6560 Results for “production”
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Five Questions with Tricked Director Paul Verhoeven
Chiefly known for his Hollywood output, which includes films such as Robocop, Basic Instinct, Total Recall and Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven is part of a distinguished lineage of European expats who have made the dream factory great. But the latest project from Verhoeven is the furthest thing from Hollywood one could possibly imagine. This manifests itself not so much in stylistic terms — Tricked (Steekspel) is in fact a soap opera of a comedy — as in the film’s creative process, which saw it being openly crowd-scripted by whomever wanted to contribute. After the first five minutes had been written, the […]
by Celluloid Liberation Front on Nov 12, 2012 -
Five Questions with Magic Camp Director Judd Ehrlich
Competition in the performing arts is a staple of non-fiction television and documentary at the moment, but few works step back from the American Idol-style face-off to depict the literal beginnings of their performer subjects. One film that does is Judd Ehrlich’s Magic Camp, a documentary about Tannen’s Magic Camp, a week-long event for budding young magicians where kids learn both stagecraft and sleight-of-hand from an illustrious group of visiting professionals. Ehrlich attended Magic Camp when he was young, and when he became a documentary filmmaker — his previous credits include Mayor of the West Side and Run for Your Life — he knew he had to return to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 9, 2012 -
Game Changers Part 3: Camera and Lighting
In this third part of the series about the production of the low-budget indie movie Game Changers, filmmakers Rob Imbs (director) and Benjamin Eckstein (cinematographer) discuss shooting with the Sony PMW-F3, shooting in S-Log, lighting issues, and the lenses used to shoot the movie. Filmmaker: Ben, you already owned the Sony PMW-F3, was the decision simply to use the camera you had? Eckstein: I’ve been fortunate that I own almost all the gear that I use on a day-to-day basis. From the beginning when talking to Rob, it was not really a discussion of “Are you trying to get the […]
by Michael Murie on Nov 9, 2012 -
AFI Fest 2012: Electrick Children and Simon Killer
In Dogtooth, an authoritarian father’s carefully constructed sham world falls apart after one of his sheltered daughters watches Rocky IV and Jaws. In Electrick Children (above), a 15-year-old Mormon girl (played by “25 New Face” Julia Garner) gets pregnant after listening to a rock ‘n’ roll song on an unmarked blue cassette tape. The narrative similarities essentially end there but, given their equally unorthodox takes on coming of age in cloistered environments, the two are oddly complementary. Split between rural Utah and fabulous Las Vegas, Electrick Children‘s visual world is entirely at odds with what its doe-eyed protagonist is used to on her big-sky homestead: neon lights, dingy […]
by Michael Nordine on Nov 9, 2012 -
Five Questions with 28 Hotel Rooms Director Matt Ross
Matt Ross’s directorial debut is an inventive look at an affair between a married account (Marin Ireland) and a novelist (Chris Messina) that unfurls within the walls of 28 hotel rooms across the country. Dictated by checkout times and the call of the “real world,” their truncated encounters are marked by a growing sense of urgency, as their physical connection turns emotional. Ireland and Messina shoulder the challenge of being the sole recipients of Doug Emmett’s lens with magnetic grace, crafting their characters’ dimensions in varying increments of restraint and ebullition. 28 Hotel Rooms, currently streaming on iTunes and VOD, […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 8, 2012 -
AFI Fest 2012: Antiviral and Caesar Must Die
In diagnosing a cultural affliction without so much as mentioning a possible cure or even treatment, Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral coldly suggests that it’ll only continue to spread. The outlandish-but-believable premise – involving a high-end clinic that harvests and sells celebrities’ infections to their obsessed fans – brings to mind both Children of Men and, of all things, Idiocracy for how depressingly realistic its vision of the near future ends up being. We want to think that something like this could never happen, but there’s more than a little evidence to the contrary. The fact that nearly every element of the […]
by Michael Nordine on Nov 7, 2012 -
RZA on The Man with the Iron Fists
What do you get when you hand RZA the keys to his own film project? As fans of the multi-tasking Wu-Tang Clan leader will be thrilled to know, you get a balls-out, rap-infused martial arts spectacle, filled with the mad love of a lifelong kung fu fan. A project nine years in the making, RZA’s directorial debut, The Man with the Iron Fists, sees the 43-year-old artist star alongside Lucy Liu and Russell Crowe, bringing to life a mashed-up actioner that blends Chinese mysticism with the U.S. slave trade and more. The impetus for the film’s production came when RZA […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Nov 7, 2012 -
DOC NYC Previewed by Artistic Director Thom Powers
With their Stranger than Fiction series at New York City’s IFC Center, Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen have been curating, programming and advocating for documentary film going on eight years now. Their Tuesday-night events are typically packed, drawing audiences with not only great films but human interaction — Q&A’s with directors, collaborators, and even the film’s subjects. Three years ago, when Powers and Neihausen wondered why there wasn’t a major, all-doc festival in New York, they realized that the challenge of launching one was a natural fit for them. The resulting DOC NYC is now in its third year (November […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 7, 2012 -
VOD for Indies
As indie makers know all too well, movie distribution is undergoing a major restructuring. The shift from analog media to digital production, post-production and distribution technologies not only changes how movies are made and distributed, but how people view them. Theatrical moviegoing is declining; since 2002, ticket sales have declined by nearly 20 percent. Making matters worse, DVD sales are shrinking. And video streaming revenues, while growing, are doing so at a rate insufficient to make up the difference. Readers of Filmmaker are urged to check out a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, “Now playing at a living […]
by David Rosen on Nov 5, 2012 -
Nara Garber & Betsy Nagler’s Flat Daddy
Nara Garber & Betsy Nagler’s Flat Daddy is released on VOD on November 6. The following was originally published on the eve of its Doc NYC premiere in 2011. In the corpus of documentaries that have come out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve seen a gradual progression from the outward to the inward — immersive forays into the battlefield giving way to subtler studies of the wartime psyche. Yet the majority of them have focused on the soldier’s experience of war. Flat Daddy sets itself apart by focusing on the people who feel war perhaps the deepest: military families put on […]
by Daniel James Scott on Nov 5, 2012
