Let’s assume you got into filmmaking because you wanted nothing to do with business school. Well, tough. Movies are the most expensive art form; even ones they call “no-budget” aren’t. You need to learn about business eventually, and in today’s world, even independent filmmakers need to understand terms like “transferable rebates,” “soft money” and “100 percent deductibility.” In fact, there’s one financing term both Hollywood and independent producers must know: “tax credits.” The studio world is continually on the lookout for states offering production rebates that will reduce the cost of their movies and TV shows, while independent producers scout […]
by Matt Prigge on Mar 8, 2018Around the time Miami’s Borscht Diez went down in late February, Black Cinema seemed to take over the world for a second. That was cool; Get Out was all anyone wanted to talk about. The doldrums of the country’s greater ills lifted somewhat during that thriller of a week, in which the Oscar Best Picture winner and the number one movie in America were suddenly, and for the first time ever, directed by African-Americans. That the former had been incubated by the country’s most outlandish short filmmaking outfit, Borscht Corp.— which goes out of its way to produce work by people of […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 20, 2017Katie Says Goodbye reps the feature directing debut of Alaska-born NYU writer/director Wayne Roberts. An alumni film of the IFP Narrative Lab, Katie Says Goodbye is described as “a cautionary tale for dreamers,” a dark drama about a young waitress striving to leave New Mexico for a new and better life in San Francisco. There’s a brutal scene at the film’s core, which we circle around in non-spoiler fashion in the below interview, in which we also discuss Roberts’ casting of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl‘s Olivia Cooke in his lead role as well as his advice to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2016