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Things I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker
I know from being on the other side of the lens how important it is for the director to be able to communicate and earn everyone's trust. The first few times I directed, I only thought about recording the actors' performances. Every once and a while I would get an idea about how framing a shot could have an impact, but I didn't really understand that part of filmmaking in the beginning. I'm always prodding myself and whatever cinematographer I'm working with to try to encourage me to think of ways to assist the actor with the composition and cinematic choices.
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Happy Days Forever
After 50 years in Hollywood, actor-writer-director-producer Ron Howard admits that he's still got a lot to learn
Though the role of cinematographer is not one he's ever tackled directly, actor-writer-producer-director Ron Howard's behind-the-camera prowess has been impressive enough to earn him the 2007 American Society of Cinematographers Board of Governors Award, which is presented annually to an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to advancing the art of moviemaking.
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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
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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Things I’ve Learned As A Moviemaker
Don't worry if you don't know what your story is about.
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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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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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Henry Jaglom’s Moment of Truth
Film's freest director dissects the Hollywood machine in Hollywood Dreams
When it comes to the film world's original independent voices, names like Orson Welles and John Cassavetes are the first to be bandied about. But for more than 35 years, Henry Jaglom has been making movies the only way he knows how-his way! Beginning with A Safe Place in 1971 and leading up to the recent Hollywood Dreams, the former actor has managed to complete 15 feature films throughout his career-not just a writer and director, but as an actor, editor and distributor, too.
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Ice in Her Stomach
A Conversation with Dogme 95 Director Lone Scherfig about "breaking the rules of film language" on Italian for Beginners
In 1995 Danish moviemakers Thomas Vinterberg and Lars von
Trier took a break from the technical conventions of modern
cinema and created the now famous Dogme 95 manifesto. This
month, Italian For Beginners, the fourth Danish Dogme
film, will be released with director Lone Scherfig at the
helm. In a conversation with MM, Scherfig talks about making
a Dogme comedy, Danish insecurities and staying true to that
prickly "Vow of Chastity."
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Comic Relief
Mike Binder and Adam Sandler team up for a unique take on the events of 9/11 with Reign Over Me
Six months after the five-year anniversary of the events of September 11th-and months after United 93 and World Trade Center-comedian-turned-auteur Mike Binder is releasing his own take on the events of that fateful day-or, more appropriately, the after effects-with Reign Over Me, starring Adam Sandler.
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What I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker
Don't stop working. For me, moviemaking is practice that makes you better but never perfect.
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A Few Minutes with William (Bill) Lustig
Lustig speaks with MM about his career and what it takes to stay at the top of the moviemaking game over the long term.
Bill Lustig has been appreciated by the French as a director with a unique, unflinching cinematic eye for years. At home in L.A., he?s best known as a cult midnight moviemaker who has crafted some of the most fun, frightening, gory films of the ?80s, including Maniac, Vigilante, and Relentless. Intelligent, articulate and intimidatingly well-steeped in film lore, the hardworking Lustig recently began a new career as a film restorer and DVD producer with Anchor Bay Entertainment.
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Things I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker
The process of each actor is different. Some are intuitive, some love to rehearse, some hate to rehearse. In some instances, you may want to rehearse even when they don't want to; it's just a matter of them understanding the process. Actors are so exposed. Directors are behind the camera crafting our world while the actors are exposed in front of the camera, exposed with their emotions. It's a matter of finding the best atmosphere for them to work.
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From Mexico to Hollywood and Back
Writer-Director Alfonso Cuarón discusses Y Tu Mama Tambien
Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mama Tambien is a film
set in Mexico about two young men on the cusp of manhood who
take up one summer with a beautiful young woman several years
their senior. A sexy road movie with a dispassionate, often
blunt take on modern day Mexican social and political realities,
Cuarón's latest work showcases his off-the-cuff visual
and narrative style that nearly got him banned by Mexican
censors.
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Things I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker
Be serious about it. The characters have to believe in the situation they are in and play it for real.
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The Triumph of Clare Peploe
Bertolucci's better half scores another directorial victory
Clare Peploe didn't plan it this way. The writer/director
whose new picture, The Triumph of Love (at theaters
this month), she adapted for the screen with husband Bernardo
Bertolucci (The Last Emperor, The Conformist) never
meant to become a moviemaker. Her entry into the film business
came serendipitously, through her friendships with moviemakers
in Italy, including renowned director Michelangelo Antonioni
(Zabriskie Point, Blow Up). Her latest film,
The Triumph of Love, stars Mira Sorvino and Ben Kingsley
in a spry and deliberately modern take on the 18th
century French farce by Pierre Marivaux.
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Things I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker
It was a good place to make mistakes and be an idiot--but learn. You make all these videos that nobody will ever see. If someone can pay for it, even better.
