Production designer Rick Carter caught the eye of Steven Spielberg when he was art director on The Goonies and first worked with him directly on the pilot of Spielberg’s anthology series Amazing Stories. Spielberg told him the minimal amount of train he needed for the episode; Carter ended up giving him more without increasing the budget. “I think I have an ability to prioritize what’s important so that I can put the resources into [those] elements, whether it’s the set or visual effects or any other aspect of the movie,” says Carter. Starting with Jurassic Park, Carter has served as […]
I teach documentary studies and production at the Skidmore College MDOCS program and run the MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute. When non-tenure track faculty recently organized to form a union, MDOCS curated a series of labor-related films to add to the conversation around labor organizing on campus. What should have been a fun project became increasingly frustrating because all the documentaries we found centered strikes—the most conflict-oriented, high-stakes and visible side of unionization. What we wanted to feature were the less-visible processes of labor organizing: meetings, conversations, collaborations and negotiations. We ended up screening two excellent films about striking workers, and although the screening generated […]
Everything Everywhere All At Once editor Paul Rogers first met co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, or the Daniels, at OMG CAMERAS EVERYWHERE, a free filmmaking summer camp pairing kids with established filmmakers to shoot videos for musicians like Daft Punk, Diplo and Benny Blanco. When I called Rogers via Zoom to interview him, Scheinert sat beside him with a guitar and occasionally chimed in: “The first thing we worked on together was a silly music video with kids—no rules, directions or studio notes. We just had to make something that would make the kids excited about what they did […]
TÁR opens with its namesake, played by Cate Blanchett, being interviewed in front of a packed audience at The New Yorker Festival. The chat serves multiple functions. It delivers the character’s backstory as an EGOT-winning classical composer and conductor, establishes the film’s immersive, observational style and lets the viewer experience sound the way that Lydia Tár experiences it. During the interview, the festival’s audience is only heard as a communal mass. It laughs together. It applauds together. There is no ambient chatter, no whispered asides, no rustling clothes or shuffling feet. It’s only when the interviewer asks about the influence […]
The main poster for Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans displays its characters within the frames on three strips of celluloid: young Steven Spielberg stand-in Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle) holding a 16mm camera, mom Mitzi (Michelle Williams) dancing in car headlights, etc. This makes sense for the “childhood of a 1970s filmmaker” plot, and it tracks technically as well. Like every Spielberg feature—save the digital-world portions of Ready Player One, the CG of The BFG and the mocap experiment of The Adventures of Tintin—The Fabelmans is shot on 35mm. But look closely and this key art doesn’t make any sense: The vertical […]
Projectr, the independent film-focused streaming service, has announced the launch of its new streaming branch Projectr EDU. Partnering with public libraries, universities and educational institutions across North America, the free streamer presents a curated selection that encompasses acclaimed films, archival restorations and award-winning documentaries. The streamer kicks off its educational initiative by partnering with the New York Public Library, meaning that any New Yorker with a library card can access Projectr EDU’s extensive library, which at present includes over 1,000 titles. It is also the only streaming service currently partnered with the NYPL. “With Projectr EDU, we’re delighted to be […]
Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise was for years considered too difficult to bring to the screen. With its jaundiced view of academia, intimate domestic melodrama, obsessions with cults and an eerily prescient pandemic, the novel spans genres and styles. Working for the first time in his career on an adaptation, writer and director Noah Baumbach started shooting primarily in the Midwest in June 2021. Starring Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Don Cheadle, White Noise premiered at Venice and opened this year’s New York Film Festival. This is the first collaboration between Baumbach and cinematographer Lol Crawley, BSC. They faced enormous […]
On the rare occasion a theater director receives an opportunity to direct for the cinema, it’s typically due to the project in question being a play adaptation (some, like John Patrick Shanley, toggle between adapting their own plays and directing original material). It was, then, noteworthy to me when Causeway (originally titled Red, White, and Water) was announced as the first feature for New York-based director Lila Neugebauer, whose Broadway production of Kenneth Lonergan’s The Wavery Gallery, with Elaine May starring in a Tony Award-winning performance, had recently concluded in early 2019. Not based on pre-existing material, Causeway was to be […]
[Editor’s note: the newly restored Not a Pretty Picture opens at Anthology Film Archives this Friday.] “This film is based on incidents in the director’s life. The actress who plays Martha was also raped when she was in high school. Names and places have been changed.” Thus begins the harrowing and uniquely personal 1976 16mm feature Not a Pretty Picture by director Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl). A narrative/nonfiction hybrid in which the filmmaker casts actors to dramatize the sexual assault she experienced as a high school student in the 1960s, Picture toggles between semi-scripted scenes of Martha (played by Michelle Manenti) with […]
Today, the Sundance Institute announces the comprehensive feature film lineup for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. For the first time since 2020, the Festival will reconvene in-person, with screenings taking place in Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance Resort from January 19-20. An online streaming window will be available for viewers across the country from January 24-29. Of the 99 feature films announced today, 94% are world premieres. “We’re so excited to be coming back in person,” Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO, told Filmmaker via phone call. “Last year was quite devastating with having to pivot late in […]