The first rule of Film Week is that if you have time to blog during Film Week, you’re probably not doing it right. The second rule of Film Week is that if you attend, the best part is that you will meet all kinds of awesome people making awesome films. This may intimidate you. It’s okay. Be cool. I guess that’s the third rule of Film Week, bro: just be cool. When the good folks at Filmmaker Magazine asked me to blog about Film Week again this year, I knew I wanted to write about some of the awesome people […]
IFP’s Independent Film Week came to a close on Thursday, I took the train home on Friday, spent Saturday relaxing, and here we are…ready to take a more in-depth look at my time in New York City. I’ve already covered practicing my pitch in the days leading up to Film Week, delivering that pitch at the Emerging Narrative orientation, and experiencing unexpected moments during my one-on-one meetings. But I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface – on either the nuts-and-bolts level, or that philosophical plane that I’ve become so fond of. To begin with, let me explain a little bit more about what […]
When D.P. Sean Meehan went to college he was undecided about what he would study. But in his first semester he took an American Film studies class and it prompted him to call his parents two weeks into school and say, “I’m sorry, I’m going to be a film major.” He then spent all his time turning Boston College’s film department into “my own mini film production major.” He took as many classes as possible and also did side projects to learn about the filmmaking process. Only graduating in 2011, Sean’s already freelancing regularly for a variety of clients. I […]
Filmmaker has a curated page on Kickstarter, where we point you towards projects that we think are worthy of your attention. Here are our recent additions, and to read more about them visit them via Filmmaker Magazine on Kickstarter. Love Spasm: New York underground film icon Nick Zedd has just launched a campaign for what sounds like an ambitious feature set to shoot in Berlin. “The themes of this movie are love, sexual freedom, loyalty, human insecurity and the strategies people employ to survive and maintain relationships within the unnatural constraints imposed upon them by the economic pressures of capitalism, […]
Stephen Chbosky has been influenced by a lot of angsty classics, like The Graduate and Catcher in the Rye. In 1999, he made his own contribution to the canon, releasing The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a young-adult novel whose tough themes helped make it a formidable word-of-mouth success, becoming the best-selling title from MTV Books by 2000. Within seven years, it sold nearly 800,000 copies, while also getting regularly challenged by the American Library Association for its exploration of drug use, homosexuality, and adolescent suicide. A film version seemed inevitable, but Chbosky wasn’t ready to hand over his polarizing […]
Hi, my name is Ian Harnarine and I’m one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” for 2012. My short film Doubles With Slight Pepper won the award for Best Canadian Short Film at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and also won the Genie Award (Canada’s Oscar). I am adapting the short film into a feature and was invited back by the festival to compete in their PITCH THIS! competition. I will compete with five other filmmakers that each have six minutes to pitch their feature film idea to a live audience of over 200 industry […]
Hello, Jesse Epstein here. I’m blogging on behalf of “Team Skeeter” at the IFP Independent Film Week. We’ve been here with our feature documentary, Mosquito, which is currently in production. It’s been quite an intense week so far (and it’s only Tuesday!). We had our screening today, had meetings yesterday and today, and more meetings are lined up for tomorrow and Thursday. We’re learning a lot and feeling very grateful to be here with the project. But let me back up… The night before Film Week started I found myself unexpectedly extra-motivated for my two morning meetings because I was […]
Is there such a thing as an opportunity of a lifetime? During the first two days of IFP’s Independent Film Week, it became clear that the answer is yes and no. Yes, a conversation, a short film, a meeting, a festival acceptance, can be the opportunity that changes everything, but a career isn’t just a year or one film – it’s a lifetime of dedication to craft. In his impressively extemporaneous speech, J.C. Chandor (above) recalled not the glories of having his first feature, Margin Call, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, but the 15 years he spent trying to […]
If independent film is going to prosper well into the 21st century, many would agree that there must be some sort of interdependence between filmmakers, a collective effort that will help everyone to communicate and share resources. Thankfully, there is already a driven group of Americans who are doing exactly that, providing a template that indie film can examine and emulate. It’s the Occupy movement. No matter how you feel about their politics, Occupy has utilized new technology and social media better than many organizations and affinity groups in the United States. And if you look closely at how they […]
I haven’t taken many classes on pitching. Wait. I’ve never taken any classes on pitching. Pitching is meant to be a precise, pressurized maneuver that either takes your project to the next stage or closes another door in its face. It is the subject of much study, stress and numerous overpriced workshops. Naturally, one always feels some amount of pressure before a pitch–similar to what I experienced as a dancer prior to going on stage each evening. Regardless of how many past meetings were nailed or how many accolades were received, one rarely goes into these “performances of passion” without […]