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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Stick to your guns. I got a lot of pressure from the studio heads [shooting the pilot for "Scarface"], who wanted me to "brighten it up." I'd tell them that 'the director doesn't want it bright.' The studio barred me from timing the TV show, but I went into the suite at 5:00 a.m. and did it anyhow. I wasn't invited to shoot another film for that studio for more than 20 years.
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Donald Morgan is Still Making Movie Magic
For veteran DP Donald M. Morgan, the best is yet to come
In a career spanning more than 30 years, cinematographer Donald M. Morgan has worked with Robert Zemeckis, John Carpenter, Roger Young and Joseph Sargent, among others, pulling in six award nominations from the American Society of Cinematographers and nine from the Emmy Awards along the way, all the while maintaining a moxie that pushes the boundaries of his art form.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Only a madman would sit down to write a script believing that it will one day become a successful movie. Be a madman. As the Book of the Samurai notes, "Nothing great was ever accomplished through common sense. One must become insane and desperate."
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Family Values
Screenwriter Michael Arndt gives the family road trip a whole new meaning in Little Miss Sunshine
For a screenwriter, there's no greater risk than throwing in the towel of a life of secure employment and handing yourself over to the writing trade. And there's no greater payoff than writing a hit movie the first time out. As the awards season kicks off, MM chatted with Little Miss Sunshine scribe Michael Arndt about risking it all for Hollywood.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
You can't be fatalistic. You can't sit down and let it roll downhill. You can't say films are all about fantasy, and meanwhile we destroy the planet.
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Fighting Irish
Ken Loach takes on the Irish resistance in The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Although the storyline of Ken Loach's new film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, seems somewhat forced, the movie succeeds in making the subject vibrant and visual for viewers today. MM caught up with Loach and The Wind That Shakes the Barley screenwriter Paul Laverty to get to the bottom of the matter.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
Don't ever let them see you panic or lose your composure.
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Luck of the Irish
Brad Gann trades in his pen for a director's chair with two back-to-back films, Invincible and Black Irish
With a hit movie just barely out of theaters, it's hard to believe Brad Gann's second feature film is already in the can. But as his script for Invincible, starring Mark Wahlberg and Greg Kinnear, was being shot in Philadelphia, Gann was already busy on the set of the 24-day shoot for Black Irish, a movie he wrote, produced and directed.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
It's a good thing to be frightened. In fact, you should be scared every day you go to work. There should be something that is daunting to you that you haven't eliminated all doubts about. There should be something that keeps you awake at night.
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Picture Perfect
Allen Daviau celebrates almost 40 years in the cinematography business
Allen Daviau worked his way up the Hollywood food chain by providing lighting for high school stage plays, working the graveyard shift in photo labs and shooting a live television show for $100 per week. These days he's best known as the cinematographer behind some of cinema's most beautiful photographic moments in such films as E.T., The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun and Bugsy. In the course of his career, Daviau has earned five Academy Award nominations and, in February of 2007, he will receive the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
Follow through with your word. People give a lot of false promises in this business. Fight that temptation.
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Mr. Roboto Revisited
Actor Tony Hale is living life after "Arrested Development" to the fullest
He's voiced a pope, rocked out to Mr. Roboto and lost his hand to a dolphin. Now he's playing best friend to an almost-serious Will Ferrell. After rising to fame as Buster Bluth on the tragically short-lived series "Arrested Development," Tony Hale is taking Hollywood by storm, with a slate of new films in various stages of production--including Paul Feig's Unaccompanied Minors and Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
On every flick since Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, I've been editing while still in the midst of production. I'm not talking about some hired editor piecing together an assembly while I'm on set, either-I mean that, whenever I'm not shooting, I'm in the edit room with my footage. For this reason, we keep our editing bay as close to the set as possible. While the crew is taking 15 minutes to an hour to set-up the next shot, I'm behind the Avid, putting the flick together.
