Short Film
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Short Film Teaser: Frank Mosley’s Spider Veins
“Loosely inspired by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House,” Frank Moseley’s ominous new short film, Spider Veins premieres this month at the Sidewalk Film Festival. Here’s the description: Two women reunite in a quiet neighborhood before a party begins. But by turns mysterious and shocking, the film’s narrative begins to unravel even as the women’s relationship teeters closer to the edge of truth. Loosely inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Spider Veins is a mercurial investigation into varying levels of everyday artifice. Starring Katey Parker, Danielle Pickard, and Jennifer Mazza-Nguyen, the film will have its world premiere this August 26-28th at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 6, 2016 -
Watch: Jim Cummings’s Springsteen-Fueled Sundance Grand Prize-Winning Short, Thunder Road
Following a heartfelt public campaign to convince Bruce Springsteen — or, perhaps, his battery of lawyers, publishers and master owners — to let him affordably release his short film, Thunder Road, director Jim Cummings prevailed. The result is that this excellent short, fully deserving of Sundance’s Best Short prize, is now screening online, for free. Cummings himself stars as a young man who decides to evoke The Boss while eulogizing his mom at her funeral, and the short is an example of a game-changing work that can make a career. (Cummings is on every agent’s radar now as an actor […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 19, 2016 -
Watch: The Lion City, 2, a Mind-Blowing, Multi-Year Time-Lapse Video
Australian filmmaker Keith Loutit, a pioneer in tilt-shift photography, has just raised the bar in time-lapse photography with his latest video, The Lion City, 2. A portrait of a changing Singapore, the video features time-lapse shooting that took place in multiple locations over years. Writes Loutit: When we pass by landscapes they appear fixed in time, but they change around us constantly. The idea behind this film is to reveal this change by returning to the same camera positions over the years. In the comments, Loutit reveals that he shot the video over three years, and while his ability to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 11, 2016 -
Watch: Giacomo Cimini’s Science Fiction Short, The Nostalgist
Author Daniel H. Wilson, whose Roboapocalypse has been in the works for some time from Steven Spielberg, has the first adaptation of one his stories receive its online premiere today over at Wired. Embedded here, The Nostalgist is the adaptation of Wilson’s first published work of fiction, and it’s described thusly: In the futuristic city of Vanille, with properly tuned ImmerSyst Eyes & Ears the world can look and sound like a paradise. But the life of a father and his young son threatens to disintegrate when the father’s device begins to fail. Desperate to avoid facing his traumatic reality, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 3, 2016 -
Watch: Álvaro, from UnionDocs Living Los Sures Project
Inspired by Diego Echeverria’s 1984 documentary, Los Sures, Living Los Sures is an expansive documentary produced over five years by 60 artists at Brooklyn’s UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art. Premiering online today here at Filmmaker is Álvaro, directed by Alexandra Lazarowich, Elizabeth Dealaune Warren, Daniel J Wilson & Chloe Zimmerman, a short doc about the daily ritual of longtime Southside, Brooklyn resident Álvaro Brandon. Timed to the restoration and Metrograph screening of Echeverria’s cinema verite work, about the largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community of the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Living Los Sures consists of 40 short films, the interactive […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 7, 2016 -
Watch: Unmappable, by Diane Hodson and Jasmine Luoma
Premiering online on Vimeo is Unmappable, a short documentary by Diane Hodson and Jasmine Luoma that presents a complicated portrait of an artist and sex offender. Here’s Whitney Mallett writing about the film previously for Filmmaker at the Atlanta Film Festival. The short documentary Unmappable is a portrait of Denis Wood, whose poetic mapmaking challenges the distinction between art and cartography. He also had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy — a friend of his son’s who began living with the family — for which he spent 26 months in prison. Both the story and tone directors Diane Hodson […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 1, 2016 -
Jim Cummings’s Thunder Road Goes to Sundance
After appearing on our 25 New Faces list in 2012, director, writer, producer and actor Jim Cummings has popped into the page of Filmmaker from time to time, offering advise on making and marketing short films and what filmmakers can learn from South Park. Cummings, who is a producer of two of the past year’s best independents (Krisha and The Grief of Others), has an intriguingly hard-to-pin down filmmaking personality. So, when he suggested that Filmmaker partner with him on a series of videos documenting the journey of his new short, Thunder Road, to Sundance, we quickly agreed. Of course, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 23, 2016 -
10 Lessons Learned While Making My First Short Film Budget
Earlier this year I produced a very low budget short film, Affections, directed by Bridey Elliott and premiering at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Armed with a Master’s Degree and several experiences assisting producers in the past, I assumed I knew everything I needed to in order to create an accurate budget. As with all firsts, this was an incredible learning experience that highlighted several integral lessons to keep in mind while creating any kind of film budget. Look to the script Although labor intensive, it’s worth spending the time to do a comprehensive script breakdown (a big spreadsheet outlining […]
by Sarah Winshall on Jan 22, 2016 -
Short Film: Dustin Guy Defa’s Review
Any filmmaker who has been around the block knows something about reactions to films — when you’re first praised for the cinematography, something has gone wrong. And when a critic spends more time on plot description than on analysis or commentary, well, then, he or she is just aiming to hit their word count. I thought of these two truisms while watching Review, the latest short from Filmmaker 25 New Face Dustin Guy Defa. Watch it above.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2015 -
Short Film: Mukunda Angulo’s Mirror Heart
Anyone who’s seen Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack knows that the Angulo brothers have a flair for costuming, and those talents are on full display in Mukunda Angulo’s Mirror Heart, a rather abstract short film made for Vice. Billed as “an imaginative tale about a cast of dreamlike characters who unify around the necessity to create,” Mirror Heart also employs the voice acting of a handful of the brothers as that nagging, negative portion of one’s creative conscience. Check out the short above and a making of video at the link.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 25, 2015
