6579 Results for “production”
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Carin Leong
Director Carin Leong’s narrative short film debut, Ghost Town, “never went anywhere,” she says, “and it’s nowhere online. It was kind of my love letter to Singapore and all the changes I’ve seen there over the years. [Making it] was therapeutic for me. It didn’t do anything for me careerwise, and I didn’t expect it to.” A casual moment on the set of that film, however, planted the seed for Leong’s ambitious and elegantly realized climate-themed documentary short Sandcastles, a Field of Vision production that premiered this year at SXSW. Her producer turned to her one shoot day and said, […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Jared James Lank
A true one-man production, Bay of Herons begins by presenting an anti-colonialist take on Gluskap, a creator character of the Wabanaki peoples, the Indigenous confederacy the Mi’kmaq nation is a member of. Mi’kmaq tribe member Jared James Lank “filmed, edited, scored and captioned” the short, which uses subtitles to tell a story about Gluskap attempting to fend off French colonialists and then never returning. Hundreds of years having passed since this standoff, the subtitles yield to a narrator who sends up a prayer for strength to Gluskap all the same. Shots from Maine’s Mackworth Island capture the area, which is […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Eli Powers
Eli Powers’ unsettling Exuma depicts an asphalt plant worker rapidly spiraling out of control as he waits for an urgent call he can’t afford to miss. His frantic futzing for his phone while working alone on top of a gigantic structure results in him dropping it down a dark hole; searching for it, he finds himself accidentally locked inside the dark pit of this steel hell as his phone continues to vibrate. The man eventually breaks out but appears almost comatose as he continues about his work—that is, before he takes a few gulps of yellow paint right out of […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Julian Castronovo
“I’ve discovered that the only way you get to make a film is if you’ve already made a film,” a disillusioned young producer—a low-level employee moonlighting from his day job at an arthouse distributor—says to a first-time director in Julian Castronovo’s forthcoming debut feature. The filmmaker he is speaking to is also named Julian Castronovo, and the film the young producer is failing to get financed bears a sideways resemblance to the one we’re watching. Dealing with the search for a disappeared art forger, the movie the on-screen Castronovo pitches is an ambitious hybrid dealing with “the discourse of authenticity” […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Off Screen Spaces: Azazel Jacobs on His Three Daughters
Azazel Jacobs’s films treat the tragicomedy of human existence with tenderness and a heartbreakingly honest sense of the absurd. In his first released feature, The GoodTimesKid (2005), the anti-hero (played by Jacobs) is trapped in a repetitive nightmare of mistaken identity punctuated by Marx Brothers slapstick and 1930s movie dance routines. Jacobs made it with colleagues and friends he met when he was getting his MFA from the AFI Conservatory, some of whom became a permanent part of his team, including his wife Diaz, an actor and filmmaker in her own right. Momma’s Man (2008) memorialized the trauma of moving […]
by Amy Taubin on Sep 18, 2024 -
Bryn Silverman and Naveen Chaubal
Naveen Chaubal and Bryn Silverman began collaborating as undergraduates at the University of Southern California, where they both studied film production. Hailing from small towns in Indiana and Oregon, respectively, they first connected within an “amazing friend group” that made work together. “I love the journey that we’ve been on,” Silverman says about their roughly 17-year connection. She’s long admired Chaubal’s “commitment to craft”; he cites her knack for “experimentation” as an enduring source of inspiration. Chaubal received his degree in 2010, a semester earlier than class of ’11 Silverman. Their first post-grad project was shooting yoga videos in Guatemala. […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Véra Haddad
Filmmaker Véra “V” Haddad’s short film Opener immediately evinces familiarity with the touring musician life. Queer guitarist Sam (Saara Untracht-Oakner) faces familiar headaches when she walks into her hometown’s small venue: a cold club manager, a dismissive sound tech (“Is that the loudest you’re going to get?” he asks her, interrupting her already truncated soundcheck) and a broken string that necessitates a protracted trip to a local music shop mostly populated by dudes. Only the eventual appearance of a supportive queer community, including a cameo from Jane Schoenbrun, puts her at ease. “All of my closest friends are musicians,” Haddad […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
On the Way to the Cutting Room: How to Be an Assistant Editor
If you’ve ever wondered, “What even is an assistant editor, and what do they do?,” you’re not alone. I find myself explaining my job repeatedly to my perplexed but well-meaning family members and even to other people in the film and TV industry. The job varies from project to project, but mostly an assistant editor deals with various technical aspects of post-production so the editor can focus on the creative work of editing. That said, it’s not an entirely technical role. Sometimes, an assistant gets the chance to help the editor creatively through assembling scenes or working on sound design; […]
by Eleanor Mance-Moran on Sep 18, 2024 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to the fall 2024 issue of Filmmaker—our 32nd anniversary edition. Inside you’ll find, alongside our features, interviews and longform articles, our annual 25 New Faces section, which makes its 27th appearance. Over the past 12 months, we’ve been on the hunt for early career filmmakers who, individually and as a group, make a statement about how independent film is conceived of and practiced today. There is an unusually large number of hyphenates on the list this year—particularly producers, but also festival directors and cinematographers who are moving into directing while not necessarily giving up their day jobs. There’s a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 18, 2024 -
Amelia Evans
Minor Attraction takes its title from a lesser-known term for what’s more commonly and stigmatizingly referred to as pedophilia. Its footage was mostly captured in the summer of 2013, when Amelia Evans was interested in making a film about subjects with that diagnosis who met two other criteria: they’d never sexually interacted with a child as an adult, and they could handle the risks associated with appearing on camera. Only three people checked all those boxes: Paul, a dancer and choreographer; the older Gary, married to a woman fully conversant with his history; and Ben, with whom Evans enjoys the […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024
