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Most of us remember watching movies with our parents — maybe a John Hughes flick — laughing as John Candy flips a birthday pancake the size of a coffee table with a snow shovel. Those memories, however, don’t burn quite as deeply and ferociously into our memories as those kill-me-now moments in which your arm and your mother’s arm accidentally touch as a katana wielding Bruce Willis opens the door to Zed’s back room of horrors in Pulp Fiction. Don’t worry. You’re not alone. In an episode of Tribeca’s One Question series, filmmakers talk about the most awkward movies they’ve ever seen with their parents. More »
Just when you thought filmmaking was migrating to the seemingly greener grass of independent film studios, a peculiar thing occurs: 3 major Hollywood studios, Disney, NBCUniversal, and Paramount are reported to have massive, long-term studio expansions in the works. In light of lower film counts and production going elsewhere, why are these studios initiating the “most aggressive growth spurt in recent Hollywood memory” and what, if anything, does this mean for independent film? More »
How do you teach comedy? Comedy writers Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, creators of the award-winning British sitcoms Peep Show and Fresh Meat, attempt to do so, or at the very least offer some tips on how to make your comedy better in this BAFTA masterclass. The two sat down to talk about breaking into the industry, how to write funny characters and scenes, and even attempt to answer the age-old question of why we laugh. More »
Earlier this week, the folks at Boinx Software released the upgraded iStopMotion 3.1, an award-winning stop-motion animation software. This upgrade includes a feature that many users have been clamoring for: screen capture. This new feature allows users the ability to create stop-motion and time-lapse videos by capturing frames directly from your computer screen — essentially turning your computer/iPad/iPhone screen into a movie set. More »
About a month ago, we had the honor of talking with director Nicolás Alcalá about his crowdfunded and transmediatic film The Cosmonaut. Ever since then, we’ve been waiting with bated breath for the May 18th release of the film — and now, that day is here. After years of raising funds, traveling across Europe, and enlisting thousands of people to become co-creators of their project, the team of at Riot Cinema Collective are ready to unveil their newest creation. More »
Cannes '13: Check out Sneak Peeks from Payne's 'Nebraska' & Jarmusch's 'Only Lovers Left Alive'
The 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival looks more like a dream than a selection of films. Packed with work from Oscar winners like Joel and Ethan Coen, Roman Polanski, and Asghar Farhadi, this year’s festival is set to amaze. Of the 20 films, 5 are from the U.S., and lucky for us, 2 of those U.S. films — Alexander Payne’s Nebraska and Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive – have released clips giving you a sneak peek just in time for Cannes’ opening day. More »
Director Haifaa Al-Mansour On Making the First Film Shot Entirely in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is experiencing many firsts in terms of filmmaking, specifically with the film Wadjda, which follows an 11-year-old Saudi girl on her pursuit to obtain a bicycle. The movie is the first by director Haifaa al-Mansour, the first to ever be shot entirely in the country, and the first to ever be shot be shot entirely in the country by a woman. Her film premiered with standing ovations and rave reviews at the 2012 Venice Film Festival, and since then, al-Mansour has gone on record about what it’s like to be a filmmaker in a kingdom without cinemas. More »
For those of us who have experienced the throes of screenwriting; from the writer’s block, the sleeplessness, to the social awkwardness felt when communicating with people outside of your story world, the message from Writer/Director Shane Black is strangely comforting. After years of writing, bolstering your literary toolbox, and seeing your efforts fail more often than they succeed, Black consoles us with the promise that it never gets any easier — but that’s a good thing. More »
Eugene's Bijou Indie-Friendly Art Cinema Uses Kickstarter to Go Digital
In my town, if you’re a cinephile and a lover of all things local, The Bijou Art Cinema is a home away from home. This former Spanish Mission style church turned mortuary turned art-house cinema is nestled in the University District in Eugene, OR, and has a 30 year history of supporting independent, foreign, and local film. In mid-2010, a handful of longtime employees pitched in each of their life savings to save The Bijou from bankruptcy, and now are calling on the community to help them make the jump to digital. And if crowdfunding wasn’t already an endeavor and a half, a second location is being opened downtown, which will help cater to local independent filmmakers. More »
Filmmaking has gone through many great evolutionary events in its over 130 years of existence. It has seen technological advances: from Edison’s Kinetograph, (arguably) the first motion picture camera to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, from exhibiting films on a Kinetoscope, to exhibiting them on smartphones. However, one change that has yet to really be made in the film world is its presence of female directors. Fandor released an infographic that breaks down the distribution of women in both independent cinema and Hollywood, and the figures may surprise you. More »