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Not-so-Silent Smith Speaks Truth
With An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder, writer-director Kevin Smith grins and bares it all
Kevin Smith has built a career on creating characters to whom almost any viewer can relate. His repertoire includes angst-filled retail clerks, heartfelt comic book romantics, fast-talking angels and widowed fathers, and he ties them all together with a no-holds-barred honesty with which Smith approaches his everyday life.
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Evil Indies
The Evil City Film Fest's Jim Muscarella celebrates cinema's underdogs
In a city overrun with film festivals and screening events, it takes a lot to get noticed. Or maybe it just takes a punk rock attitude. Inspired by the indie artist roots of its East Village location, the Evil City Film Festival has made quite a name for itself in just two years-and gained the support of top film and media companies and indie moviemakers in the process.
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Randolph Kret & Shaun Hill: Things We’ve Learned as Moviemakers
Make friends in the industry instead of trying to kill the competition.
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Doing Distribution Right
Indican Pictures' husband and wife team, Randolph Kret and Shaun Hill, make it work in life and business
With an eye toward promoting independent voices and visions, Indican Pictures distributes an eclectic mix of genre films, animations and documentaries among which are Troy Duffy's The Boondock Saints, a cult favorite for its vigilante flare, Monteith McCollum's Independent Spirit-awarded Hybrid and Rosario Roverto Jr.'s social comment comedy, A Wake in Providence.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Be yourself. If you come as somebody else, one day you'll forget who that is, and you'll look a fool.
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Reel Life Lessons
Screenwriter Jeremy Brock brings The Last King of Scotland and Driving Lessons to the big screen
Jeremy Brock has a knack for depicting the intimate lives of the very famous. Whether it's a grieving Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown or the infamous dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, Brock manages to create complex, larger-than-life characters who are still somehow relatable. But Brock has more than just one trick up his sleeve, as the diversity of his projects attests. In addition to The Last King of Scotland, which is already attracting a healthy amount of Oscar buzz, Brock's first outing as a director, Driving Lessons, hit theaters this month.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
Don't worry if you don't know what your story is about.
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Learning By Doing
At Jerry Sherlock's New York Film Academy, instructors prefer a hands-on approach
For most moviemakers, a career as a successful Hollywood
producer would be enough to satisfy the creative urge. But for Jerry
Sherlock, executive producer on John McTiernan's The Hunt for
Red October and a number of other Hollywood hits, the desire
to teach the craft of moviemaking was always a lingering desire.
He acted on that desire 10 years ago when he founded the New York
Film Academy.
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Rejection Turns Revolutionary
Nodance Film Festival Founder Jim Boyd discusses being Park City's "Number Three" festival
Park City regulars know that if they're in the mood to view some truly original work, Jim Boyd is the man to bring it to them. Part entrepreneur and part revolutionary, Boyd brings his Nodance Film Festival to the mountain for its fifth year this January, and lets us in on the three things every Park City visitor should remember.
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Shooting for an Alternate Reality
Benoît Delhomme discusses his work on Ming-liang Tsai's What Time is it Over There?
We have all heard it said countless times: cinema is a collaborative
art. Anyone who can deliver the goods at a high level of craft
and work well as part of a team is likely to find a healthy
amount of success is the industry. Such a person could be,
like French Director of Photography Benoît Delhomme, a very
busy artist, moving from one interesting project to another,
and collaborating with some of cinema´s most exciting, innovative
moviemakers.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
One piece of advice I give to people of both sexes in this business is don't let anyone abuse you-life is too short.
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Walking the Tightrope
Longtime David Lynch producer/editor Mary Sweeney talks about their latest collaboration, Mulholland Drive
Beginning her career as an apprentice sound editor on Reds, Mary Sweeney began her now more than 15-year editing and producing collaboration with David Lynch on 1986's Blue Velvet. With their latest film, Mulholland Drive, in theaters across the country, Sweeney talks about her relationship with one of the world's most original directors and the struggles of being a woman in a man's industry.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
Never, ever, give anyone-friend, foe,and especially a professional-a script whose three digit page count has the middle numeral of "three." "One" is preferable. "Two" only if necessary. "Four" or higher means you should not quit your day job.
