. As I warily eye the world that I will be releasing my baby into, I’m somewhat alarmed by the large and growing divide between modern audiences and modern distributors, and how inadequate the trends of the moment are for […]
Nicola Marsh was one of two cinematographers for Twenty Feet from Stardom, this year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary. She’s worked with director Morgan Neville on a number of projects, including Troubadours and The Night James Brown Saved Boston as well as other directors including Cameron Crowe on Pearl Jam Twenty and The Union. Marsh, who has just finished shooting a reality show in the Caribbean, spoke to us about shooting Twenty Feet from Stardom, the different cameras used on the project and the hidden strengths of older lenses. Filmmaker: For Twenty Feet from Stardom you were shooting with […]
Perhaps it’s the fabulist way its characters relay their inverted sense of normality or their ragged way of dress, but something about Aaron Schimberg’s debut feature Go Down Death is unshakably anachronistic — and it’s not just the black-and-white 16 mm. Fitting then, that the film accounts for the first-ever theatrical run at the Williamsburg repertory theater, Spectacle. Screenings begin this Friday, with select showings in Smell-o-Vision, the aromatic brain child of producer-editor Vanessa McDonnell, who considers Go Down Death to be the ultimate vehicle for “the weird perfumes and other odd tinctures I’ve made out of plants, foods, etc.,” aside from […]
For the past couple of years, Panasonic has taken a backseat to Sony and Canon in the cinematography and indie movie world. While Sony and Canon raced to produce new large-sensor cameras in different configurations and prices, Panasonic was content to stick with the low-end AG-AF100, which was released at the end of 2010 and has seen few updates. They have also had some success in ultra low-budget production with the GH2 and GH3, which produce good quality video but are primarily stills cameras. This year Panasonic seems intent on making its move. Or, as a product manager said at […]