6576 Results for “production”
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Jennifer Phang, Nicole Beckwith and Stewart Thorndike Receive Inaugural SFFS Women Filmmaker Fellowships
The San Francisco Film Society announces today three women filmmakers as recipients of its SFFS Women Filmmaker Fellowships, a program supporting women making their second or third features in the genres of science fiction, comedy, action, thriller and horror — areas in which women are traditionally under-represented. Supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the fellowships are run by Filmmaker360, the Film Society’s filmmaker services department, and they include financial support, programs and events, mentorship services and more. “We’re thrilled to be kicking off this new initiative with such talented individuals, and to help bridge the support gap we have seen […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2015 -
“Your Obstacles are Basically Everything”: Writer/Actress/Producer Naomi McDougall Jones Talks Grassroots Female Filmmaking
Once again, the two-decade-old Bermuda International Film Festival, where I’m on the international advisory board, provided some truly unique networking opportunities. While I didn’t find myself star-struck like at last year’s fest – when I had the once in a lifetime chance to serve on a jury with a spry legend, Kubrick’s producer and brother-in-law Jan Harlan – the 2015 edition hosted several impressive names. Rounding out this year’s Academy Award qualifying shorts jury were producer/writer Hilary Saltzman (daughter of Harry Saltzman, best known as the producer of the first nine Bond films), the inimitable Killer Films co-founder Christine Vachon, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 20, 2015 -
Tracking Changes: The 53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival
One of the unexpected pleasures of the 53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) was, at first, a cringe-inducing annoyance. It began with the first screening on Wednesday morning, a presentation of work by AAFF juror Jesse McLean. The lights dimmed in the Michigan Theater Screening Room, the smaller of two auditoriums used by AAFF in the spectacular Michigan Theater. Just as the audience nestled into their seats and darkness took hold of the room, something interrupted the transfixed environment: a wincing screech from the front of the room. The sound continued for several seconds before halting with a loud thud. Then, […]
by James Hansen on Apr 20, 2015 -
Animate Objects: The 24th Aspen Shortsfest
With its “bodegas” serving $35 seafood entrees and cobble stone streets lined with Prada, Burberry, and every other Madison Avenue ready boutique a yuppie mom could think up, Aspen may seem like an odd location for the country’s preeminent shorts festival. The grungiest thing about the stunningly well-preserved 19th century Wheeler Opera House — the festival’s screening and conversation locus — are the $4 yellow bullet tall boys tucked behind the bar amid top shelf malts. But despite the slightly stuffy portents, audiences seemed game for whatever co-directors Laura Thielen and George Eldred threw their way: dry comedies, 40-minute docs, atmospheric animations, and gutting dramas […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 20, 2015 -
Tribeca 2015 Critic’s Notebook: Live from New York, Ludacris, The Survivalist, Crocodile Gennadiy and More
The Tribeca Film Festival isn’t going away. The 47 people who care about the lives and deaths of film festivals ask the same question every year: Is this brash upstart turned middle-aged guy relevant? The national news media seems, well, not to care. In the film media, all anyone talked about the day after opening night was the unveiling of the Star Wars trailer and the Cannes lineup. But while Tribeca will never represent the pinnacle of Hollywood commerce or European high art in the way the Star Wars and Cannes brands do, its selections and sensibilities do their best […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 18, 2015 -
Alma Har’el on her Work-in-Progress LoveTrue at the Tribeca Film Festival
Alma Har’el’s 2011 Bombay Beach is one of the most striking feature debuts of any sort, fiction or doc, in recent years. In writing about the film and Har’el for our 25 New Faces of 2011, I called it “not only a loving, deeply empathetic portrait of the diverse characters who make up the town” (a small burg in the Salton Sea) “but also a beautifully poetic cinematic essay on the power — and necessity — of play and self-invention.” Bombay Beach, shot largely by Har’el herself on a handheld, $600 Canon consumer video camera, had style to burn, and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2015 -
Kieślowski, WarGames and the ’80s: Carleton Ranney on Jackrabbit
Set in the not-too-distant future, Carleton Ranney’s debut feature Jackrabbit observes two young hackers living in City Six, a dystopian urban environment still recovering from The Reset, an event which caused the city to literally go back to square one. Interacting with the outside world via computers and video game systems that go back to user-friendly technology’s infancy (we’re talking pre-Pong), Simon and Max attempt to uncover the secret of a mutual friend’s murder, while fighting to escape City Six and the police/surveillance state they’ve grown accustomed to. An Orwellian fable, Jackrabbit is steeped in political paranoia and a fascination with the impersonal implications of a corporatized America. […]
by Erik Luers on Apr 17, 2015 -
The Power of Story: Previewing the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival
Story. Storytelling. Experience. Community. Story, story, story! Talk to the heads of the Tribeca Film Festival and its programmers, and you’ll soon pick up on the event’s messaging this year. A festival that, as Robert DeNiro said at yesterday’s press lunch, was originally intended to be a “one-time thing” is now something of a New York institution. But it continues to evolve. At a sit down earlier in the week, Festival Director Geoff Gilmore, Tribeca Enterprises Executive V.P. Paula Weinstein and senior programmer Cara Cusamano spoke of today’s film viewing and festival landscape — how we are in, as Tribeca […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 16, 2015 -
DIY Previs: Developer Dan Fearing on ShotPro
Just as pencil-and-paper storyboarding has by and large given way to computer-based previsualization software, high-end previs suites are now confronting much more budget-friendly software and apps. The newest of these is ShotPro, an iOS app from WebGames3D.com that premiered on the App Store late last year. Developed by Dan Fearing and a small team of Sacramento-based designers and coders, ShotPro already looks like a game changer in the world of DIY previsualization. It launched loaded with characters, props, settings, lights and even lenses, and two updates have already followed, adding scalability for onscreen items, animatable cameras, new camera models, moveable keyframes and other features. Version 1.5 […]
by Randy Astle on Apr 16, 2015 -
The Wizard of Odds: John Maclean’s Slow West
A trio of black musicians performs a Congolese song in a desolate area inhabited by relentless bounty hunters, surviving Native Americans, and individuals — enterprising or on-the-lam — seeking reinvention in the anonymous open frontier. A finely-choreographed triangular shootout puts both a general store and a starving family of German immigrants out of commission. Set in Colorado in 1870, five years after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox ended the Civil War, Slow West is positively — in every sense of the word — disconcerting. Which is precisely Scottish filmmaker John Maclean’s ballsy aim. Wildly but meticulously blurring the boundaries between genres, […]
by Howard Feinstein on Apr 16, 2015
