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 […]
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. […]
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.) […]
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.
“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. […]
Now in its seventh year, the Trinidad + Tobago Film Festival is both a celebration of Caribbean cinema and of the young country itself, which only gained independence from its British rulers, after a long series of turnovers through the hands of Spain, France, The Netherlands and Courland a little over 50 years ago. (Though I’ve covered many film festivals both in the U.S. and abroad over the past few years, this was the first time I was required to stand for the singing of a national anthem on opening night.) And while many international festivals struggle for a taste […]
Tokyo Sally is the second narrative feature by director-cinematographer-editor Kal, after his 2010 debut Superhero in the Rain. He’s also a prolific producer of music videos, documentaries, and spots for companies like the Food Network. The Tokyo Sally project, which features Anna Adams, consists of one 60-minute film and a related app, Tokyo Sally: Lost Highway, both of which are nearing completion. Kal envisions the film as the first in a series of ten pictures that will explore different aspects of horror and suspense films; each will be self-contained but, when seen together, will relate to a larger story. The film […]
This third installment of Time Frames draws on The Media History Digital Library, a reservoir of information about early cinema that includes the sorts of magazines, journals, and trade publications that, in the pre-digital era, had only been available to those able to travel to research libraries. At over 800,000 scanned pages and growing, the collection is daunting. In Time Frames I’ll cull through and select a series of images and text from the collection to highlight key transformative moments in the film culture and industry, as well as other oddities and obscure artifacts. Note: click on images to enlarge. Prior to the publication of the […]
From a new YouTube account, BanksyNY, graffiti’s greatest talent has posted a new video, entitled “Rebel rocket attack.” We’re deep into production on our Fall issue of Filmmaker, so I’ll post this with a minimum of comment and say only this: Watch.
“Love & Anarchy” may have been the motto of the 26th Helsinki International Film Festival, which took over the Finnish capital the last ten days of September, but hospitality and order ruled the three-day Finnish Film Affair. The industry event, which takes place during the fest and is now in its second year, was created in 2012 to highlight Finnish films and connect international professionals (mostly sales agents, distributors, and programmers) with the Nordic country’s surprisingly robust film scene. To that end, works in progress were presented alongside prestigious festival hits. And an abundance of networking opportunities at nightly parties […]