Last week we covered the new innovative website, Chain of Title, which at its launch will provide filmmakers with invaluable legal information, forms, and resources for the reasonable price of — totally free. Headed by independent filmmaker and producer, Jordan Clark, Chain of Title will feature, among other things, information described using both layman’s and legal terms accompanied by videos, accessible forms, and easy and creative navigation. We were lucky enough to sit down with Clark recently and ask about his project, its Indiegogo campaign, and how it intends to help independent filmmakers once it goes live. More »
Vimeo has always been a clean and clutter-free video-sharing site. There are no pre-roll advertisements and non-video ads appear much less than on YouTube or other similar sites. However, this doesn’t mean that advertisements and brands are not apart of the Vimeo experience. They just recently announced their new Brand Creative Fund, which matches major brands with talented Vimeo users to create films (which aren’t necessarily exclusive to that brand). With this initiative, Vimeo is handpicking users for the opportunity to partner with large companies and get paid in the process. More »
After launching in 2010, Amazon Studios has made its way to producing original content, albeit after a bit of trial and error. The 2012 changes, thousands of scripts, and your feedback have brought 14 of Amazon’s pilot episodes from script to screen, including 8 comedies (1 of which was submitted via Amazon Studios). Now that these shows are available on Amazon Instant Video, viewers are once again being asked to share their input by rating and reviewing them; a strategy that Amazon has embraced since the beginning. More »
Filmmaking is hard. We all know that. Fortunately, we have lots of tools, gadgets, and resources that make almost every phase of production easier: from screenwriting software that formats your scripts for you, to step-by-step online video tutorials. However, one aspect of production still seems to be absent from the bountiful spring of online help: securing, maintaining, and assign the copyrights for projects. Wading through all of the legal jargon, lengthy documents, and confusing rules and regulations can stomp out your creative fire, but, it looks like that’s about to change with Chain of Title, a website geared toward making this process a lot less painful. More »
Are you feeling inundated with MōVI updates yet? I hope not, because we have more news about how this innovative handheld stabilizing system is taking the film community by storm. Just within the last couple of weeks, the MōVI went from day player to superstar: first being announced by Freefly, gaining over a million views on its YouTube and Vimeo videos, winning a bunch of awards at NAB, holding a contest to win 2 units, and now making its debut on network TV. More »
For the third time, MUBI has partnered up with the Images Festival to bring you a selection of the festival’s short films. Images Festival, established in 1987, is the largest festival in North America for experimental and independent moving image culture. Images has presented thousands of vanguard media-based projects in the last 24 years of its existence, and this year, they bring 20 of this year’s films to you — for free — through MUBI. More »
It has been an exciting couple of weeks for the team at Freefly with the unveiling of their gyro-stabilizer MōVI, overwhelming response to Laforet’s Vimeo gallery showcasing the stabilizer, and award wins at NAB this past week. It looks like things are only getting better — not just for Freefly, but for all of you who want to get your hands on your very own MōVI. It’s availability, pre-ordering details, product information, and updates on Freefly and Vincent Laforet’s Twitter contest have been released. More »
Tribeca Enterprises and Maker Studios announced their collaboration to create a new YouTube channel featuring web series and short films called Picture Show. Comprised of Maker Studios’ YouTube talent, along with writers and stars from College Humor, Upright Citizens Brigade, and Tribeca’s own artists, Picture Show will “specialize in original content that blends the Maker sensibility with Tribeca’s cinematic focus.” With its official launch date of April 19th nearing, it might be worth your while to get acquainted with this comedy destination with a cinematic twist. More »
As we posted earlier in the week, EditShare announced the Mac OS X version of the long-standing NLE Lightworks. Though it has been around just as long as it’s competitor Avid, Lightworks has only recently completed the platform trifecta: being compatible across all major operating systems (Windows, Linus, and most recently Mac). It still has to go through more stages of beta testing, but EditShare demonstrated Lightworks for Mac at NAB 2013. Whether you’ve been a user of Lightworks for years or, if you’re like me, just recently became interested after the promise of a Mac version, the demo video is worth taking a look at: More »
The production teams over at Studioset and WAO bring us Waste, a short film that is half Soviet montage and half pop-up book. Its approach to cinematography is a dreamlike reality, but that description doesn’t seem to suffice when describing the juxtaposition of dull and vibrant, dead and alive, and active and inactive. Director Anton Groves and his crew light up the dreary world of their protagonist’s life with colorful “monsters”, representing his wastefulness, that unfold like a pop-up book to reveal the monsters within. More »
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