» Posts Tagged ‘documentary’
You want to make a documentary, and you know how Ken Burns did it, so you google “NEH grant.” Four hours go by. Who knew it took eleven steps to sign up to apply for said grant, let alone finish the 20+ pages of writing, acquire two humanities experts, and get one public television station letter-of-interest that may or may not be needed to turn it in?! (Hey, I’m no expert — I never actually finished my application.) To help with these headaches, POV has released a handy-dandy new “For Filmmakers” page to save us from some of the pain of trying to figure out how to make content for public television from scratch. More »
First Time at Tribeca: 'Alias Ruby Blade' Forgets Hollywood and Tells a Real Spy Love Story
Amidst a revolution to overthow invading oppressors, a beautiful young woman becomes a spy for the resistance under the moniker ‘Ruby Blade.’ While she sneaks in messages to the imprisoned, non-violent leader of said resistance, they begin a glorious love affair. And get this, it’s not starring Leo DiCaprio, it’s a true story! From chasing sharks to helicoptering heads-of-state, filmmakers Alexander Meillier and Tanya Ager Meillier are taking their very first feature documentary Alias Ruby Blade to Tribeca. Director Alex Meillier was kind enough to sit down with NFS to explain just how you go about telling an action-adventure love story…that really happened. Read on for the interview, plus a way you can watch it online through Tribeca tonight. More »
This is a guest post by Alyssa Bolsey
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First things first, you want to make a movie and you need a camera, right? The options are endless and it feels like there is a new camera coming out every couple of months! What to do? After you’ve done all your research, you either buy one, rent one, or most likely (as in my case) you beg until someone will let you borrow theirs for a few days. Ahhh… Such is the life of an indie filmmaker. Now, imagine a time when there wasn’t an affordable camera to buy, borrow or rent because independent filmmaking didn’t exist and therefore, a camera for the independent filmmaker didn’t exist. This is Beyond the Bolex, the story of the man responsible for the beginning of independent filmmaking and the inventor of the Bolex motion picture film camera, Jacques Bolsey. More »
Filmmaker, editor, and creator of Krisp Films, Kriston Johnson granted a short interview to nofilmschool about his project, Paradise City: a short documentary about homelessness, addiction, but ultimately love and happiness. The film follows a young homeless couple, “Christina” and “Papi,” as they shed light on what it’s like for them to live in the City of Brotherly Love. Watch the full film below and jump down for the interview: More »
Music documentaries happen to make very useful case studies in distribution strategies, because it’s so damn obvious who their core audiences are. And lucky for us, it seems like rock stars past and present have new films about them released every week. Below is a cross comparison of three new music documentaries and their corresponding release strategies that I thought were both useful and entertaining to compare.
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The filmmakers behind the new, entirely found-footage documentary Our Nixon weave an eclectic portrait of one of the most peculiar American Presidents and best Futurama talking heads ever: Richard Nixon. This doc is no historical snooze-fest, but an “Anti-Nixon-Film Film” revealing never-before-seen private Super 8 movies filmed by Nixon’s youthful White House Aides. (The contemporary version might be like stumbling onto Malia Obama’s iPhone with two years of Vine videos that had never been uploaded.) While waiting for a delayed flight to the SXSW film festival, Producer Brian L. Frye sat down with NFS to give us insight about how they pulled off the film, from before-and-after 4k scans, to standing up for your fair use rights as a filmmaker. More »
If you’re heavily into music you’ll undoubtably be aware that certain geographical areas tend to become associated with particular music scenes. For myself here in the UK, I could quickly point to Manchester as the birth place of the aptly named ‘Madchester’ scene comprising bands such as The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and The Charlatans, and the beautifully idealistic Factory Records, closely followed by rave culture which sprang up around the legendary Hacienda nightclub. Recently Nokia Music in partnership with the Sundance Channel raided Somesuch & Co’s director roster (Emily Kai Bock – Spit Gold Under An Empire, Tyrone Lebon – Atlanta Dream$ & SFV ACID, Bob Harlow – Lords of Detroit & Abteen Bagheri – Electric Noise & That B.E.A.T) for New American Noise; a six-part series of documentaries exposing the underground music scene in six US cities. More »
How to Make Your First Film Halfway Across the World with No Money and Get Picked Up by Oscilloscope
It’s the stuff of dreams. Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq started out on a no-budget journey to make their first film about one man, a non-proselytizing humanitarian in Pakistan named Edhi. The film, These Birds Walk, just premiered at SXSW to sold out crowds, with Oscilloscope Laboratories coming on board in their first-ever producing role; the film will probably play in theaters later this year. Our Q&A follows. More »
It seems counterintuitive to shell out $100 or more to attend a fundraising workshop when you’re desperate for money to begin with, but if your entire fundraising strategy consists of “getting a grant from a top granting agency” in today’s climate, well it might be money well spent. Fortunately for us, IFP has uploaded an entire masterclass from 25-year-plus media executive Louise Rosen for us to watch, and we don’t have to pay a dime. What Louise outlines right off the bat is that the documentary funding landscape is in flux. Today, doc filmmakers have to get more creative, and Louise outlines just how to go about getting started on raising your budget incrementally in the video below: More »
It’s far too easy to get caught up in the technological aspects of filmmaking, whether it be with new cameras, lenses, NLEs, or anything else. Focusing on gear is easy when something new comes out practically every day, but all of this technology is in place for the purpose of helping us tell better stories. What better way to remind ourselves of this than to see a great story made with what is widely considered to be “less than adequate” equipment? Such is the case with Searching for Sugar Man, the Academy Award winner for Best Feature Documentary at this year’s Oscars, part of which was shot on, as you might have already guessed, an iPhone. Check out the trailer for this fascinating film below: More »
'Side by Side,' the Film vs. Digital Documentary Produced by Keanu Reeves, is Now on Netflix
