(Full disclosure: Chris Bell is a friend and his feature film The Winds That Scatter, due to hit the festival circuit this year, is great, so I’m getting the word out now.) In this single-take short, Chris Bell layers on the vérité. Perched behind a bench in a transit hub, his camera watches as a crane rises to the ceiling, two men greet one another and an off-screen voice breaks the fourth wall. It’s unclear as to whether any of the action was previously orchestrated or Bell merely whipped out his camera in the moment, and it’s probably best to keep it […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 18, 2014Filmmaker and dancer Lily Baldwin premieres here at Filmmaker the first episode in her new series of short films, The Paperback Movie Project. Each short “is an interpretation of a novel and explores the fluid relationship between a reader and the book’s characters.” The debuting piece is titled “A Juice Box Afternoon,” and it tells “the story of Anne Morrow Lindbergh through her own writing as she comes of age, meets Charles Lindbergh, and experiences flight in more ways than one.” Following her breakthrough at SXSW 2012 with the dreamscape thriller Sea Meadow,Baldwin’s next short, Sleepover LA, will world premiere […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2014Miami-based filmmakers Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva — two of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces — have been touring the festival circuit with their short film, #PostModem, which they describe like this: “[It’s] a comedic satirical sci-fi pop-musical based on the theories of Ray Kurzweil and other futurists. It’s the story of two Miami girls and how they deal with the technological singularity, as told through a series of cinematic tweets.” For the first time this insanely infectious riff on virality and uploaded consciousness is online. Watch it above, and try to keep its K-Pop-styled song out of your head.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2014Barely five minutes long, Agnès Varda’s 1976 short Plaisir d’Amour en Iran finds a breadth of emotion in its surroundings. Shot in Esfehan at the Shah Masjed, Varda conveys the blossoming relationship between a French tourist (Valérie Mairesse) and an Iranian (Ali Raffi) across narration, dialogue and, most effectively, architecture. It’s a transported exercise indigenous to its original time and place (France, Rive Gauche/Nouvelle Vague) that proves visuals and words can do their finest work as distinct properties. Read more at UbuWeb.
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 17, 2014Commissioned by the designer Miu Miu as part of a series of seven films, “Women’s Tales,” Spark and Light is a lovely and wonderfully executed short by Treeless Mountain director So Yong Kim. Riley Keough, in a sensitive, affecting performance, plays a motorist stranded in snowy Iceland as she’s on her way to visit her dying mother in the hospital. Dreams, memory and reality all merge as Keough’s character turns her moments alone into a hypnotic emotional journey. Special mention to Eric Lin’s subtly expressive cinematography.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 13, 2014The following is a guest post written by composer Kim Halliday, a U.K.-based composer who has written music for shorts, features, documentary and fiction. You can find his work at www.kimhalliday.com, under “Kim Halliday – Music” on Facebook, and @hallidayk on Twitter. Many film composers learn their trade by scoring short films. Many continue to score short films, and many never get an opportunity to score a full feature. The truth is that there are many challenges for a composer with a short – how do you get coherent themes into so few cues, for example, and how do you […]
by Kim Halliday on Feb 3, 2014HBO has launched a four-week program designed to provide project development, master classes and mentoring for diverse, emerging filmmakers, who identify as Asian Pacific American, Sub-Continent Asian American, African American, Hispanic American, Native American, or as a woman. Dubbed “HBOAccess,” the program will invite four finalists to Los Angeles (though housing and travel are not included) for the month of June to craft a budget and blueprint for short-form content – either a webisode or a 10-15 minute film. Upon completion of the program, HBO will consider each proposal for production and an eventual airing spot on HBO platforms including HBO […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 3, 2014With the instant gratification and popularity that can accompany a YouTube upload, filmmakers are questioning whether the internet or the traditionally prestige festival circuit is the ideal forum to premiere a short. As Ryan Koo suggested back at the IFP/DCTV “Short Takes” panel last summer, why choose? Indeed, while some festivals rule out previously seen shorts, others welcome online buzz with open arms. One of those festivals, it so happens, is Sundance. Three shorts that will screen in Park City within the coming days were all originally available on YouTube, including Janicza Bravo’s Gregory Go Boom, a black comedy starring a […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 15, 2014When one thinks of an insightful, sardonic examination into the world of online film criticism, Shia LaBeouf probably isn’t the first name to come to mind. And yet, the actor’s directorial debut, HowardCantour.com, is just that. Starring perennial familiar face Jim Gaffigan, the short film tracks the eponymous character through junkets, brushes with former colleagues, and fallen directors, as he evaluates his profession in this increasingly consumer-driven industry. After stops at Cannes and Aspen Shortsfest, HowardCantour.com is now available online, courtesy of Short of the Week. Update: It appears that LaBeouf may have adapted (perhaps a generous euphemism) HowardCantour.com from Daniel Clowes’ comic Justin M. Damiano, without […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 16, 2013When I made my first short film in 2011, the idea was to set a goal for myself and let that drive my process. The short ended up being Mr. Fitzpatrick, and my goal was simply to present a character and show a day in his life. That’s it. No story or anything complicated. I didn’t even want to get to know him very well–just get an impression. I’m pretty happy with the way the film came out, but the one thing people always comment on is its sound design. We shot the film completely MOS (with the FGV-PL7D and […]
by Iain Marcks on Dec 10, 2013