What did I wish I had 10 percent more of when making The Wackness? Easy, sleep. As I approached the first day of production on The Wackness, I couldn’t help but feel the overwhelming sense of: “Don’t mess this up.” I had worked so hard on the script and I was really happy with it. My heart and soul were all over every page. So in my dogged determination not to mess up the movie, I decided I could live on two hours of sleep a night. I stayed in the office storyboarding and tweaking dialogue until the sun came […]
If I could’ve had 10 percent more of something on Chronic Town, I would have to say that it would’ve been 10 percent more length on our extension cords. That may sound odd, but when you have to plug in your production vehicles (which on our budget equaled two minivans) to prevent the oil in your car from freezing overnight, then every inch counts. During the winter in Alaska, you need to plug your car into an outlet to keep the oil in your engine from freezing (it’s advised to be plugged in when it’s below zero, which it was […]
Here are some posts that have caught my eye this week. Jon Taplin, probably the only professor at the Annenberg School for Communication who can also lay claim to producing one of the seminal films of the ’70s (Mean Streets), has a great blog that mixes his commentary on politics, economics and the film business. (Hat tip: Ted Hope.) The former Dylan tour manager and Merrill Lynch v.p. has written a two-parter entitled “Memo to Hollywood: Stop Making Movies.” He compares Hollywood’s battle for market share to players locked in the classic example of game theory, The Prisoner’s Dilemma. From […]
Filmmaker Lance Weiler, whose Workbook Project has, in a short while, become an indispensable source of information on independent film production and marketing, is launching a new event that employs his expertise in online distribution to help emerging filmmakers. Entitled “From Here to Awesome,” it is a multi-exhibition-platform film festival created in collaboration with two other filmmakers well known to the Filmmaker audience: Arin Crumley and M dot Strange. Here is more information about the festival from the press release, and look forward to news of its progress on the blog in coming weeks. NEW DISCOVERY AND DISTRIBUTION FESTIVAL “FROM […]
AN EXPECTANT MOTHER IN DIRECTOR ABBY EPSTEIN’S THE BUSINESS OF BEING BORN. COURTESY RED ENVELOPE ENTERTAINMENT. After years as a theater director, Abby Epstein has transitioned into being one of the most important new female voices in documentary film. Epstein began directing plays in the 1980s in Chicago where she started her own theater company, Roadworks Productions. In the late 1990s, she relocated to New York to helm the highly successful Broadway musical RENT. Notable amongst numerous other credits is her involvement with Eve Ensler’s seminal The Vagina Monologues, which she directed during its New York run as well as […]
In my initial post on the sudden bankruptcy filing of Axium Payroll Services, I commented on the potentially huge effect it would have on independent films currently in production and using Axium for their payroll. Typically, a small film will have posted some kind of payroll bond or advance that payroll monies are being drawn down against. Now, news is coming in from the production community about all of this. I received this email from NYC production accountant Joe Lombardi, currently working on a production affected by Axium’s shutdown, which I am reprinting with his permission: I have to say […]
Variety has posted its story on the Axium bankruptcy, which we wrote about in the blog post below. Their story has a couple of quotes from affected parties — a director, Charles Matthau, who says he is owed $75,000 of his director’s fee on an indie film, and a production executive who comments on the loss of the long-term accounting and record-keeping functions of Axium’s software. Earlier in the day I talked with an indie distributor who used Axium to pay SAG and DGA residuals on the company’s DVD releases. The DGA had called him and told him to cancel […]
In a sudden and stunning piece of news that’s just breaking within the film production comunity, Axium, one of the industry’s largest payroll services and a leader in the administration of state tax incentives for independent producers, is closing and will be filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In a Chapter 7 corporate bankruptcy, a company ceases its operations and its assets are liquidated to its creditors and investors by a court-appointed trustee. We will try to have more details, including news of what will happen to current productions that have their payroll with Axium, soon. UPDATE, 7:00PM: News on Axium’s closing […]
The below was posted on Filmmaker‘s Facebook page by John Fiege, director of the documentary Mississippi Chicken, which was one of our five “Best Film Not Playing Near You” Gotham Award nominees this year. As it’s a general call for support, I’m taking the liberty of posting it here. It’s the holiday season, and in the spirit of Christmas a major poultry company fired one of MPOWER’s board members in what appears to be a retaliatory action for his active involvement in fighting several cases of race discrimination at the plant. MPOWER is the workers’ center that was in the […]
THE GHOSTLY TOMÁS (ÓSCAR CASAS) IN DIRECTOR JUAN ANTONIO BAYONA’S THE ORPHANAGE. COURTESY PICTUREHOUSE. Though he looks and dresses like he’s still a teenager, behind Juan Antonio Bayona’s youthful appearance hides a mature and sophisticated cinematic sensibility. The 32-year-old Barcelona native has a passion for movies that first led him to become a precocious journalist, and then to study directing at film school. Since graduating, he has built a formidable reputation making a series of acclaimed commercials, pop promos for Spanish artists such as Hevia, Ella Baila Sola, Camela and OBK, and two short films, Mis Vacaciones (My Holidays) (1999) […]