Quibi
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“You Get to Be Your Own Editor as You’re Watching It”: Catherine Hardwicke on Quibi Series Don’t Look Deeper
Ever since she made her directorial debut in 2003 with Thirteen, Catherine Hardwicke has been one of the American cinema’s great chroniclers of young people navigating the transition to adulthood. In films as diverse as Lords of Dogtown, Twilight, Red Riding Hood and The Nativity Story, Hardwicke has explored teenage crises and discoveries with serious intent and the sharp attention to visual detail that she developed as a production designer on movies like Three Kings and Vanilla Sky. Her work on those films and other often demonstrated a bold and original approach to color, and this is true of her […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jul 27, 2020 -
Director Michael Jacobs on Making the Basketball Doc Blackballed for Quibi’s Mobile, Dual Aspect-Ratio Platform
Long regarded as the worst-run franchise in the National Basketball Association, the Los Angeles Clippers have (after brief stints in Buffalo and San Diego) called the “City of Angels” their home since the summer of 1984. Purchased for a cool $12.5 million in 1981 by real estate tycoon Donald Sterling, the Clippers’ relocation to LA was seen as a move that would hopefully rival its “big brother” franchise led by Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Los Angeles Lakers. That ultimately wasn’t meant to be: the Lakers, long a shining example of the league, continued its successful run atop the […]
by Erik Luers on May 21, 2020 -
“What’s Happening in the Vertical Version?” Mark Pellington on Quibi Series/Film Survive
Director Mark Pellington has spent a great deal of his career addressing the complexities of grief, memory and reconciliation, but with his new film Survive he explores these themes on a larger canvas than ever before, placing his preoccupations in the context of an adventure tale that is sweeping in its physical scale yet every bit as emotionally penetrating as more intimate Pellington character studies like Nostalgia and I Melt with You. Richard Abate and Jeremy Ungar’s script tells the story of Jane (Sophie Turner), a traumatized young woman who plans to commit suicide in the bathroom of a plane […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 20, 2020 -
Trailer Watch: #FreeRayshawn on Quibi
Filmmaker has two points of intersection with crime drama #FreeRayshawn, one of the first releases on Quibi and scheduled to drop on April 15. Director and executive producer Seith Mann was on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2003. And creator, writer and executive producer Marc Maurino has been a regular contributor for several years. In 2010 he was a blogger out of IFP’s Independent Film Week, which he attended with his debut script, Into the Machine. Several posts ensued, and then one of our great evergreen pieces: “‘It’s Just a General’: How To Take a General Meeting.’” His follow-up […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2020 -
Which Way is Up? On Aspect Ratio Diversity and Quibi’s Turnstyle Technology
Of all the gimmicks announced during the interminable two-year runup to the launch of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s billion-dollar video startup Quibi—from a short-form reboot of Punk’d to a Spielberg-helmed horror series that can only be watched after sundown—perhaps the most striking is Turnstyle, the platform’s unique new approach to aspect ratio. Turnstyle will allow users to rotate their phones while viewing Quibi content, triggering a real-time shift between horizontal and vertical framing. The idea was met with awe by tech evangelists and revulsion by cinephiles when it was announced in January, but more than anything it reveals Quibi’s intentions as markedly […]
by Charlie Shackleton on Mar 17, 2020 -
Bigger, Shorter, More Expensive
One would think that in this era of superabundance—with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Pluto TV, Criterion Channel, OVID.tv, Kanopy and more than 300 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute—the last thing we need is another viewing option. But nearly every day a new platform seems to launch, and many are investing heavily in “original content.” New platforms spending money should be good for filmmakers, right? Well, the answer seems a qualified maybe. The boom isn’t just occurring with platforms focusing on features and episodic content. There’s a new rise in outlets focusing on short-form work. […]
by Brian Newman on Jun 19, 2019
