6568 Results for “production”
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Too Much of a Good Thing?
Digital cinema has afforded independent filmmakers many benefits, one of which is the ability to achieve something previously only the province of big-budget films: very high shooting ratios. However, the resulting mass of footage can overrun the typical understaffed, underfunded, low-budget edit room. “You’re shooting more footage, and usually with two cameras,” says Paul Frank, editor of the recent Maggie Carey comedy The To Do List. While he notes that there are many pros to this way of shooting — it benefits performance, it allows for more improvisation and, ultimately, more options in the edit room — he also notes […]
by Shaun Seneviratne on Oct 21, 2013 -
Matt Herron Talks Audition
Usually the term “a cast of hundreds” isn’t applied to a film with just two characters. But that’s exactly how to describe Matt Herron’s new feature Audition, an innovative film in which 100 actors — 50 men, 50 women — portray one couple over the course of a torrid romance. The concept is for this narrative story to be told through the documentary process of different actors interpreting the fictional roles (or, conversely, it could be seen as a documentary about acting that conveys a narrative storyline): the original 100 actors are winnowed down as the film progresses until the […]
by Randy Astle on Oct 21, 2013 -
13 Steps to Directing Famous Actors in a Microbudget Film
As I wind up my festival and theatrical run of my film Between Us, it’s gratifying to see the amazing reviews for our four-person ensemble cast, with critics using blurb-ready adjectives like “brilliant,” “razor-sharp” and “career-best” to describe the performances of Julia Stiles, Taye Diggs and Melissa George. David Harbour, in particular, just won the Best Actor prize at the Woods Hole Film Fest, and many reviews agree that he steals the movie in his breakthrough film performance. Naturally, all credit is due to the actors themselves. But a couple people nicely said that I couldn’t have screwed up the […]
by Dan Mirvish on Oct 21, 2013 -
Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman to Direct TFI/Rockefeller-Funded Sandy Doc
It’s been less than a year since Hurricane Sandy blasted New York and the TriState area, but already it has had a number of representations in film and transmedia, from Sandy Storylines to the narrative Stand Clear of the Closing Doors and the upcoming Sandy relief concert 12-12-12. Now to that list can be added a new title — and arguably the most definitive work about Sandy yet — This Time Next Year, directed by Remote Area Medical‘s Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman. (Full disclosure: Zaman is a regular Filmmaker contributor.) Uniquely, the project, which “tracks the resilience of Long […]
by Nick Dawson on Oct 17, 2013 -
Introducing Screen X, Cinema in 270 Degrees
The Busan International Film Festival saw the launch of Screen X, a cinema technology that promises to offer audiences an immersive cinematic experience without the need to wear glasses. The South Korean company behind the technology, CJ CGV Screen X, owns the CGV cinema chain and currently operates one American location in Los Angeles. To showcase the technology, CJ CGV Screen X commissioned The Good, The Bad, The Weird director Kim Jee-Woon to make The X. Ostensibly a spy thriller, it’s really just an excuse to show off the technology that augments the action on screen, by projecting images onto […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Oct 17, 2013 -
My Crowdfunding Crash Course: 14 Tips from The Royal Road
After my very successful crowdfunding campaign this summer I’ve been asked repeatedly for tips and advice by numerous other filmmakers. In the spirit of helpful guidance (and to make it easier to deal with as people keep asking me to share this info) here are my tips and guidelines. I did my campaign on Kickstarter but these guidelines are equally applicable on Indiegogo and other platforms. 1) Make sure your description is compelling, as concise as possible and conveys urgency. Click the link to see mine — you can decide whether you think it’s compelling, but in any case it […]
by Jenni Olson on Oct 17, 2013 -
Screenwriter John Ridley Talks 12 Years a Slave
12 Years a Slave — the title of Steve McQueen’s latest, taken from its source material, the Solomon Northup memoir — is one of the most direct and descriptive of recent cinema history. But consider further the subtitle of Northup’s 1853 book: “Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana.” It’s one of the film’s extraordinary achievements that, as it lands in theaters nationwide with the headwinds of an Oscar frontrunner, it tells, on its most basic level, that story. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 16, 2013 -
On Watching Half of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby
In the Fall issue of Filmmaker that went to the printer last week is my coverage of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. But there’s one film — or, rather, half a film — I didn’t write about. I’ll explain, but that involves a detour into a discussion of ’90s experimental theater. The Sarajevo-based Open Stage Obala’s Tattoo Theatre is a lovely work that follows a couple from courtship to old age, tracing their loves, infidelities and reunions with evocative, unexpected imagery. (Old age, for example, is represented by the actors standing face to audience and covering themselves with flour.) […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 15, 2013 -
Nicholas Rombes, Grace Krilanovich Discuss their Microbudget The Removals
The Indiegogo campaign for Two Dollar Radio’s microbudget film division continues, with screenwriter (and Filmmaker contributor) Nicholas Rombes and author and now director Grace Krilanovich posting videos explaining their approach to the first production, The Removals. Check out the videos below. Read more about Two Dollar Radio at Filmmaker here.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 14, 2013 -
Adapt or Die: 13 Steps to Adapting a Film from Something Else
“We’re not special. We’re not brilliant. We never were.” So says David Harbour’s character in my film Between Us. And he’s right. Most of us probably started as writer-directors by necessity, but at a certain point in a filmmaker’s career (and of course, if you have an actual “career,” you will eventually cease to be a filmmaker, and become instead a “filmSmaker”), you will realize you’re probably not as brilliant or talented as you once thought you were. If you were indeed a genius screenwriter, you’re probably better off writing scripts for Hollywood and actually getting paid to write anyway. […]
by Dan Mirvish on Oct 10, 2013
