Production designer David Doernberg, who brought a sensitive, finely crafted and observant touch to many excellent independent films, died in New York on Friday after a battle with cancer. Doernberg began his career in the late ’80s/early ’90s working on music videos for bands like Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and Superchunk. He quickly moved into independent features as a propmaster for films by Hal Hartley (Amateur), Daisy von Scherler Mayer (Party Girl) and Eric Schaeffer (If Lucy Fell). Soon after he became a production designer, bookending his career with films by Kelly Reichardt. He designed her 1994 debut film, […]

Excuse the inconsistent audio levels, a few bad edits, and the boom-y sound of some of this, but I decided to simply take the recording of my interview with Roddy Bogawa about his new doc, Taken by Storm, and run it as an audio podcast. I may try and do some more, and if they get smooth enough, start uploading them to iTunes. Taken by Storm is a portrait of artist Storm Thorgerson, who is best known for his work with the graphic design company Hipnosis designing album covers for bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. His sometimes surreal […]

Brent Green is a self taught filmmaker and artist who lives and works in the Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania. His unique hand drawn and stop motion short films have played venues including the Sundance Film Festival, the L.A. Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. He was also one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces in 2005. Recently he wrapped up filming his first feature-length film, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then. Shot entirely in stop motion using human beings, the film tells the true story of Leonard and Mary Wood, two people joyously brought together but separated through forces far […]

In film we are used to starting with the character (the protagonist who faces conflict in order to achieve his goal) or simply the concept (which usually yokes together the bare bones of character with a simply stated narrative). But what if you started elsewhere — with, for example, the world? Mike Mignola is creator of Hellboy and the new Baltimore and a visual consultant to director Guillermo del Toro on Hellboy, Hellboy 2, and Blade 2. From an interview at BLDGBLOG titled “Ruin, Space and Shadow.” BLDGBLOG: … Have you ever found yourself in a situation where a setting […]

Leading up to our 18th birthday, I’ll be revisiting on the blog one issue of Filmmaker a day. Today’s is Spring, 1994. The first ticking clock…. Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner’s Go Fish was our cover story, Spring, 1994, and I think may have been our first original piece of cover photography. Holly Willis’s story was a comprehensive account of the film’s production and sales process, charting the film’s beginnings as a no-budget feature begun alone by Troche and Turner to one produced by Christine Vachon and Tom Kalin and sold by famed producers’ rep John Pierson to Goldwyn in […]