Television stations – like distribution and production companies – can have a lot invested in their IDs. They represent the brand in the mind of the consumer. In 1972, WGBH created a station ID with a logo sting by Gershon Kingsley. That sound has become closely associated with WGBH, and they’ve made several updated IDs using that original Moog synthesizer sound through the years. Paul Sanni, an editor for the Creative Services department and the Masterpiece series at WGBH has twice worked on revisions of the ID. Sanni has a background in audio and video and for the latest version […]
D.P. Sean Porter’s credits include Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, Eden and, opening on Friday at the IFC Center, Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love. Here he contributes a guest blog post on the latter film, listing the five rules he made for himself that he wound up breaking when shooting this highly recommended micro-budget picture. 1. Use other movies as references in preproduction. When I sat down to prep It Felt Like Love with Eliza Hittman the first thing we did was talk about movies. It makes sense — it’s the most direct way discuss tone, lighting, framing and style. […]
It was only a matter of time. With quality, funds and star power funneling into television, the Sundance Institute is the latest name to hop on board the medium, in announcing their first ever Episodics Story Lab to be held in the Fall of 2014. Designed for TV and online serial writers, the six day lab will pair the chosen few with accomplished mentors who will aid in script development as they also impart wisdom on the production and distribution landscape. Cary Fukunaga, Louis CK and Lena Dunham are among Sundance’s Screenwriters Lab alumni who enjoyed breakouts through their television […]
Last Friday the African news site AllAfrica.com published a lengthy story on the growth and maturation of the Rwandan film industry since the Tutsi genocide of 1994. Coming from a place of inter-tribal distrust and decimated infrastructure, filmmakers, like others in the country, got to work rebuilding their country, their pride, and their national image. In the immediate aftermath of the genocide many films understandably dealt with it as subject matter (think Italian neorealism springing up in the wake of the Allied tanks), but in the ensuing 20 years filmmakers have created a space to tell other stories and redefine […]
The pairing of the finest scientific mind of his generation with one of America’s best documentarians and the preeminent composer of his time should, one would think, have made more of a lasting impression on the cinematic landscape. However, 20-odd years after its release, Errol Morris’ 1992 A Brief History of Time – a (liberal) adaptation of Stephen Hawking’s all-time bestseller, with a score by Philip Glass – is a title receiving a much-needed revival thanks to its release on DVD and Blu ray through Criterion. Morris’ movie, which cannily interweaves Hawking’s own compelling history with the astrophysicist’s theories of the […]
Spring is a always a godsend, especially so after a harsh winter. For discerning cinephiles, it marks an end and a beginning. The exhausting awards season is over. It is followed in New York by a celebratory spring cleaning, a shift in priorities to some of the finest emerging directors from all over the world in the prestigious and prophetic New Directors/New Films, now in its 43rd edition (March 19-30). Not only do the principal artistic creators get their due, but, unlike the U.S.-centric January-to-March hyperamas, the pool of pictures is fiercely international. How does ND/NF’s focus on the filmmaker […]
Expect to be hearing a lot more from me on Under The Skin in the ensuing weeks. The film is pretty much flawless. One of its innumerable exciting aspects extends beyond the glossy finished product, and into its production. Director Jonathan Glazer and his team rigged Scarlett Johansson’s abduction vehicle with eight cameras, allowing her to freely cruise the Glasgow streets and lure actual pedestrians to her van. They’d drop her in a mall, a busy intersection, and let the scene unfold before their very eyes. In the above featurette, Glazer, Johansson and producer James Wilson discuss the film’s guerrilla production, among […]
This guest post by Alexandre Rockwell is published as his Kickstarter campaign to support finishing costs of his latest feature, Little Feet, launches. You can learn more and donate here at the link. “An old dog learning new tricks.” That’s what a pal of mine said to me the other day, and I could not disagree more. I never have seen myself as an old dog and “new tricks” are what I have had to constantly seek out to keep making handmade films over the years. Continuously reinventing oneself and jumping into the fire over and over is either insanity […]
“If you happen to know a brave fifteen-year-old, that’s not too embarrassed to act in an emotional teenage role, that deals with things teenagers deal with — please have her contact me. Most of the kids I’ve been seeing can only handle a part that’s an idealized version of how they want to be perceived. It’s kind of incredible that parents would let their children perform in some totally exploitative slasher movie, but tense up at the opportunity to be a part of a fictional yet emotionally truthful coming-of-age film.” * * * Eliza Hittman posted the aforementioned on the […]
Cinereach, the not-for-profit film support and production company, is offering moviegoers who see at least two of the four Cinereach-supported pictures in theaters this month special, one-of-a-kind artist gifts. The films — all of which are very good, by the way — are Matt Wolf’s Teenage, Tom Gilroy’s The Cold Lands, Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love and Daniel Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces. (The first two are at the IFC Center in New York now; It Felt Like Love opens next week and Hide Your Smiling Faces on the 28th). Here is info from Cinereach: Why? Indie releases unite! […]