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Issue #2012 [Spring 2012]

Sol Negrin, Candid Cameraman
By Rebecca Pahle
Einstein once said that, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” But when it comes to teaching the art of moviemaking—particularly cinematography—that task might be easier said than done, as reading textbooks and analyzing films cannot truly prepare a student for the realities of a film set. Veteran cinematographer Sol Negrin, ASC, now a professor at New York's Five Towns College, understands the challenges of bringing cinematography from the set to the classroom. Not one to hoard his knowledge, Negrin shares his tricks for the best ways to teach—and learn—cinematography.

25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee: 2012
By MovieMaker Staff
Making the decision to screen at a festival is easy. But which fests are truly worth a withdrawal from your hard-earned Entry Fee Bank Account? Here's our 2012 list of 25 festivals worth the entry fee.

Richard Linklater’s Cinematic Conviction
By Andy Young
The first thing you need to know about Richard Linklater is that he’s a Texas moviemaker. From his breakout hit Slacker, which told the poly-vocal story of several eccentric Austin residents, to his latest film Bernie, which is based on the true story of a murder that took place in Carthage, Texas in the mid-1990s, the bulk of Linklater’s films have taken place in his home state. MM caught up with the director on his home turf, at the SXSW Film Festival, to talk about truth, justice and the moviemaking way.

James McTeigue Captures The Raven
By Kevin Canfield
Unlike the many American teens who first encountered the work of Edgar Allan Poe in English class, James McTeigue, director of the upcoming thriller The Raven, discovered the Gothic writer in the lyrics of 1970s punk rock, specifically the song "Descent Into the Maelstrom"—named after a Poe story—by the band Radio Birdman. The first assistant director on all three Matrix films before making his directorial debut with V for Vendetta, McTeigue was never a Poe fanatic. But when producer Aaron Ryder (Donnie Darko, Memento) suggested that they work together on a fictionalized account of the legendary writer’s life, he couldn’t say no.

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Issue #2012 [Winter 2012]

Tarsem Singh Sees the Future
By Phillip Williams
Director Tarsem Singh is on a roll. With his international box office triumph Immortals still collecting receipts, and his newest picture, Mirror Mirror (“The Untold Adventures of Snow White”) being prepped for a March release, it’s fair to say that something is afoot in a directing career that has been “on the verge” for quite some time. Once the promising visual stylist who came out with a movie only now and then, Singh has set his sights on becoming a more constant force in moviemaking... and maybe a force to be reckoned with.

Ed Burns Is Forever Indie
By Paul Osborne
Edward Burns is no stranger to the world of indie film. He launched his career with the $25,000 The Brothers McMullen at the Sundance Film Festival back in 1995, during the dark, pre-digital days of 16mm cameras and now-foreign concepts like optical houses and film prints. In 2010, after seven larger-budget features as a writer-director, Burns returned to the low-budget arena with Nice Guy Johnny. He bypassed traditional distribution methods by releasing the film himself, first with a short festival tour and then with a simultaneous day-and-date rollout on VOD, DVD and Pay-Per-View. Now Burns is taking this new model even further with Newlyweds, which he produced for a staggering $9,000 sum.

Top 10 Cities to be a Moviemaker: 2012
by Julie Jacobs
It’s been more than 10 years since MovieMaker began citing the best cities to be an independent moviemaker—those places that go the extra mile in welcoming lower-budget productions just as much as they do the “big guns.” With more and more moviemakers opting to shoot in their own backyards, a city’s ability to offer a sustainable, creative community in addition to production support, tax incentives and local and experienced crew bases has never been more important to the indie industry. Read on to discover which cities topped our list for 2012.

Haskell Wexler: The Last Indie Rebel
By Timothy Rhys
Haskell Wexler is simply one of our greatest living cinematographers. He’s in a class by himself as much for his fearless sense of justice as for his groundbreaking technical innovations, but it’s his lifelong commitment to putting his lens where his mouth is—as with his second film as a writer-director, 1985's stunning Latino—that makes Wexler such a unique source of inspiration to so many moviemakers.

