6569 Results for “production”
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Taking Horror Interactive: Neal Edelstein on Haunting Melissa
As the producer of films like The Ring and Mulholland Drive, Neal Edelstein is no stranger to horror films and thrillers. And with his new project, Haunting Melissa, he’s moved beyond traditional pictures with his first immersive production for iPad and iPhone. Available for free in the App Store, Haunting Melissa centers around the search for a girl who vanished from the farmhouse where her mother had earlier gone insane, but this story is told in a succession of videos released to the viewer in seemingly random bursts. The temporal extension – and unexpected timing – of the narrative through these push notifications […]
by Randy Astle on Oct 30, 2013 -
Fractured Atlas’s Artful.ly Software to Streamline Outreach
Aiming to give independent artists and arts organizations the same marketing power as their bigwig counterparts, the non-profit Fractured Atlas recently unveiled Artful.ly, a web-based software system that streamlines audience interactions. Among the service’s offerings is a MailChimp integration that directly manages and catalogues email outreach, and a ticketing and fundraising apparatus that can be embedded onto websites. There are no sign-up fees or contracts, however, in the interest of an event, ticket buyers will be charged $2 per purchase in addition to credit card processing. Filmmaker spoke with Selena Juneau-Vogel, program director for Artful.ly, about how filmmakers can make […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Oct 29, 2013 -
Click Here Lifts the Curtain on the Development Process
Any filmmaker knows that the script is but the first brick in a winding pathway to production. The feature documentary Click Here: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Making Movies takes this fact to heart, training the lens on the action that transpires before the camera even rolls. For Pete Chatmon and Candice Sanchez McFarlane, the development process effectively began at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, where their screenplay $FREE.99 debuted in competition, netting Chatmon TFI’s Creative Promise Narrative Award. While they found their fair share of industry champions, raising production funds proved to be another story altogether. Five years […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Oct 28, 2013 -
Welcoming Contributing Web Editor Sarah Salovaara
This week we are happy to welcome Sarah Salovaara to our Filmmaker team as our new Contributing Web Editor. Filmmaker readers will recognize Sarah’s byline as she has contributed previously to the site as a freelancer, but with this new position she’ll be contributing each week on a wide range of topics spanning film production, financing, new media and criticism. Most recently in a series of thoughtful and well-read articles, she spoke with the founder and participants of Dogfish Accelerator, looked past the media circus of Blue is the Warmest Color and spoke with director, actor and No Budge founder […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2013 -
So You Want to Make a Horror Film? On Jump Scares and Other Basics of Fright
If you’re looking to make a horror film simply because you think it might be an easy road to notoriety, you’d be dead wrong. This is a dish that’s best served cold by filmmakers who are fans — those who have long loved being chilled to the bone — so it should be in your blood. If you’re a filmmaker who’s new to horror, immerse yourself in the classics and study their techniques before you set out to try to create a monster of your own. The potential pitfalls you face when making a horror film are what’s really frightening. […]
by A.D. Calvo on Oct 28, 2013 -
The Subject as Auteur: Jonathan Demme on Enzo Avitabile Music Life
Italian jazz saxophonist and composer Enzo Avitabile might not be a household name in the States, but in the annals of world music he’s quite a fixture. In his native Naples he is so famous that when he visits the neighborhood of his youth, folks bustle into the streets and onto rooftops and balconies to lay eyes on him. A scholar of jazz, he can hold court on the evolution of the form as long as you’d like him to, although as Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme discovers in his newest concert film, Enzo Avitabile Music Life, that may not […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 25, 2013 -
Team-Building, Data Science and the Business Plan: Dogfish Accelerator’s New Film Financing Model
Not long after he founded Dogfish Pictures in 2009, producer James Belfer sensed an industry-wide disconnect between content creation and return on investment. Filmmakers, he gleaned, were concerned with short-term assets, agreeing to sell their film to distributors for a fixed sum that was a mere fraction of the eventual profit. In order to capture the full value of their content, filmmakers would need a new set of marketing tools and a fair bit of elbow grease. Belfer felt that any of these strategies would not be found in the traditional film industry at all, but rather, in the tangential […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Oct 25, 2013 -
Shooting with 18 Cameras: The Making of The Short Game
With a background in comedy shorts, you’d be forgiven if you thought Josh Greenbaum’s first feature, a documentary that follows the 7 and 8-year old competitors in the World Championships of Junior Golf, would be a dark look at another group of driven parents. But that’s not what Greenbaum was interested in doing. Instead, he focuses on the children, these pre-teens who can, at turns, appear tremendously adult, or just like any other 7-year old. The Short Game follows eight competitors through last year’s championships, though production actually started a year before at the previous championships. That was where they […]
by Michael Murie on Oct 25, 2013 -
Producing a Low-Budget Short Film and Pitching a Movie: Run Like Hell
Red Giant has unveiled their latest low-budget, effects-rich short; Run Like Hell. It’s billed as a short film, but it’s really intended to be a teaser for a full-length movie director Stu Maschwitz hopes to make. Maschwitz is a visual effects wizard who worked at Industrial Light & Magic before co-founding effects house The Orphanage. He is also the author of The DV Rebels Guide, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood is beating down his door to make a movie. Meanwhile, Red Giant, the makers and sellers of products such as Colorista, Magic Bullet and BulletProof, have been pursuing an interesting […]
by Michael Murie on Oct 24, 2013 -
Theatrical’s Not Dead; It Just Smells Like It
This article by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez about the distribution of their Detroit firefighter documentary Burn originally appeared in our Fall, 2013 print edition. It is appearing online for the first time. “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” — Mark Twain As filmgoers are increasingly flooded with new media options to keep them at home, the prevailing theory is that the days of theatrical releases for independent films are in their last slow throes. We disagree because we just spent the last year filling 300- to 2,000-seat theaters in 170 cities with our firefighter documentary Burn. We […]
by Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez on Oct 23, 2013
