Kristyn Ulanday and Max Esposito graduated from the journalism department of Boston University in 2010. They both work commercially as freelance photographers and filmmakers, but in 2011 they also began a collaborative project called Full Frame America to tell the stories they wanted to tell. The first result of that collaboration is a 24-minute documentary, The Druid City, that focuses on the town of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and how the residents have coped after the town was hit by an EF4 tornado in April 2011.   Filmmaker: How did you come to make this movie? Esposito: We both felt like we […]

In the seventh part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab,  Ingrid Kopp, Director of Digital Initiatives at Tribeca Film Institute,  answers our questions. Kopp oversees the TFI New Media Fund, runs Tribeca Hacks and produces TFI Interactive during the Tribeca Film Festival. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How do you see people making the transition to digital interactive storytelling? Kopp: I think people have […]

Like most motion pictures, Roman Coppola’s latest film, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III was color graded in a DI theater at a post house. Unlike many films, this final grading only took two days; extensive “pre-grading” was done using Resolve Lite at American Zoetrope’s own facilities, while the final grade was performed at SPY using the full version of Resolve. With color grading taking place in two facilities and by two people, the facilities had to work together to calibrate equipment and create a consistent workflow. In part 1 of this series, VFX artist Ryan Bozajian […]

Two weeks ago RED announced that they were suing Sony for patent infringement for technology used in Sony’s PMW-F5, PMW-F55, and F65 cameras. Last week Sony posted a response on their Pro video website. First noting that the F65 has been commercially available for over a year, and that the F5/F55 were announced in October, they go on to say: Sony has now had an opportunity to study Red’s complaint and the asserted patents, and categorically denies Red’s allegations. Sony intends to defend itself vigorously in the Red lawsuit. Sony looks forward to prevailing in court, thus vindicating the Sony […]

Being an independent filmmaker means we are often times working with very little money but still making our projects happen. We use any tools and tricks we can get our hands on to help us finish or enhance our films. Of course these have to fit within our budgetary constraints. Here is a list of post production tools that are affordable for the no budget filmmaker. 1. Blender – 3D Modeling & Animation (Win, Linux & Mac) I’m constantly amazed at what this FREE program can do. It includes many features found in competing 3D apps that cost hundreds and many […]

Editing is older than motion pictures. The ordering and pacing of dialogues, scenes, entrances and exits to build conflict and resolution have long defined Western theater, from Aeschylus’s Oresteia to Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung [Der Ring Des Nibelungen]. It was the insertion of first-person thoughts into dialogue and plot that modernized 18th- and 19th-century novels and clever sequencing of mechanically animated magic lantern glass slides that thrilled Victorian audiences to popular epics like Ben-Hur.