Archive for February, 2007
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
In 2004 Cinevegas and Sundance programmer Mike Plante wrote a piece for us titled “Confessions of a Short Film Programmer” in which he listed the ingredients that make a short film impress festival selection committees.
Now he’s got a new website, “I Blame Society,” with both a photo blog as well as a blog tied to his film zine Cinemad. On his latest post, he references the Filmmaker article and adds an addendum, which I’ll repost here:
One of the things I did not mention in the article: why do film schools try to teach students by showing them features and then expecting them to emulate what they have learned inside of a short?
As you can guess, it is quite hard to tell a deep story, to establish characters, to create a world within 5 to 15 minutes. And once you go over 15, it had better be amazing or audiences will start to drift. There are shorts that succeed in all these ways, but not many.
Yet students are not watching amazing shorts by filmmakers who may have been on the same level with similar resources, or more importantly, at the same creative stage. At age 18 or 21 or 25, you may be able to recognize the talent behind Ford and Hitchcock, but how can you possibly translate similar film structure and metaphor into a short when you are learning? It would be better to simply watch certain scenes and learn editing and composing shots, using sound and pacing, for example.
At the end of the day, students are spending time and money at schools in order to learn how to be a filmmaker. How many are going to be successful, or are even talented? 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? And with the wisdom of someone at 21? Just teach them the tools. The Cassavetes are going to create themselves.
Regardless of that, universities should serve all students equally. Let them rent the famous shit on their own. Show them short films because that is what they are required to make at their level. And pay
… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
Over at their MySpace page, the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival is announcing the First Annual American Pavilion Student Filmmaker Program Short Film Contest (whew!). The deadline is March 9, and submitted films should tackle the question, “How will Cannes 07 change your life?”
The prize? A trip to the Cannes Film Festival. For more info, click on the MySpace page above or visit the American Pavilion website.… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007
I’m usually annoyed that whenever the horror genre heats up, a bunch of indie filmmakers decide to capitalize on the trend and “make a horror movie.” Most of the time, these filmmakers don’t really like horror, don’t watch it, and don’t understand its specific rules and traditions. And then they wonder why people don’t find their scripts scary.
So, this article in Variety by Archie Thomas is quite interesting. It reports on a new venture from the folks at the U.K. film production company Warp X. It’s called Darklight, and it’s a program intended to get horror newcomers — specifically, female horror newcomers — to develop films in the genre.
First, from Variety:
Low-budget digital film outfit Warp X is launching a training and production initiative to encourage more women to direct horror pics. Ten female directors from 76 applicants have been selected for the scheme, which goes by the name of Darklight: Women Direct Horror.
U.K. Film Council-backed Warp X aims to greenlight two projects as feature films for production through their digital slate in 2008.
The 10 femmes have already attended a horror master class at the creepy sounding Fawsley Hall in Northamptonshire, where they received expert advice from writer/director Richard Stanley (“Hardware”), producer Ros Borland (“The Last King of Scotland” co-producer), Lizzie Francke from regional screen agency EM Media, editor Celia Haining (“Dead Man’s Shoes”), Danny Perkins, head of distribution, Optimum Releasing, and Warp X production execs Robin Gutch, Caroline Cooper Charles, Barry Ryan and Mary Burke….
Next up for the 10 hopefuls is a second master class weekend, which will include work with actors. After this, four will be headhunted to develop their ideas into a treatment.
And next, from the Darklight site:
Why don’t women direct horror? In 100 years of cinema history we can barely name a handful of women horror directors. What is it about this incredibly successful worldwide genre that either excludes, or fails to appeal to women directors? This question becomes even more pertinent as women attending cinema screenings of horror films now marginally exceed male attendance figures for the
… Read the rest
Sunday, February 25th, 2007
For those of you who briefly scanned the recent headlines stating that Microsoft was fined $1.52 billion for infringing on two minor patents related to MP3 technology with only mild passing interest (or glee), Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly has a solid post explaining why this situation is more than a little screwed up.
Here are the key graphs:
So how about MP3, the ubiquitous music encoding standard? Who holds the patents on that? Answer: the MP3 standard was developed in the early 90s and the patent pool was originally controlled by Fraunhofer IIS. Microsoft paid Fraunhofer $16 million for the right to use MP3 in its Windows Media Player and hundreds of other companies have done the same over the past decade. During that time, everyone in the world assumed that Fraunhofer was the legitimate patent holder.
Until now. In 2003 Alcatel-Lucent suddenly announced that they owned some of the underlying patents on MP3, and on Thursday a jury decided they were right. The result was a $1.52 billion patent infringement verdict against Microsoft. And just in case you hate Microsoft enough to cheer for this, allow Rob Pegoraro to set you straight. As he says, “Alcatel-Lucent’s patent payday has all the things that patent-abuse critics hate”:
“Submarine” patents, invoked years after a contested invention has hit the market? Check
Claiming ownership of a media format most people use all the time? Check
A plaintiff that’s failed to commercialize its own alleged invention? Check
Extortionate royalty demands? Check.
… Read the rest
Sunday, February 25th, 2007
The Film Independent Spirit Awards were handed out yesterday in Santa Monica, California. Here are the winners.