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Woman on the Verge
Nicole Holofcener discusses her latest film, Lovely & Amazing
After cutting her teeth on the set with such notable moviemakers
as Woody Allen and Allison Anders, Nicole Holofcener achieved
remarkable success as a writer-director with her first feature,
Walking and Talking. Her latest film, Lovely &
Amazing, a dysfunctional family story that is at once
entertaining and poignantly human, opens in theaters later
this month.
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Things I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker
Treat the writer with respect if he or she is any good-and have him or her on the shoot.
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Things I’ve Learned as a MovieMaker
LA is ironically and paradoxically a dangerous place to be if you make movies. Because it's almost impossible to keep a sense of film as a representation of life and to get connected to what's going on outside. In other words, if you're going to make films about making films, that's a good idea for a film. But to continue in a career in which it's all self-reference and self-quotation or quotation from friends or enemies, it's such a distortion of what film can and should be.
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Sacrifice Yes, Compromise, No
The Dangerous Life of Director Peter Care
David Fincher, Spike Jonze and Jonathan Glazer are just a
few directors who've carried their success in the world of
music videos to the big screen. The latest director to follow
that trend is England's Peter Care, whose The Dangerous
Lives of Altar Boys made a splash at Sundance earlier
this year and is at theaters now.
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Invitation to a Head Fracture
Straight Talk from Maverick Harvard Man James Toback
Compromising is not the first word that comes to mind when
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
You can't have enough pre-production. There's never enough post-production.
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More Than Master of the Feel-Bad Film
Neil LaBute talks about moving from the jet-black humor of In the Company of Men and Nurse Betty to the romantic Possession
Neil LaBute moves from the jet-black humor of Nurse
Betty to the romance of Possession
His plays and films are about people-mainly men-behaving badly.
They're about relationships, which means men vs. woman, where
nasty people lie, cheat and betray each other. But Possession,
Neil LaBute's new movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow, is
adapted from a prize-winning literary romance. So why the
switch?
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
You must have a clear vision of the film-every frame, every rhythm, every nuance, every sound. However, you must also remain "open." You must be ready to embrace surprising opportunities, [the] happy (or unhappy) accidents and be extremely collaborative.
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An Obsession for Style and Content
Writer/Director Mark Romanek Discusses One Hour Photo
Director Mark Romanek made his mark as a
music video director working with Lenny Kravitz, Nine Inch
Nails, Janet Jackson, Beck and Madonna, and he has an eye
for images. In his debut feature, One Hour Photo,
he's concerned with the surface of things. The film does for
photo processing guys what Alfred Hitchcock did for hotel
clerks in Psycho. Just how creepy and harmless is
Sy Parrish, the character at the center of the film? Is he
a villain or someone to pity? Romanek lets you make up your
own mind. Here, he discusses his debut film, putting the comedic
Williams in a deeply dramatic role, and his own obsessions.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
I learned very, very early-I spotted it at the age of twenty-two-that writing and directing could become inextricably one creative process.
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Balls in Blizzards
The Magic and Mystery of Mike Leigh
The characters in Mike Leigh's new picture,
All Or Nothing, are so fully realized, so three dimensional,
that at times you'll want to question whether you're watching
fiction film or documentary drama. For all its blunt realism,
All Or Nothing is ultimately a film about love, hope
and redemption. Starring Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville,
the picture features the sort of rich, honest performances
that fans have come to expect from a Mike Leigh project. On
a recent visit to LA, Mike Leigh told MM
about his unique approach to moviemaking and how it all came
together on All Or Nothing.
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Things We’ve Learned as Moviemakers
Not only do you have to eat, but you need to spend time with your subjects as fellow human beings and not just as filmmakers. There's no better time to do this than over a meal. Put your camera down occasionally and experience life with your subjects. How can you hope to understand your subject's life if you don't experience it a bit for yourself?
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The Curse of Quixote
Documentarians Louis Pepe & Keith Fulton get Lost in La Mancha with Terry Gilliam
The Terry Gilliam School of Film may not be an education in conventional moviemaking, but it's certainly provided Louis Pepe and Keith Fulton with a world of experience.
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What I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Don't wait to start your documentary until "all the funding is in place."
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Lives That Deserve to Be Told on Film
The balancing act of Stevie's Steve James
Though Steve James' new documentary, Stevie, is being
touted as the "long awaited follow-up" to his 1994 film, Hoop
Dreams, the past nine years have not been idle ones. After
the triumphant success of Hoop Dreams, he went on to
direct three feature films—Passing Glory, Prefontaine
and Joe & Max. This spring he makes his return
to the documentary genre with the very personal Stevie,
which won the Best Documentary Cinematography award at
Sundance, and which will be released by Lions Gate on March
28th.
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“Give ‘Till It Hurts” at the Fourth Annual SAW Blood Drive
SAW fans may get to save a life or two with the Fourth Annual SAW “Give ‘Till It Hurts” blood drive. Benefiting the Red Cross, the blood drive is set to coincide with the Halloween premiere of SAW V, the latest entry in the gruesome Lionsgate Films horror franchise, opening nationwide on October 26.
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