6300 Results for “Open ”
-
Three-Minute Window
Three Minute Window
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Jul 19, 2012 -
Please Hold
In the fall of 2007, I interviewed Craig Zobel about his first film as a director, Great World of Sound, a wryly funny drama about scamming “talent scouts.” Zobel, who for some years worked as a UPM and co-producer for David Gordon Green, was on a high after getting great reviews at Sundance earlier that year, selling Sound to Magnolia at SXSW, and then being chosen as one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces in the summer. As we casually chatted before the interview officially began, Zobel talked about a script he had written that was to be his next movie, […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 19, 2012 -
Brooklyn Basics
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing exploded on the screen in 1989; an energetic, in-your-face portrait of a Brooklyn neighborhood — Bed-Stuy — on the hottest day of the summer as racial tensions boil over. Lee’s third film, it was an instant classic, scoring the writer, director and actor an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. A decade later it was placed in the prestigious National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Following She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, the film also cemented in the public’s eye Spike Lee as “Spike Lee,” a bold and savvy showman who […]
by Ava DuVernay on Jul 19, 2012 -
Mood Reels and Lookbooks: In Today’s Pitches, the Image Comes First
The pitch — boiled down to its simplest terms, it’s when someone with an idea tries to sell it to someone with the money or resources to get it made. Writers and directors can pitch their own original ideas or pitch their creative skills to win a job on an already-developed for-hire project. For decades, these pitches were purely verbal. They were about “being good in the room.” But today the pitch game is changing, and it’s a harder game to play than ever before. A great verbal presentation is still key, but filmmakers are increasingly supplementing their pitches with […]
by Ariston Anderson on Jul 19, 2012 -
The Shooting Parties
John Cassavetes once described the role of the director as essentially indirect: “I don’t direct the film. I set up an atmosphere and the atmosphere directs.” Atmosphere and budget may seem like two very different issues, one ephemeral and elusive, the other pragmatic and denumerable, but in practice they are intimately linked. Decisions regarding the selection and number of cast, crew and locations; the scheduled duration and pace of the shoot; the resources at its disposal—each choice is at least partially determined by financial limitations, and each, in turn, affects the atmosphere of a production and the qualities of the […]
by Donal Foreman on Jul 19, 2012 -
Alternate Routes
As the keynote speaker at the Los Angeles Film Festival this June, Chris McGurk, of digital theatrical distribution platform Cinedigm, described seven signs of a resurging indie film industry — an “indie renaissance,” he called it. Most of his bullet points had to do with the ways in which digital technology and social media allow for new ways to program for and reach audiences in theaters and online. “Just as happened in the ’80s,” he said, “there is an exploding demand for filmed entertainment. There is huge competition now going on between all of these digital retailers. It’s an ‘arms […]
by Randy Astle on Jul 19, 2012 -
Alternate Routes: New DIY Distribution
How three films are navigating the new distribution landscape.
by Randy Astle on Jul 19, 2012 -
Five Questions with Shut Up And Play the Hits Directors Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace
Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace’s LCD Soundsystem movie Shut Up and Play the Hits has a one-day-only release today through Oscilloscope Pictures (in partnership with TUGG). The following interview was conducted just prior to the film’s premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Over LCD Soundsystem’s ten-year career, the band grew from early blog darlings to lauded indie stalwarts. After telegraphing the group’s demise years in advance, band-leader James Murphy officially disbanded LCD last April with a star-studded, marathon-length performance at Madison Square Garden. Now, less than a year later, Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace present Shut Up […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jul 18, 2012 -
Inside a Three-Minute Film Competition
On the first Sunday of July, a group of filmmakers gathered at the Salem Willows Park in Massachusetts to participate in a Three-Minute Film Challenge. The brainchild of local d.p.s Rick Macomber and Paul Antico, the event was as much a gathering of enthusiasts as it was a competition. “I was watching a 48-hour film fest,” says Rick, “and I had an idea that maybe we could do something like this, with a group of people, and [a film length limit of] three minutes. I’d never tried anything like this, and it was my first narrative attempt.” “We’d talked about […]
by Michael Murie on Jul 18, 2012 -
The Solar Odyssey: Shooting with the Sony NEX-FS100, Part Two
Todd Mahoney recently spent ten days shooting a documentary project using the Sony NEX-FS100. It was his first experience with the camera. He was documenting the pre-voyage progress of the Solar Odyssey Project, the voyage of a solar powered boat that will be traveling The Great Loop. You can read more about that in the first half of this series [“THE SOLAR ODYSSEY”: TAKING PART IN A DOCUMENTARY, PART ONE] In this interview, conducted after he had returned, Todd talks about his experiences shooting with the Sony NEX-FS100, the Sony NEX-7 and a GoPro Hero. So what happened? The boat […]
by Michael Murie on Jul 17, 2012