Best Feature: Little Miss Sunshine, Producers: Marc Turtletaub, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, Albert Berger & Ron Yerxa
Best Director: Jonathon Dayton & Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine
Best Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Thank You For Smoking
Best First Feature: Sweet Land. Director: Ali Selim. Producers: Alan Cumming, James Bigham, Ali Selim
Best First Screenplay: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine
John Cassavetes Award (For the Best Feature made for under $500,000):Quinceañera. Writer/Directors: Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland. Producer: Anne Clements
Best Supporting Female: Frances McDormand, Friends with Money
Best Supporting Male: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
Best Female Lead: Shareeka Epps, Half Nelson
Best Male Lead: Ryan Gosling, Half Nelson
Best Cinematography: Guillermo Navarro, Pan’s Labyrinth
Best Foreign Film: The Lives of Others. Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Best Documentary The Road to Guantanamo. Directors: Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross… Read the rest
Saturday, February 24th, 2007
The second annual New York Comic Con seems like the last place Filmmaker would be at but yesterday I was at the Javits Center to see new footage of Eli Roth’s sure-to-be gore fest Hostel: Part II and got a look into fan boy paradise.
Showing up a little early to get my badge, I walked around the trade show which is split up in designated areas for comic giants like DC Comics and Marvel, turn a corner and you can try your hands at some of the newest video games, and a little farther down are racks of memorabilia as far as the eye can see. Taking one lap of the venue is exhausting as my eyes try to keep up with everything coming at me. I see three Spider-Mans in the span of twenty footsteps, Batman is trying to get a picture with Princess Leia who’s wearing her slave outfit from Return of the Jedi, I run into a few other comic book characters but my limited geek knowledge causes me to not be as excited as some others around me.
Working my way to the conference hall where the panels take place I run into a heard of Star Wars characters and must pause to take in the sight. Vader, Boba Fett, Storm Troopers, Obie Wan, Anakin, they’re all there in their glory pausing for the handful of fans who want photographs. Finally in the conference hall I get the biggest treat of all, the ultimate fan boy, Kevin Smith, is at the podium. Now I’ve heard of his college speaking tours, but seeing his skills live is indescribable. Nothing is sacred.
“What do you think of Reese and Ryan’s break up?”
“Yeah, Ryan’s gay.”
“Do you think I can get in your next movie?”
“I’ve already got one fat bearded guy in my movies.”
“You’ve been starring in a lot of movies lately…”
“That’s Hollywood trying to tell me to stop directing movies.”
After close to two hours, where Smith answers every single question, he gives … Read the rest
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
When I first saw David Gordon Green’s exceptional debut George Washington (2000), one of the things that most impressed me about Green’s style of filmmaking was his inspired use of music. The score was understated, evocative and poignantly beautiful, and was a major contributing factor (along with Tim Orr’s gorgeous cinematography) to the comparisons between George Washington and the films of Green’s great idol, Terrence Malick.
Unfortunately there has never been a George Washington soundtrack album released, and as a result the man behind the haunting sounds, David Wingo, has not had anything like the credit he deserves. Wingo has since contributed music (often with co-composer Michael Linnen) to all of Green’s subsequent films, All The Real Girls (2003), Undertow (2004), and this year’s Sundance hit Snow Angels, but recently has been starting to gain much-deserved attention with his new band Ola Podrida. The outfit describe themselves as an alt-country group and their music has a slightly rockier edge than Wingo has shown in his film scores, though the plaintive poeticism that is a trademark of Wingo’s music is still very much at the fore.
The band’s eagerly-anticipated self-titled album is released in April, and they will be hoping to make a big splash at SXSW next month. But if you can’t wait until then to see Wingo and co., they are playing tomorrow night in Brooklyn at Union Pool, and come highly recommended.… Read the rest
Friday, February 23rd, 2007
Kirby Dick‘s This Film Is Not Yet Rated didn’t just expose the inconsistencies in the MPAA ratings system but helped in the battle documentary filmmakers fight every time they make a movie and must determine what is in the realm of fair use and what isn’t. In Dick’s film over 100 clips are used to show how violent films are deemed acceptable by the MPAA while films with sexual scenes aren’t. Defining the clips as fair use, Dick didn’t pay licensing fees, which would have ranged between $10,000-$15,000 a clip.
Inspired by the film, Kansas City-based Media/Professional Insurance has started offering coverage for doc filmmakers allowing them fair use of film clips, according to a story in Variety.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Initiative by Media/Professional Insurance is designed to explicitly allow documentarians to retain coverage if they rely on the “fair use” doctrine, which holds that copyrighted material may be used without compensation if it’s for purposes of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research.”
… Read the rest
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
Recently, I came across an mp3 of Samuel L. Jackson‘s first musical foray, which comes from Black Snake Moan, Craig Brewer‘s forthcoming follow-up to Hustle & Flow (2005). The song leaked a few weeks ago on the music blogs, and it certainly seems to be an interesting way of publicizing the movie. More importantly, I think ol’ Sam (singing about the legendary tale of Billy Lyons and Stackolee) does a pretty good job of handling a tune – in his own inimitable way, of course. But it may not be the best idea to play the song loudly in your workplace as the lyrics are somewhat ‘colorful’…… Read the rest