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The Cat’s Meow: A Classy Story of Classic Hollywood
Patience pays for New York-bred, LA-based screenwriter Steven Peros
For writer Steven Peros, overnight success has been a long
time coming. Though he thought he was "on his way" when his
first original screenplay was optioned shortly after his graduation
from NYU, the movie wasn't made. Unlike many neophytes, though,
Peros believed in his talent enough to persevere, and he survived
for a dozen years working as a reader for William Morris and
landing "sporadic, small-change writing gigs." Finally, his
script for The Cat's Meow was brought to the project's
ideal director, Peter Bogdanovich, and the rest was history.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
You know, you're with the subject for a long time. It's important that you get it to where you want it to be.
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The Circus Comes to Town
Todd Field talks about shooting In the Bedroom on the coast of Maine
If up until now Todd Field has been known primarily as an
actor, all that is about to change with In the Bedroom,
his feature directorial debut. The movie garnered a special
jury prize for acting for the film's stars, Sissy Spacek and
Tom Wilkinson, and is already generating some Oscar talk.
Here, Field talks about how being an actor informed some of
his directing choices and why being an performer is a whole
lot easier than being a director.
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Film Education’s Maine Attraction
A Conversation with Int'l Film & TV Workshops Founder David Lyman
Anyone can tell you that America's moviemaking hotspots are
Los Angeles and New York City. But what about Rockport, Maine?
With the help of David Lyman, founder of the International
Film & Television Workshops, Rockport has become an important
outpost in the world of cinema education. In this interview,
Lyman discusses the benefits of his sleepy seaside town, and
how Mary Ellen Mark and Conrad Hall helped to make the program
what it is today.
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From Dance Fever to Digital Video
A Conversation with NY DV Show's Rick Friedman
The digital revolution is hardly a secret, but why has New
York City been kept in the dark? The Big Apple doesn't have
to wait any longer, as NY DV Show 2002 hits the city this
month (Feb.) Mindshare Ventures president Rick Friedman talks
to us about the upcoming conference.
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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
Whenever I DP a film, I try to bring something different to the table that separates it from my previous work.
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Focusing the Eye Through Composition
An Interview with DP Neal Fredericks
In 1999, Blair Witch mania hit and made instant superstars
out of all those involved. For cinematographer Neal Fredericks,
it was the opportunity of a lifetime. With 10 years of experience
in film, television, commercial and music video experience
behind him, the success of that film was all he needed to
become one of independent film's most in-demand DPs. Here,
Fredericks talks about his preferred filming format, his new
projects, and how his globetrotting childhood helped to hone
a cinematic sensibility.
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Julia Stiles Never Lets Them See Her Sweat
The actress steps behind the camera to write and direct Raving
When you're a director embarking on your very first project, it might seem intimidating to have your work backed by one of the world's top fashion magazines. But this is just how Julia Stiles found herself both writing and directing the short film Raving, which premiered at this year's Tribeca Film Festival in April and aired on The Sundance Channel in May.
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Things We’ve Learned As Moviemakers
Don't ask people to do something they can't do. Casting is crucial. Don't give a very physical actor a lot of intellectual reasons to do something; learn to know your actors and direct each differently according to who they are as individuals
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Latest from the blog:
Doorpost Awards $300,000 to “Undiscovered” Moviemakers
The Doorpost Film Project, a “contest aimed at discovering and developing moviemakers capable of producing films that inspire and influence rather than simply entertain,” just finished round one and is now left with 15 finalists who are described by Nathan Elliott, the Project's director, as “a globally, ethnically and racially diverse group of filmmakers that have one important thing in common: They're enormously talented."
Posted 07.23.08 | News/Commentary | No comments yet...
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