production | Filmmaker Magazine

A Recipe for No-Budget Filmmaking

A recipe for no-budget filmmaking might go something like this: gather no more than a baker’s dozen of crew members, a half dozen actors, a large helping of friends and family, and a lighting/camera/sound equipment package smaller than half the size of a cargo van. Fill the other half with set dressing, props, wardrobe, unit supplies, and craft service and load into a smattering of free locations of varying shapes and sizes. Roll camera, repeat up to 1,000 times or until you run out of time, money and hard drive space. Total prep time – 4 weeks. Total shooting time […]

by Karin Chien on Jan 17, 2010

THE COVE WINS AT THE CINEMA EYE AWARDS

Louie Psihoyos’s The Cove was the big winner at the Cinema Eye Awards, which were held tonight at the Times Center in midtown Manhattan. The film won the Oustanding Achievement in Non-Fiction Filmmaking Award as well as the Production and Cinematography Awards. A complete list of the awards follows. 2010 Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking: Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking:The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos, produced by Paula DuPre Pesman and Fisher Stevens Outstanding Achievement in a Debut Feature Film:October Country, directed by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher Outstanding Achievement in Direction:Agnes Varda, The Beaches of Agnes Outstanding […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 15, 2010

GRAPHIC NOVEL CO. TOP SHELF, BREGMAN AND JOHNSON PACT

From a press release I just received: Co-Publishers Chris Staros and Brett Warnock of independent graphic novel and comic book publisher Top Shelf Productions announced today that it has entered into a capital investment deal with new media entrepreneur John S. Johnson, and independent film producer Anthony Bregman. Johnson, and Likely Story, Bregman’s film production company, have purchased a 33% interest in Top Shelf Productions, Inc. Johnson will join the board of Top Shelf, and Likely Story will get a first-look deal for all new Top Shelf publications for possible film and TV development. The first project slated for development […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 13, 2010

REPORTS FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE DSLR DEBATE

At Filmmaker, we’ve covered the new generation of DSLR cameras, like the Canon 5D and 7D and Nikon D90, quite a bit, and while there’s a huge amount of interest from the indie community about these cameras, there’s also criticism of them as substitutes for professional HD cameras. I came across this morning two blog posts that articulate both sides of the issue. On Philip Johnston’s HD Warrior blog, he’s penned a post titled, “Filming with an HD DSLR: The Things They Don’t Tell You.” Here is his intro: RED Digital Cinema are in the process of producing the worlds […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2010

Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Ilisa Barbash, Sweet Grass

An observational documentary that utterly transports you to a forgotten corner of the American West, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash’s Sweetgrass is billed as a glimpse at the final sheep drive the state of Montana ever hosted. Shot in muddy, early aughts DV, this often funny, occasionally terrifying and almost always beautifully composed film follows a pair of modern shepherds who travel mostly on foot with three thousand sheep over a two hundred mile Montana expanse that cuts across the seemingly unending Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains. Without the use of voiceover narration or title cards, the film allows you to soak in […]

by Brandon Harris on Jan 6, 2010

Viewing Zeitgeists and the Best U.S. Indies of the Decade

To try to recall your favorite films from an entire decade (and then to limit them to only ten titles) is to immediately set yourself up for uncertainty and ridicule: first off because it’s hard enough to remember what you saw ten days ago, much less ten years ago, and secondly because to limit the list to ten is to leave hundreds of excellent films out, titles that you’ll undoubtedly get bludgeoned to death with through later feedback (“You blithering idiot~pretentious snob~Hollywood tool! How could you leave out Judd Apatow~Jean-Luc Godard~Abbas Kiarostami~McG,” read the heated responses to already posted lists). […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 31, 2009

Lee Chung-Ryoul, Old Partner

Topping the Korean box office is no small feat for a first-time filmmaker, given the perennial offerings of sassy romantic comedies and vivid, attention-grabbing genre flicks from this nation’s impressive stable of film artists. It’s even more improbable when you’ve made a no-frills documentary (not so popular in South Korea) for less than $150,000 about the relationship between an elderly farmer and his aged ox. But a few months after it hit the market at the 2008 Pusan International Film Festival, where it won the best documentary award, Lee Chung-ryoul’s Old Partner became one of the most successful indies in […]

by Damon Smith on Dec 29, 2009

A LETTER FROM THE IFP

I am reprinting below a letter I received from Joana Vicente, Acting Director of the IFP, which publishes this magazine. Please consider joining the IFP and taking part in its activities over the coming year. It has been a time of many changes in the independent film scene; both scary and exciting. Through it all, independent filmmakers of all stripes keep pushing forward, making great work that moves, inspires, and amuses countless people around the world. It has been a year of changes at IFP as well. After 12 years at IFP’s helm, Executive Director, Michelle Byrd, stepped down to […]

by Scott Macaulay on Dec 23, 2009

QUOTES FROM THE MELTDOWN

Anthony Kaufman’s current Village Voice piece, “New York’s Independent Film Community Goes from Boom to Bust: My Big Fat Greek Collapse,” has some good quotes that speak to the changes the indie film world has gone through this past decade. I’m not one to periodize things too much by saying that things were once X and now they are Y. Independent film has always been too multi-headed a hydra, and the business plans that a distributor talks about were often ones that didn’t have much to do with the majority of actual makers. That said, on decade’s end it’s clear […]

by Scott Macaulay on Dec 23, 2009

Stephane Aubier And Vincent Patar, A Town Called Panic

Absurdists at heart, Belgian animators Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar have spent two decades perfecting their hilariously antic brand of fantastic, faux-naïve humor. After graduating from La Cambre, the School of Visual Arts in Brussels, the duo created a popular hand-animated series entitled Pic Pic Andre Shoow, about the adventures of a magic pig and an evil, beer-swilling horse, which first debuted as an award-winning short film in 1988, and was then expanded into a three-part festival fave. In 2000, the pair decided to revisit a stop-motion short Aubier had made as his graduation film, using the most rudimentary materials […]

by Damon Smith on Dec 16, 2009

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