Why Sundance?
By MovieMaker Staff
With the 2012 Sundance Film Festival now in full swing, we've asked some Park City-bound moviemakers one burning question: Why Sundance? Here's what they had to say.

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Issue #2011 [Fall 2011]

Joshua Leonard Tells The Lie
by Joshua Leonard
A commercially successful screenwriter friend of mine recently attended a showing of my film, The Lie. Afterwards, as folks were milling about and drinking the booze that I was hoping wouldn’t run out, he approached me and began a wistful ramble that I often hear from well-paid acquaintances. Something like, “It’s so fantastic how you guys keep it real with your work, man.” Or worse yet, “You know what’s great about you guys? You manage to make cool things for no money.”

Borderline Normal
by Dante A. Ciampaglia
At first, it’s a film that feels familiar. Late-twentysomething guys in tank tops and jeans work the grounds of a rural farmhouse while their women, completing their own domestic tasks, look on. A dirty, blissfully oblivious toddler plays in an unkempt yard that leads to a roughshod shed. John Hawkes shows up, languid yet commanding, setting this scene of a 21st-century paradise on the edge of calamity.

Strip off the opening credits and, for the first five minutes, Martha Marcy May Marlene plays like a Winter’s Bone retread. But any sense of been-here, seen-that familiarity is wrenched away as a determined young woman-on-the-edge flees the farmhouse for the mysterious world that lies beyond the surrounding forest. With this, the film becomes a study in unrelenting paranoia, the kind perfected by Roman Polanski in films like Repulsion, as we follow the titular Marcy May née Martha née Marcy May (and sometimes Marlene) during the first two weeks of her life after escaping a violent cult.

Jason Segel Resurrects The Muppets
By Phillip Williams
At the end of 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, actor-scribe Jason Segel inserted a Dracula puppet musical as both a touching coda to his witty comedy and a good excuse to showcase a longtime passion. Having gotten Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to create the puppets and help stage his mini-tribute, Segel asked if he could meet Kermit and Miss Piggy, only to learn that his old friends had been sold to Disney.

“I just got a little fire in my belly,” Segel recalls. “The Muppets are such a great group of characters. I just couldn’t stand the thought of it going fallow. I went to Disney and pitched the idea of a Muppet movie.”

So began the next chapter in the charmed life of the 31-year-old Los Angeles native—and the resurrection of Henson’s internationally beloved pantheon. “I don’t think anyone saw it coming,” admits Segel.

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Issue #2012 [2012 Complete Guide to Making Movies]

First-Time Tricks of the Trade
by Mark W. Travis
Being a first-time director is like jumping into the deep end of a pool. You may have prepared for this job by directing short films, attending workshops, watching other directors work and reading lots of books. All of that is good, but when you embark on directing your first feature, you’re still jumping into the deep end, where there’s no lifeguard on duty and no one to yank you out if you drop below the water line. But there are some tricks you can learn quickly that will work for you if you are willing to embrace them enthusiastically.

My Golden Rules: Errol Morris
by Errol Morris
Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, Gates of Heaven, The Fog of War), who explored the potential of photography to reveal truth in his book Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography, presents his five golden rules for discovering truth through cinema.

Five Reasons Why Short Films Are Still Essential
by Warren Pereira
I wrote and directed my first short film, Lacking Lewis, in early 2005. The supposed “final” cut, ready later that year, was awful. So I rewrote, re-shot, re-color corrected, re-edited, re-scored and re-sound mixed it more times than I care to admit.
 By 2007, the film was better. It got into some festivals and even won a few awards. I was told that I was ready to make a feature and that any more time spent making short films would be a waste, but over the next four years, I made four more short films with the same meticulous work ethic as my first. The shorts garnered me multiple festival selections and awards, Oscar qualification, critical praise and even distribution. They connected me with amazingly talented artists whom I respect and who have taught me a lot. For anyone who thinks that making a short film is just an easily-ignored pit stop on the road to feature film stardom, I offer the following five reasons to make a short film.

