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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
One of the smartest things I did was I cold-called a bunch of young directors, and just said "you don't know me but I'm about to direct a movie.
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Shoot First, Ask Questions Later
Columbia College Hollywood believes that film is all about "doing"
In any college curriculum, there are electives and there are requirements. Since 1952, for students at Columbia College Hollywood, making a movie is the latter. Taking a hands-on approach to the moviemaking process, the school guarantees that you won't leave without adding at least one film to your credits. Here, CCH's Director of Admissions (and alum) Amanda Kraus talks about their student body, state-of-the-art facilities and the Columbia College advantage.
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A Quick Camera Comparison
Find out which camera will work best for you and your project
Almost as important as choosing the right actor, cinematographer or editor is choosing the right camera for your production. Like picking crewmembers, camera choice is as much about "personality" as it is about cost or any other variable. It's decision that will impact every aspect of your production, so before you go out and rent or buy the first DV camcorder you can afford, there are some important considerations to keep in mind...
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
If someone wants to be an editor, I would tell them to cut anything and everything that they can-whether it's their parents' wedding videos or a music video for their friend's garage band. Just get in and cut as much as possible.
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Shooting in the Comfort Zone
Editor Jeff Betancourt on the importance of building strong relationships
Every editor's career path is different. For Jeff Betancourt,
it all started with a phone call. Still a student when he was hired to cut his
first film, Miguel
Arteta's Star Maps, Betancourt has gone on to make quite a name for himself
in the indie film world, working again with Arteta on both Chuck & Buck and
The Good Girl. From the cutting room of the comedy Harold and Kumar
go to White
Castle, Betancourt spoke with MM about his career and The
United States of Leland.
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Billy Ray’s Shattered Glass
The screenwriter and first-time director takes a closer look at the media and moviemaking process
Years before Jayson Blair led the axe to fall on the staff-and
reputation-of the New York Times, another young, hotshot
journalist was turning fiction into fact at the offices of
The New Republic. Billy
Ray's Shattered Glass examines the world of writer
Stephen Glass-and the precarious relationship between human
nature and an unbiased media.
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Special Report: Testdriving the Panasonic SDX900
Abel Cine Tech and Offhollywood Digital give the much-hyped new camera a road test
Abel Cine Tech and New York-based Offhollywood Digital recently collaborated to shoot a commercial spot for Volkswagen in order to try out "the refined production path made possible by the new SDX900 DVCPRO 50 camera." Is the SDX900 really the best solution for anyone who wants to achieve a film look?
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Fight for your film. Fight for a bigger budget, your favorite actor, the best locations, the best distributor and the best theaters to show in.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
If things go wrong, you have to believe in your film. When we came back to Los Angeles, after shooting in North Carolina, we still needed to raise lots more money to finish the film. What kept me going was the belief that the film was something that I had to finish.
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Low-Budget Horror Film a Career-maker for first-time moviemaker
Much-anticipated Cabin Fever brings old fashioned terror back to the cinema
For years, Eli Roth, the 31-year old writer-director of Cabin
Fever, wondered
if the horror genre had a place in the world of independent cinema-or any cinema,
for that matter. It took six years for Roth to raise the financing for Cabin
Fever, a film he shot in the grainy backwoods of North Carolina in 2001 for "way
less than a million dollars." Eventually it sold to Lions Gate for a staggering
$3.5 million-along with the promise of a wide theatrical release and an additional
$15 million in advertising and promotion.
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Education on a Grand Scale
Filmmaker's Central takes a global approach
If you don't live in Hollywood but are interested in getting an education in moviemaking, Filmmaker's Central School of Cinema may be the answer. Here, the school's executive director and co-founder, Rayelle Belleau, talks about their unique approach to film school, their international expansion and what a hands-on education can teach a student about "follow-through."
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
The more time I can spend with a new director in prep, the more I learn about his or her taste and personality. How do they see themselves as directors? What support do they need to make their vision of the story work? It's my job to ask all the right questions.