Film vs. Digital. Celluloid vs. Silicon. While the debate is beginning to die down due to economics and advancements in digital cinema cameras, a documentary on the subject called Side by Side takes a look at the issue with some of the premiere directors and cinematographers. We mentioned a few months ago that the doc, produced by Keanu Reeves, was available to buy, but now the film is available to watch right now on Netflix. Click through for some clips from the movie. More »
Doc Alliance, a documentary distribution platform which is the result of a partnership between seven European documentary film festivals, frequently runs retrospectives of great documentary filmmakers. This month, and until February 17th, they are streaming 17 films from the legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda. Click through for more details on her and the films they are showing. More »
Upcoming B&H Seminar: 'Making a Movie Without a Hollywood Budget and Big Crew'
Beginning in the summer of 2010, filmmaker Gail Mooney and her daughter took a 99-day journey all over the world to create “a film about people who were making a positive difference.” Opening Our Eyes was the result. The partially Kickstarter-funded film follows eleven subjects across six continents, and went on to achieve accolades such as Best Documentary at the 2012 Orlando Film Festival. Considering the scope and scale of the project, and the budget at which it was accomplished, Opening Our Eyes is a startling achievement — and, through an upcoming B&H seminar with Mooney herself, other filmmakers can learn exactly how it was accomplished. More »
Focus Forward Documentary Winners Announced, Watch All 5 Including the $100K Grand Prize Film
It was announced all the way back in February 2012, but the Focus Forward documentary short film competition has finally come to a close, and they’ve announced the winners at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The contest, sponsored by General Electric and Vimeo, and in partnership with Cinelan, has awarded $200,000 in prize money to five short films around the theme of invention or innovation. Check out all of the winners below, plus a new short film from Morgan Spurlock. More »
Exercising micromanagement and fine-tune control over the minutia of scenery is a must in filmmaking for all but the most hardcore run-and-gun-style productions. It’s not very often, however, that you see production-level set design and construction, prop manipulation down to the inch, or cinema lighting used to illuminate deep lived-in landscapes in still photography. Gregory Crewdson does just this, implementing an unheard-of degree of visionary control upon the constituents of his still frames — the image at left, for one, is no incidental happenstance. Filmmaker Ben Shapiro has documented Crewdson’s decade-spanning pursuit of creating true-to-life vignettes by fictitious articulation in Brief Encounters — screenings are limited, but the doc looks to be a must-see. Watch the trailer and some clips from the film below. More »
What does a grocery store do with food deemed to be “unsellable” — when a bag is torn or a can damaged, or when items are past their sell-by date? In many cases charities can’t accept such food. So this otherwise perfectly good — or at least partially good — food ends up in the dumpster out back. What kind of people show up to dig through these discards? Filmmaker Alex Mallis shows they’re sometimes not who you think with his doc Spoils: Extraordinary Harvest. As many of us sit down to (over)consume Thanksgiving dinner in the U.S., watch what happens to some of the food you didn’t — or couldn’t — buy (in this case, here in Brooklyn, NY). Don’t click play if you’re expecting a quick-hit viral video with visual effects; this is a 20-minute documentary starring very real characters. More »
This is a guest post by Till Schauder (with Sara Nodjoumi).
I’m married to an Iranian woman. She’s smart, beautiful, and tough as nails. (I may be a little biased, though not much…)
In 2007 a friend of ours – actually the fellow who married us – sent me an article about a handful of Americans who play professional basketball in Iran. At that time we were high at war with Iraq and Afghanistan and it looked like Iran – or “I-ran” – would be next on the list, just as it does again now. In the absence of diplomatic relations (we haven’t had an embassy in Tehran since 1979), I was inspired by these athletes, who arguably do more for dialogue between Iranians and Americans than any politician on either side. More »
“How do I become a music video director? How did you get into this? Whose door do I knock on? That’s not the right way to think about it. You should really just grab a camera and shoot stuff and wait till it’s good enough for people to notice.”
Being exposed to first hand knowledge and advice from those also on the filmmaking journey is vitally important when it comes to developing your craft, regardless of how far along in your career you are — it’s pretty much this ethos which saw our very own Koo put out the DSLR Cinematography Guide. As last month’s Fidgit Box interview with William McGregor demonstrated, advice from a peer can be of more practical use than the wisdom gleaned from cinema’s master practitioners as it often contains insights you can put into practice here and now, as opposed to filing it away for that elusive day when you direct your first multi-million dollar feature. Episode 1 of the new documentary web series The Videographers Guide aims to share this type of knowledge through its interviews with working music video directors: More »
One of the most crucial pieces to a great documentary is the interview. In post production you will ground your edit around a transcription of what these people have to say about your subject. When you are performing the interview, you obviously want the subject looking straight at you to achieve a human connection and better result. But what if you want to connect your subject to the audience more… how would you go about making the connection with the subject while getting a first-person angle on them? Enter the Interrotron, a favorite device used by Oscar winner Errol Morris. Check out these clips from Fog of War, his Oscar winner that used the device: More »
We may still be a mighty ways off from the ubiquitously connected, always recording (and slightly disturbing) world depicted in Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo’s cautionary short Sight, but if Google hold good to their planned release schedule, then we may only have to wait until 2014 to be able to shoot true POV with our own set of Google Glass. For now we can vicariously experience the hustle and bustle of New York Fashion Week’s DVF Spring 2013 show as captured by designer Diane von Furstenberg and her team using a prototype set: More »
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