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Issue #2011 [Summer 2011]

Paul Rudd & Jesse Peretz's Idiot Interview
by Paul Rudd & Jesse Peretz
In 2001, Paul Rudd appeared as the unworldly American inheritor of a French mansion in The Château, directed by Grammy Award-winning music video director Jesse Peretz. Since then, Peretz has directed just one other feature—The Ex, starring Amanda Peet and Jason Bateman—while Rudd has perfected the role of the sarcastic-but-sweet man-child in films like Knocked Up, Role Models (which he also wrote) and I Love You, Man, earning himself a reputation as one of the most likable guys in movies. Ten years after their first collaboration, Rudd and Peretz are re-teaming for Our Idiot Brother.

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Issue #2011 [Future of Moviemaking 2011]

My Golden Rules: Chris Weitz
by Chris Weitz
Writer. Director. Producer. Actor. Chris Weitz has done it all. Here, he offers his 21 "golden rules" for life in the Hollywood fast lane.

Social Media All-Stars
By Jeffrey Goodman
The world of independent movies is changing. Thanks to advances in technology—especially inexpensive HD cameras and the increased availability of consumer-friendly digital editing systems—it’s easier to make movies today than it ever has been before. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, since more movies are being made, distributors are paying less for finished movies.

Studios Off the Beaten Path
by Julie Jacobs
They may be off the beaten path, or at least away from the bright lights of Los Angeles and New York, but they’ve been spot on in making cities like Austin, Texas and Albuquerque, New Mexico burgeoning production beds for both big-budget and indie moviemaking.

Best Apps for Moviemakers 2011
By Rebecca Pahle
Ah, how things have changed in just one short year. When we published our first list of 25 must-have apps for moviemakers in last year’s Future of Moviemaking edition, the world of apps was still a relatively new one. Last year’s list included only one app exclusively for the then-brand-new iPad, and today’s newest technological toy du jour, the iPad 2, wasn’t even on the radar.

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Issue #2011 [Spring 2011]

A Film in the Crowd
by Paul Osborne
It’s always been hard to find the money to make a movie. Investors have forever been scarce, but in today’s toxic economic climate, they’re almost nonexistent. Then along came crowdfunding, viewed by many as the great financial hope for independent cinema. Crowdfunding takes a page from the age-old idea of pre-selling a movie, but instead of regional distributors in foreign territories purchasing the rights in advance of principal photography, the moviemaker is pre-selling directly to his or her potential audience. Such pre-sales are then used, in whole or in part, to fund the making of the film.

Wes Craven Screams Anew
By Bryan Reesman
He has unleashed incredibly influential horror films over the last four decades, including The Last House on the Left, A Nightmare On Elm Street and Scream. His movies have resonated with audiences not only because they tap into our primal fears, but also because they often dip into the mainstream zeitgeist and hit upon social issues. His excursions into fright films have inspired many to label him “The Master of Horror.” In recent years Wes Craven has taken some time off from directing, but even though some are calling last fall’s My Soul to Take and the upcoming Scream 4 a “comeback,” in truth he never really went away. But times have certainly changed.

Take 10: Danny McBride
By Jennifer M. Wood
“Somewhere between Porky’s and Goodfellas” is when Danny McBride realized he wanted to be a moviemaker. Though he got his start in more serious-minded fare as a second unit director on fellow University of North Carolina School of the Arts alum David Gordon Green’s George Washington, the writing was on the wall for this would-be wiseass, whose first credited acting role is the character of “Bust-Ass” in Green’s All the Real Girls.

