6570 Results for “production”
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IFP Launches New Web Series Initiative
Yesterday IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced that an annual lab for web series will be added to its existing programs for narrative and documentary films. The Web Storytellers Sidebar, part of IFP’s RBC Emerging Storytellers program, is designed to promote web series through an in-depth consultation during Independent Film Week in September, with additional logistical support extending beyond. Up to five series–in any stage of development, production, or post–will be selected to participate in the conference, which constitutes the largest meetings-based film forum in the United States. As part of their acceptance, the projects also will have exclusive access to additional IFP web series […]
by Randy Astle on Mar 27, 2014 -
ornana’s Jim Cummings on How To Make a Short Film and Get It Seen
Short films are a peculiar enterprise. They are well regarded as an investment vortex, with nearly zero prospects for return and lots of prospects for expense. Many are made and vanish after a run on the festival circuit, if they are even seen at all. But they are also an essential tool for honing one’s craft, and, given the bitesized format, ripe for cultivating an audience. I was impressed by the intelligence and honesty Jim Cummings displayed in his talk on the digital recession at SXSW, so I asked if he’d be interested in doing a quasi-followup for Filmmaker. Given ornana’s […]
by Jim Cummings on Mar 27, 2014 -
The Book of Lone Peak: Distributing and Marketing the Short Film
For ten days in January a documentary called The Book of Lone Peak ranked as the top-selling short film on iTunes. The film, which profiles a high school basketball team from the town of Highland, Utah, was made by New York City-based filmmaker Ben Altarescu and a fifteen-year-old journalism student named Zack Samberg. The pair moved quickly to push the project through to completion before the basketball players left for post-high school pursuits. The filmmakers talked with me about how a professional filmmaker and teenager collaborated and how they helped push the film on iTunes and other platforms. Filmmaker: You both came to this project […]
by Randy Astle on Mar 26, 2014 -
Contemporary as Repertory: Aaron Schimberg and Jon Dieringer on Go Down Death at Spectacle
Perhaps it’s the fabulist way its characters relay their inverted sense of normality or their ragged way of dress, but something about Aaron Schimberg’s debut feature Go Down Death is unshakably anachronistic — and it’s not just the black-and-white 16 mm. Fitting then, that the film accounts for the first-ever theatrical run at the Williamsburg repertory theater, Spectacle. Screenings begin this Friday, with select showings in Smell-o-Vision, the aromatic brain child of producer-editor Vanessa McDonnell, who considers Go Down Death to be the ultimate vehicle for “the weird perfumes and other odd tinctures I’ve made out of plants, foods, etc.,” aside from […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 25, 2014 -
Vice City: The 31st Miami International Film Festival
Like many so-called “regional” film festivals, the Miami International Film Festival might not be on the tip of every rising filmmaker’s tongue when figuring out where they ought to submit. Struggles to get attention from the film world at large aren’t new for festivals taking place in non-media hub cities that happen to be events where movies aren’t bought and sold, just shown. Regardless of whether they’re “regional” or not, such festivals often get stuck with that half derogatory term. Such is the case with Miami even though it’s in a major city, is over 30 years old and has improved […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 25, 2014 -
Azazel Jacobs on His New HBO Series with Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells, Doll and Em
Type the words “never hire” into Google and it autocompletes an admonition anyone entering business has certainly heard. Indeed, working with your friends — not in the collaborative way we as filmmakers work together but rather with friends as your employees, having them roll your calls, drive you on errands and maybe even pick up your dry cleaning — is usually a recipe for professional and personal disaster. But while the combination of friendship and the employer/employee relationship can produce profoundly icky moments, that ickiness can also be the stuff of great humor and nuanced drama, as is the case […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2014 -
Club Med: New Directors/New Films (II)
Coincidence or zeitgeist? Three of the four outstanding films in the second, slightly shorter segment of ND/NF feature swarthy, sensuously handsome male protagonists who live and act out their dramas in sweltering countries with edges that kiss the cool yet uncomforting Mediterranean. And no, this is neither a projection nor an implication of selectors. Violence, be it palpable or discreetly off-screen, is a powerful element in all four. New Directors ends March 30; Part I of this review appeared last week. Four of 10 viewed (I missed centerpiece Obvious Child and closing nighter 20,000 Days on Earth)? A respectable proportion, […]
by Howard Feinstein on Mar 24, 2014 -
Robert Herrera on the App and Distribution of the Basketball Documentary The Gray Seasons
It’s been two full decades since Hoop Dreams, but any basketball documentary is still bound to be compared to that iconic film. Still, technological changes over those 20 years beg the question of how Steve James and Kartemquin Film would handle distributing the film today. When director Robert Herrera was faced with the same challenge for his new film The Gray Seasons, about the women’s basketball team at St. Louis University, he struck upon a series of festival screenings, simultaneous cable PPV and VOD (via Vimeo on Demand) availability, and finally a DVD release and iOS app that encapsulates much of […]
by Randy Astle on Mar 24, 2014 -
Jersey Boys: Daniel Patrick Carbone on Hide Your Smiling Faces
Promising newcomerDaniel Patrick Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces, well received at festivals such as Berlin, Tribeca and Abu Dhabi, is a sumptuously shot meditation on the difficulties faced by a couple of rural New Jersey teenage brothers following the untimely death of a friend. The film’s delicately designed frames, as well as its super spare screenplay, studiously withhold information — artfully, but perhaps somewhat tediously, denying the audience pleasure. (That pleasure is subsequently generated, however, by the beauty of Hide Your Smiling Face‘s overall visual aesthetic.) The picture’s rather chilly style is somewhat reminiscent of Alastair Banks Griffin’s Two Gates of Sleep, with […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 22, 2014 -
Why You Should Apply to the IFP Narrative Lab
The deadline to apply for the 2014 IFP Narrative Lab, April 4, is coming soon, and in advance of that deadline, I thought I’d write some words about my debut feature Something, Anything being selected for last year’s Lab, what happens in the first week of the Lab, and things to consider if you plan on applying. And let’s be clear: If you’re working on your first feature you should apply. * * * In Spring 2012, producer Ashley Maynor and I set our sights on applying to the IFP Lab when we were halfway through shooting Something, Anything, which […]
by Paul Harrill on Mar 21, 2014