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Cinematography in Black and White
Frederick Elmes on Jim Jarmusch's Coffee & Cigarettes
Frederick Elmes, ASC has had a fascinating career, beginning with his collaborations with directors David Lynch and John Cassavetes while they were both still students at AFI. He's shot such films as Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth, and Ang Lee's The Ice Storm and Hulk. Currently his work can be seen at theaters in Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Show the rough cut every week or two to a bunch of people who haven't read the script. Then listen to their feedback about what isn't working and what isn't clear. It may be painful to hear the critiques, but get over it. Then take all the info back to the edit room and figure out what to do.
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Confessions of an Indie Editor
The Station Agent's Tom McArdle discusses his career
He's a veteran of such indie classics as Laws of Gravity and Star Maps.
But sometimes, locked away in the cutting room, unaware of the outside world
and surrounded by fiction and fantasy, Tom McArdle says "you do whatever you
can to keep things feeling real." Here he discusses his latest project, Tom McCarthy's
critically acclaimed The Station Agent.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Moviemaking should be something you do with a story you need to tell. Your passion is always what drives it.
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Digital By Design
A Conversation with Dopamine Writer-Director Mark Decena
For Mark Decena, the decision to shoot with the Panasonic 720p and go the digital
route on his feature debut, Dopamine, was about one thing: having the
time--and tape--to work with his actors. Opening in theaters in October, Dopamine is
the story of a computer programmer whose view of feelings as nothing more than
a chemical activity begins to change through his relationship with a schoolteacher.
Here, Decena talks about what he hoped to achieve with the digital medium and
answers a few of the recent false claims about Sundance.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
The biggest advice I give to people is this: we're all neurotic about what we're good at. Ridley Scott is neurotic about the images of his film; he'll never do a bad image. Other directors may be neurotic about the direction, and not the image. What we must do is surround ourselves with people who are not us, who don't have the gifts we have and become neurotic about what we're not good at. The easiest way to achieve that is to find someone who's really good at it.
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Breathtaking Alberta on Moviemaking Map
Moviemakers head north to Calgary for the latest blockbusters
E. Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain may have been set in Wyoming, but Ang Lee's runaway Academy Award-nominated epic of the same name was actually filmed in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. MM spoke to Beth Thompson, Calgary's film commissioner, about the steady rise of Calgary's moviemaking industry.
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Shrinking History
Script Doc Turned Scribe Bart Gavigan Returns with Luther
Moviemaker Bart Gavigan is
a rare bird. A writer-of-repute for countless years, he is only now beginning
to see his own name in the credits. Luther, an epic tale about Martin
Luther, the 16th century German monk, is Gavigan's first feature screen
credit. It's also only the latest in a chain of pictures that have benefited
from Gavigan's august input, either as a much sought-after ghostwriter
or consultant.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
I try to remember that even if finally a film is authored by one person--and I believe it is--the conundrum is that it's achieved by many, many hundreds of people. It's as if they're all holding onto your pen as you're writing. And if they don't hang on--if they don't support the pen--you can't make your piece of work. So I've never allowed myself the delusion that I was doing it by myself. I am extremely grateful to the crew, and I let them know I am.
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Renaissance Man
Film Connection's Jimi Petulla on apprenticing and educating
Call him a revolutionary, but Jimi Petulla's method of learning by doing is really just a "a throwback to the Renaissance period," where you learned your art by paying your dues and taking advice from a true master. Through his Film Connection program, aspiring moviemakers all over the country are becoming working moviemakers-and learning from the best in the business. Here, Petulla talks about bringing the 12th century into the 21st.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Successful filmmaking requires the temperament of an industrial dreamer-someone who can sustain a vision, given lots of work.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
Write what you love. Write the kind of movies that you want to see. People can generally tell if you're writing to sell something. If you're writing something that you really care about, that translates into something that will make a good movie.
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Oxygen-fed Action-Verit�
XCZONE's David McMahon goes to extremes
By putting cameras into the hands of athletes who are in the field skiing, rafting climbing and otherwise risking their lives for the love of sport, the founders of XCZONE offer a first-person POV that they have lovingly dubbed “action-verité. The result is a company which allows everyone to experience the thrills of extreme sporting. Former Olympian McMahon discusses the company’s philosophy and how the advent of digital video has helped his company bring the sporting experience to home viewers.
