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Editor’s Letter
I can’t think of a better film to grace the cover of the final issue of Filmmaker’s 30th anniversary year than Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama. From its opening scenes, it impresses as a work of classic independent cinema—social realism shot through with unexpected creative flourishes and informed by the personal life experience of its maker. A version of this film might have been made in each of Filmmaker’s three decades, but with different emphases, of course, and perhaps under very different circumstances. The story of this one—a U.K./U.S. production backed by Channel 4 and A24—was told last issue by Anthony […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 27, 2023 -
Life (And Work) After Film School
When I graduated film school after years of grueling work, I really felt like my university should have rolled out a cannon and launched me directly at the Hollywood sign. With my diploma in hand, the industry was my oyster. I knew everything there was to know—I thought. Instead, it was as if somebody had forgotten to aim the cannon properly, because it felt like I was hurled at a brick wall, Looney Tunes style. As stars and birds circled my head, I thought, “Now hang on—wasn’t film school supposed to be a literal launchpad into the industry? Didn’t I […]
by William Connor Devlin on Jun 27, 2023 -
How and Why to Set Up a Production Company
In today’s entertainment industry, owning a production company has become synonymous with having a trainer, manager or overall deal—no celebrity can be seen without! But what exactly makes owning a production company such a crucial and sought-after asset? How can aspiring producers, particularly those who are young and not yet famous or well-established, go about creating one? What are the key factors that contribute to making it successful? Drawing from a decade of observing producers, learning from their triumphs and setbacks, as well as my personal experiences, here I explore the anatomy of a production company, the elements that lead […]
by Miranda Kahn on Jun 27, 2023 -
“The Nature of Global Capitalism is Such that [Stories About] Gay Sexuality Are More and More Difficult to Finance”: Passages Director Ira Sachs in Conversation with Stephen Winter
The following interview with director Ira Sachs by director Stephen Winter was published in Filmmaker’s Summer, 2023 issue and is being reposted today as Sachs’s film Passages arrives in theaters from MUBI. There are acclaimed films about filmmakers set during production—Fellini’s 8 1/2, Truffaut’s Day for Night and Fassbinder’s Beware of a Holy Whore, to name three. But there are far fewer set during what might be an even more psychologically fraught time: post-production. For some directors, it’s when a film wraps that things become unstable. The ersatz family of cast and crew retreat, the militarized schedule lessens somewhat and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 27, 2023 -
Reaching the Peak: Exploring Virtual Production on an Independent Budget
Given our tech-driven and communication-obsessed culture, it’s highly likely that you’re reading this article while multitasking on your smartphone. But as is the case with so many commodity industries like data, the true cost of all this connectivity often eludes us. This disconnect is what drove us to write the film HIGH, set in the fascinating and rarely seen world of telecom tower climbers. In the aftermath of a tragic accident, team foreman Butch Robbins leads his crew through the brutal Buffalo winter to finish their job on deadline and save the company, all without losing the connection he needs […]
by Jonathan Mason and Tisha Robinson-Daly on Jun 27, 2023 -
A New Kind of Cinematograph: New Filmmakers at the AI Film Festival
We see a childhood photograph nearly centered in the frame on a black backdrop. In the photograph, a boy of three or four years of age smiles inside the bathtub with his two dogs. A few seconds later, the black screen around the photograph becomes part of the photograph; the image expands and the rest of the room is revealed. Everything looks familiar and slightly off at the same time. The tiles are slightly skewed, as if the wall has melted. The shape of the bathtub looks normal but perhaps larger than usual. There are suddenly three more dogs in […]
by Deniz Tortum on Jun 27, 2023 -
YouTube Film School
“How much time will you need for the shot-up?” the assistant director asks the DP. The DP looks at the grip crew for answers and responds, “Uh, 10 minutes?” “Shot-up in 10,” the AD announces to the crew. The DP isn’t sure how much time she’ll need because she isn’t sure how to use the lights she just rented. She had seen someone use them once before on set but had never used the new LED lights herself. So, to figure out how to use them on the fly, she does what many Gen-Z filmmakers do when we have questions—we […]
by Jacob Pincus on Jun 27, 2023 -
Peak TV is Over—What Comes Next?
Remember “Peak TV”? It was a good run, starting more than a decade ago with the launch of filmmaker-driven shows such as Lena Dunham’s Girls on HBO, David Fincher’s House of Cards on Netflix and Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake on Sundance Channel, not to mention episodic heavyweights like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Mad Men and The Walking Dead, all of which supplied steady work for a plethora of indie writers and directors. But that party is over—or at least taking a break. If the corporate mergers and media layoffs of the past year weren’t enough of a […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jun 27, 2023 -
Turning Poetry into Art: Joanne McNeil on Large Language Models and the Poetry of Allison Parrish
An application like ChatGPT is “taking the last 20 years of the internet and chewing it up, then producing a system that draws from that,” Allison Parrish explained when we spoke over Zoom last month. To the poet and programmer, generating content with large language model (LLM) neural nets is like “powering an engine with the methane that comes from decomposing corpses in a graveyard.” Few artists working today have Parrish’s depth of experience with generative text. You have likely encountered her work online, especially if you were active on Twitter in the “Horse_ebooks” era. Early on in her career, […]
by Joanne McNeil on Jun 27, 2023 -
Decisive Moments: Earth Mama Director Savanah Leaf in Conversation with Derek Cianfrance
There are two long back-and-forth tracking shots in Savanah Leaf’s wise, emotionally full debut feature, Earth Mama. In the first, the pregnant Gia—a 24-year-old Oakland single mother fighting for custody of the two young children she already has lost to state-sponsored foster care—purposefully strides across a playground, the camera focused on her as she passes expensive strollers and children playing in the background in soft focus. Moments before, she has asked the owner of the photo studio she works at for a cash advance: “I don’t want my baby coming out with no clothes or nothing,” she says. (Leaf cuts […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 27, 2023
