Archive for July, 2009
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
In “A Filmmaker’s Glamorous Life,” online and in our latest print edition, Esther Robinson surveyed a number of filmmakers about the jobs they’ve taken to support themselves when they are not making films. In this blog series we’ll run the unedited responses we received that were then condensed for the piece. Below: Ross Kauffman.
Filmmaker: How did you support yourself during the production of your last movie/movies?
Kauffman: About 14 years ago, I took long term leases on a raw space, built apartments, and rented them. I supported myself by being a landlord.
Filmmaker: What was good/not good about this kind of job(s)?
Kauffman: For the most part, everything ran smoothly and the job did not entail too much day to day effort. But oh, there were those times when it didn’t, and at those times, when things went wrong (things like floods, fires, etc), the “second” job became the “first” job, and the filmmaking had to take a back seat.
Here are three examples:
1) THE FLOOD: One of my apartments was flooded from the floor above me. As the good landlord, I had to replace the ceilings, redo the floors, etc. As I was walking through the parking lot of Home Depot with all my supplies, I found out that I was shortlisted for the Oscars. It was a very grounding experience.
2) On the morning of the big day of my feature film premiering at the Film Forum I was awoken with the news that there was, yet again, another flood from the floor above.
3) While filming a doc for someone else in India (actually a third job during my second job) I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of my cell phone ringing. It was my tenant in NYC telling me that there was a fire on the floor just above her, but that everyone was ok and that the fire department put it out before it spread. Unfortunately, the water that the fire department used to put out the fire succumbed to the force of gravity, … Read the rest
Monday, July 27th, 2009
TV ad for a Film Four mumblecore movie week.
Hat tip: Karina Longworth.… Read the rest
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
In “A Filmmaker’s Glamorous Life,” online and in our latest print edition, Esther Robinson surveyed a number of filmmakers about the jobs they’ve taken to support themselves when they are not making films. Over the next few days on the blog we’ll run the unedited responses we received that were then condensed for the piece. First up: Joe Swanberg.
Filmmaker: How did you support yourself during the production of your last movie/movies?
Swanberg: Now I’m able to support myself as a filmmaker, but during the making of my first two features I worked as a web designer, and I worked for two installments of the Chicago International Film Festival.
Filmmaker: What was good/not good about these jobs?
Swanberg: I taught myself web design and HTML when I was in film school, knowing my degree would be fairly worthless in the real world. I wanted a solid skill that could bring in money. I worked for a web company in Chicago for the first two years after I graduated, then I did freelance web design for another year. The money from that job paid for my first two films. The company was really cool about giving me days off or letting me work half-days when I needed to shoot. My boss knew I wanted to be a filmmaker and was very supportive. He even has a cameo in my second film, LOL.
My job with the Chicago International Film Festival was great. It was seasonal, so I worked there August through October. I was in charge of booking the flights and hotels for the visiting filmmakers. It wasn’t creative work, but I learned so much about the way film festivals run. I worked directly under the main programmer, so I got a firsthand glimpse at how the festival was programmed. I also learned the names of all the distribution and sales companies and who worked for them. I learned about the important International festivals and how their tastes run. I also got to meet most of the filmmakers, because often when they arrived I was the only … Read the rest
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
As some of you noticed and commented upon back in the early Summer, our previous message boards fell apart due to rampant spam. We decided to completely raze the boards and start from scratch, and our new boards have just gone up in what we are considering a soft-launch while we work out any unexpected bugs or kinks. If you click over there you’ll see expanded and more specific categories covering the wide range of filmmaking as well as members of our editorial staff answering questions and taking part in the conversation. So, if you are a message-board kind of person, head over there, register and start posting.… Read the rest
Saturday, July 25th, 2009
Proving that sometimes you just have to a) show up and b) ask, writer/director Oren Moverman sent the below email detailing how it came to be that Oscilloscope picked up distribution rights to his Sundance-premiering film, The Messenger. Six months after the film screened in Park City, a distribution deal emerged when Moverman happened to attend an IFP reception held at Deluxe Laboratories in New York to welcome Adam Yauch to its Board of Directors.
Around 7.45 that night I met Adam and David Fenkel of Oscilloscope for the first time. I had wine.
They told me they liked The Messenger, a film I directed a few months ago.
They said they hoped to release a film like The Messenger one day.
I said, well maybe that day has come.
My friend Ira Sachs smiled.
Adam and David thought we surely already had a distributor.
They were wrong.
I told them to give it a shot.