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MovieMaker Sneak Peek
Mythology of Anthony Minghella, Storyteller
Anthony Minghella is part of that rare breed of
auteur who favors quality over quantity, releasing very
few films--but gaining high critical praise for each
effort. Making his feature debut with Truly Madly
Deeply in 1991, Minghella's subsequent projects have
totaled only two: The English Patient in 1996,
for which he won an Oscar, and The Talented Mr. Ripley in
1999 (for which he was also nominated). This Oscar season
is sure to bring Minghella's name back to the minds of
voters, as the long-awaited big screen adaptation of
Charles Frazier's novel, Cold Mountain, is set
for theaters this December, and features an all-star
cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Renée Zellweger,
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Donald Sutherland,
Giovanni Ribisi.
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King of the Ants
After 20 years, director Stuart Gordon is still breaking new ground
King of the Ants, the latest cringefest from director
Stuart Gordon, who gave us the classic Re-Animator
(1985), is another gruesome foray into the dark side of human
nature. His coupling of a brutal revenge story (by acclaimed
British author Charlie Higson) with a minimal budget (Gordon's
wife provided catering for cast and crew) has resulted in
a streamlined, neo-noir thriller with macabre overtones. This
movie is sure to be a Halloween night favorite. In this interview,
the influential talent recaps his horror career, from pre-Re-Animator
days staging David Mamet plays with Chicago's Organic Theatre
to his present success.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
When you do a movie for a studio, it's gonna be somewhat homogenized. But a smaller movie like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre just came out of nowhere and horrified everybody. The fact that it was shot in 16 millimeter made it seem even more real. I would put Audition and 28 Days Later in the same category-they're not studio films. The small movies, where the director is capable of anything and not held back by studio pressures, are the most frightening.
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Building From a Foundation of Passion
InDigEnt director Peter Hedges gets personal with Pieces of April
Already a celebrated novelist (What's Eating Gilbert Grape)
and screenwriter (About a Boy), Peter Hedges knew he
needed to step behind the camera for Pieces of April, a
story only he could tell. Here he discusses the challenges of
being a first-time director, adjusting a formerly $7 million
film to fit within the $150,000 InDigEnt budget and the need
to be passionate about any project in order to make it successful.
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Winning the Waiting Game
David Berenbaum is living every scribe's dream
You can't blame David Berenbaum for being happy. At only 32
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
No matter what position you have on a film crew, try to always think like the director, then you'll know the best way for you to help.
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Educating the Iron City
Pittsburgh Filmmakers' Charlie Humphrey on 30 years of moviemaking
It may not be considered one of America's hotspots for moviemaking, but for the past three decades, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has been home to one of the country's most distinguished media arts organizations. Recently MM spoke with Pittsburgh Filmmakers' executive director Charlie Humphrey about the group's founding mission and the city's important cinematic history.
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Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker
I've always thought that editing makes you a better shooter and vice versa. If you can come in and edit, you'll learn a lot about your shooting. And if you shoot a lot, it will make you a better editor also. So don't be afraid to do both.
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Chemistry Lessons
Personality (and skill) pays off for DP Rob Hahn
Who says that sucking up is the only way to pry open Hollywood’s firmly closed gates? For cinematographer Rob Hahn, who counts Frank Oz, Sydney Pollack, Owen Roizman and the late Conrad Hall among his closest collaborators, success was a result of simply being himself—and having a sense of humor.
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Digital Redefined
The DV Awards' Martin Rhodes sheds new light on digital movies
You might think the term "digital movie" applies only to projects that were shot on a digital camera. But Martin Rhodes, founder of the biannual DV Awards, says "I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody out there who produces anything that isn't done digitally in some aspect." As a result of this expanded definition, any works that have been "touched" by digital technology are eligible for Rhodes' popular year-old competition, which is rapidly changing the way viewers see-and define-digital projects.
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Video Views Pick: Wanted
The editors of VIDEO VIEWS magazine pick Wanted, based on the Mark Millar graphic novel, as the best new DVD this week. Featuring eight bonus featurettes and a cast that includes James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, home video watchers can't go wrong.
Posted 12.3.08 | Video Views Pick | 1 comment
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