Greg Mottola Enters Alien Territory with Paul
by Aaron Hillis
When Greg Mottola, the New York-based moviemaker behind such naturalistic, character-driven comedies as Superbad, Adventureland and The Daytrippers, was asked by Shaun of the Dead co-creators Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to direct Paul, their “pop culture mash-up” homage to the golden age of sci-fi blockbusters, even Mottola admits he wasn’t the most obvious guy for the job.

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Issue #2011 [Winter 2011]

Roger Deakins Show True Grit
By Bob Fisher
With more than 30 features under his belt, Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC is one of the world’s master cinematographers. While Deakins has collaborated with some of today’s top moviemakers, including Martin Scorsese (Kundun), Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) and Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road), he has enjoyed an especially fruitful relationship with Joel and Ethan Coen, with whom he has worked for nearly two decades.

Neville Page, Creature Designer
By Brian Hickey
If you’re the type of person who stays after a film to watch the end credits, you know how many people it takes to make a movie. (Sometimes hundreds.) While James Cameron gets most of the credit for Pandora, the fictional planet on which Avatar takes place, that environment could not have come to life without Neville Page.

Peter Weir Finds His Way Back
By Eric Kohn
Isolation is a recurring them in the cinema of Australian director Peter Weir, both literally and metaphorically. From his classic 1975 mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock to more recent efforts like The Truman Show and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the director has demonstrated a nuanced fixation on the struggle between men and forces beyond their control—nature and otherwise. In The Way Back, Weir keeps up that tradition with the spare tale of prisoners escaping from a Siberian gulag in the heat of World War II. Weir, who also wrote the screenplay, follows a group of survivors as they wander across a series of barren landscapes and eventually wind up in India.

Take 10: Melissa Leo
By Jennifer M. Wood
One might expect a certain professional trajectory from an actress who landed her first role—that of Linda Warner on the soap “All My Children”—by beating out Julia Roberts for the part. But in the almost three decades since she first appeared on the small screen, Melissa Leo has gone the route of the consummate character actor.

Designing Red Riding Hood
by Catherine Hardwicke
Production designer-turned-director Catherine Hardwicke on the childhood creativity that inspired the world of Red Riding Hood.

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Issue #2010 [Fall 2010]

Darren Aronofsky and Mila Kunis Reveal Their Dark Sides
By Joe Leydon
So what’s it all about? Well, like Pi, his 1998 breakthrough indie feature, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a drama about an obsessive protagonist poised on the brink of madness while pursuing perfection. Like Requiem for a Dream (2000), his critically acclaimed sophomore effort, Aronofsky’s latest film focuses on the desperate frenzy of a character whose fantasies are intruding on reality. And like The Wrestler (2008), his sentimentally gritty tale of a has-been grappler who repeatedly returns to the ring, Aronofsky’s much buzzed-about drama about a ballerina who gets in touch with her dark side is the story of an artist who quite literally suffers for the sake of art.

20 Coolest Film Festivals: 2010
By Jennifer M. Wood
After all the postcard printing, press pandering and promo piece plastering you do in preparation for a festival screening, sometimes you just want to have a little fun. So take a seat for 20 of the world’s coolest film fests.

David O. Russell Takes On The Fighter
by Aaron Hillis
From his darkly comic take on incest (Spanking the Monkey) to the neurotic quest for a man’s biological parents (Flirting with Disaster), a wild Gulf War action-satire (Three Kings) and an absurdist farce about philosophy itself (I ♥ Huckabees), the films of Spirit Award-winner David O. Russell are too idiosyncratic, ambitious and sharp-witted to make us wait six years for the next to arrive. But indeed we have, and at first glance, what’s most surprising about the boxing biopic The Fighter is that it’s Russell’s first directorial effort where he didn’t also write the script.

127 Hours with Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy and Christian Colson
By Eric Kohn
Many people are familiar with the amazing survival tale of Aron Ralston, the mountain climber whose life was irrevocably changed in 2003, when his arm became trapped under a boulder for five days until he managed to amputate it with a dull knife. Now the subject of Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, an adaptation of Ralston’s 2004 memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the ordeal has been turned into an uplifting adventure-thriller starring James Franco.