On July 11th we closed the deal with Oscilloscope to distribute The Messenger this November.
I couldn’t be happier.
My daughter and I were experimenting with veganism that month.
I left hungry and tipsy.
A very good idea, this reception.
Thanks IFP, Deluxe, and Ira. — Oren Moverman
… Read the rest
Friday, July 24th, 2009
PETER CAPALDI AND JAMES GANDOLFINI IN DIRECTOR ARMANDO IANNUCCI’S IN THE LOOP. COURTESY IFC FILMS.Scottish writer-director Armando Iannucci has made a slow and steady progression toward becoming a film director. The Glasgow-born Italian Scot originally was planning to become a priest (like Martin Scorsese) but the lure of the entertainment world won out over the less glamorous prospect of a life of piety and celibacy. Iannucci attended the University of Glasgow then studied English at Oxford University, where he discovered his passion for comedy. He next got a job as a radio producer on comedy shows for the BBC, and by the early 90s he was working on the iconic sketch show Week Ending and had created both the edgy faux newscast On the Hour (with Chris Morris) and Knowing Me, Knowing You… with Alan Partridge, starring Steve Coogan. The latter two shows then graduated to television (On The Hour became The Day Today), where they were highly acclaimed by both viewers and critics. In the late 90s, Iannucci progressed from writer and producer to director also, helming a segment of the movie Tube Tales (1999) as well as his first longer form political satire, Clinton: His Struggle with Dirt (1998). In 2001, he wrote, directed and starred in the series The Armando Iannucci Shows, and the following year he teamed up with Coogan again to co-write and direct episodes of I’m Alan Partridge. In 2005, he created The Thick of It, a vérité mockumentary series that depicted the farcical goings on in the lower echelons of the British government. After getting rave reviews for its first series, the show returned two years later with three one-hour specials.
Iannucci’s first feature, In the Loop, sees him adapting The Thick of It for the big screen, though only one character – the merciless, insult-hurling spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) – makes through the transition intact. Fittingly, the scope is much greater here, as it swaps the idiocies of small government for the farce of international politics and global warfare. The film’s … Read the rest
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
As detailed in our Spring 09 issue, the unspeakably indescribable Cory McAbee’s “Stingray Sam” will soon be available for your unparalleled enjoyment, when it is released in full on many formats in mid-September. In the meantime, you can download the trailer and an original song from Episode 1, “Mars,” right here. Don’t delay.… Read the rest
Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
The production community is stunned by the sudden passing this weekend of well respected Montana Artists senior feature and television agent Jon Furie. A memorial service will be held Thursday, July 23, at 3:00pm at the Large Chapel at the Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles. In lieu of flowers or gifts, his family is asking that donations be made to Good Beginnings at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.… Read the rest
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
The 8th Berlinale Talent Campus will take place Feb. 13-18, 2010 under the theme “Cinema Needs Talent: Looking for the Right People.” Application deadline is Oct. 7. Producers, directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, editors, production designers, film composers, sound designers, film journalists and visual artists from all over the world are invited to apple at, www.berlinale-talentcampus.de.
Here’s more from the release:
For many filmmakers, teaming up with the right people to inspire and support them and to create a collective vision is the essential element of successful filmmaking. The upcoming Berlinale Talent Campus will tap into these thoughts and ask how the development of personal craftsmanship and the experience of choosing the right people intertwine to build gainful long-term creative collaborations. “Teamwork is the key to success. It’s about daring to ask the vital questions together in order to exceed your own limits and to keep that one essential goal in sight: to make a great film. This theme also reflects the Campus, which has, since the beginning, strived to connect young international filmmakers with their colleagues and established professionals, always in the spirit of encouraging collaborative filmmaking”, says Programme Manager Matthijs Wouter Knol.
The Campus application also includes applications for the numerous additional hands-on training programmes: Talent Press, Score Competition, Doc- and Script Station, Talent Project Market, Campus Studio and Berlin Today Award.… Read the rest
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Just posted in our new issue is Roberto Quezada-Dardon’s second article for us about shooting on the new DSLR still cameras. This one is “Pimp your DSLR,” in which Quezada-Dardon looks at some of the new accessories that are being manufactured to bring video camera functionality to these cameras. He also has his own blog, Outtakes, in which he’s posting a lot of great related material, including links to Canon 5D workflows , blog posts on working with HD, and outtakes from the pieces he’s written for Filmmaker, which include extended interviews with filmmakers like Zak Forsman. Recommended.… Read the rest