Shana Feste’s Nanny Diaries
By Joe Leydon
Like many (if not most) moviemakers before her, Shana Feste—writer-director of The Greatest and the forthcoming Country Strong—relied heavily on diligent networking to launch her career. The big difference in Feste’s case is that she went about the business of making contacts while minding babies. Babies, that is, with parents in the right places.

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful Life
by Peter N. Chumo II
Over the course of just three feature films, Alejandro González Iñárritu has established himself as an international director whose work addresses both social issues and the most personal yearnings of the human soul. Conceived with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, these films have examined how chance and accident connect disparate characters in surprising and heartbreaking ways

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Issue #2011 [2011 Complete Guide to Making Movies]

10 Legal FAQs That Can Make or Break Your Production
by Michael C. Donaldson & Lisa A. Calif
As lawyers who regularly work with independent moviemakers, we see the same legal pitfalls on a regular basis. The 10 below are easy to avoid and, simply by being able to recognize them as issues, you will be ahead of the competition.

Getting Supreme Sound on Any Budget
by Graham Reznick
Modern cinema is made up of two parts: Vision and sound. Here are some ProTips™ on how to get the most out of the aural component.

10 Story Techniques You Must Use to Sell Your Screenplay
by John Truby
The key question that all screenwriters should ask themselves is: How do I write a script that Hollywood wants to buy? Most writers mistakenly think that success is all about connections and star power. Not so. The real trick to writing a script that will sell is to know and use Hollywood’s central marketing strategy. That strategy can be summed up in one word: Genres. The first rule of the entertainment business worldwide is that it buys and sells genres. Genres are story forms and each has from eight to fifteen special story beats (or story events) that make up the form. The reason Hollywood marketing is based on genre is that executives are selling to a worldwide audience. People the world over love particular types of stories that speak to their deepest desires.

Promotion 101
by Jon Reiss
Today’s moviemakers can no longer expect someone to come and take their film off their hands by guaranteeing a theatrical release and full recoupment of the budget. You are now responsible for the marketing and promotion of your own film. But even if you are picked up by a distributor, any marketing work you do in advance will not only help you during your release, but might actually help you get stronger distribution deals than you would have otherwise. So here are 10 essential things to know about promoting your movie.

Screenwriting Solutions
By MovieMaker Staff
Who has time to format margins and check for typos? You’ve got a movie to make, after all. But your script will never progress beyond a reader’s desk and into a potential financier’s hands unless it is created using the industry-standard format. Although you should know the rules by heart, these programs can help you avoid mistakes with relative ease—and not a lot of dough.

How to Get Hollywood Production Value on an Indie Budget
by Christopher Kenworthy
It’s sometimes said that if you have a small budget you shouldn’t try to look like a Hollywood movie. But all movies seem like low-budget movies when you’re in the heat of battle. You’re always fighting the weather, the clock and the budget. That’s why A-list directors work the same long, stressful hours as the more independent directors. When the big guys’ films look good, it’s not because of the money they have, but how well they used that money. Every cent you spend should be seen on the screen. Whatever your budget, try to make your film look like it cost 10 times that amount. The big directors do that every day, and you can, too.

My Golden Rules: Danny Boyle
by Danny Boyle as told to Ryan Stewart
Danny Boyle has directed hit films in a wide array of genres, from the cautionary drug saga Trainspotting (1996) to the horror smash 28 Days Later... (2002) to the family-friendly Millions (2004) to the inspirational drama Slumdog Millionaire (2008), which won a total of eight Oscars, including Best Director for Boyle and Best Picture. His latest film, a stark drama about one man’s life-changing ordeal in the desert entitled 127 Hours, opened in theaters courtesy of Fox Searchlight in November.