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May 26, 2012

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Issue #72 [Fall 2007]

On Location: San Antonio, TX
by MM Staff
On February 23, 1836, the Battle of the Alamo commenced, marking the date when the meager Texas forces secured a place in middle school history textbooks for generations to come. But while San Antonio denizens are proud to tout the city’s historical significance, present-day attractions are the real story when it comes to moviemaking.

The Plague's Horror Story
by Hal Masonberg
When I was first asked to write about my experiences making The Plague, I was thrilled to get a chance to tell my story. At the same time, I was gripped with self-doubt: Who’s gonna care about my story? It’s the same old cast of characters from so many other Hollywood tales. What makes this version worth telling? Perhaps it’s the fact that, for me, the story’s not yet over…

The Legendary Laszlo Kovacs
By Bob Fisher
I interviewed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC for the first time about 30 years ago to talk about The Deer Hunter. At the time, I had no idea the film was destined to become a classic. After patiently answering my questions, Zsigmond politely suggested that I should be writing about another cinematographer: Laszlo Kovacs, ASC.

Horror Fests in Your Neighborhood
By Jennifer M. Wood
Horror-themed film fests are happening around the country--find one near you!

Features: Horror Film Festivals Rise from the Grave
By Nancy Rosenbaum
Screamfest horror film festival director Rachel Belofksy says she didn’t grow up loving scary movies. “As a little girl, I was terrified of everything,” she recalls. “All the vampire films freaked me out. Even as a teen, it wasn’t my thing.” Belofksy’s fear has since been supplanted by fandom. Now if you show her a good “decap” scene, she can explain its artistic merit, point by point.

Features: Zach Helm’s World of Wonder
By Cristy Lytal
Zach Helm’s life may not be stranger than fiction, but it is sweeter than a fairytale. Plucked out of the playwriting scene in Chicago in 1997 to participate in a writers’ program at Fox 2000, he dreamt up Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium as a writing sample.

Features: The Naked Truth About Film Nudity
By David Geffner
From Caligula to Lust, Caution, moviemakers have always struggled with shooting nudity and sex. What does it take to make it happen successfully?

Features: Jennifer and Suzanne Todd’s Sister Act
By Jessica Hundley
Founded by sisters Jennifer and Suzanne Todd, Team Todd has been responsible for pushing a number of incredible projects through the stranglehold of production.

Features: Todd Haynes Takes on Bob Dylan
By Jason Matloff
After the enormous success of recent biopics like Ray and Walk the Line, it should have been easy for writer-director Todd Haynes to make his Bob Dylan-inspired film, I'm Not There. It wasn't.

Julie Taymor’s Golden Rules
by Julie Taymor
From Oscar to Tony, Julie Taymor has found success in Hollywood and on Broadway as a writer, director, producer and costume designer. In 2003, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for Frida, which she also directed. Her latest film, Across the Universe, starring Evan Rachel Wood, is on DVD now. Here she shares her secrets for success at everything from Hollywood to Broadway.

Tamara Jenkins Gets Savage
By David Fear
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A moviemaker workshops a script through the Sundance Institute, the finished feature gets accepted into the prestigious festival and the critical hosannas start pouring in. Then he or she gets courted by a number of studios, several projects stall and years pass… Soon, the moviemaker is regrettably relegated to the “Where are they now?” files, along with a number of other indie film alumni who sprint out of the gate and then find it hard to get a follow-up made.

Julian Schnabel Paints The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
By Phillip Williams
In his latest picture, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, artist-moviemaker Julian Schnabel returns to familiar terrain while managing to explore a new landscape. Like his previous outings, Basquiat and Before Night Falls, the film is a biopic—the story of an artist living on the margins of life, searching for his voice. The true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, one-time editor of Elle France, The Diving Bell brings us deep into the inner life of its main character, a man who, flush with all the trappings of worldly success, is suddenly felled by a debilitating stroke.

Javier Bardem Breaks Big
By Kevin Canfield
Though he's best known to American audiences for his Oscar-nominated role in Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls, Javier Bardem is redefining audience expectations with starring roles in two of this fall's most anticipated movies, Mike Newell's Love in the Time of Cholera and the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men.



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Issue #70 [Summer 2007]

Food Film Festivals
By Nancy Rosenbaum
A new wave of film festivals are taking the tried and true "dinner and a movie" combo to a whole new level.

Cook Up Your Own Food Film Festival
By Nancy Rosenbaum
Have you got a hankering to cook up a food and film festival close to home? Here’s some handy information about the dollars and cents you’ll need to make it all happen.

Mixed Reviews: Guilty Pleasures
By Travis Crawford
From 1970s Euro sleaze to Italian Neorealist classics, it's time to admit some guilty pleasures. DVD and book reviews.

Virginia’s Indie Film Revolution
By Jennifer M. Wood
Whether you’re aiming to make the next Revolutionary War epic or just need a film-friendly rural locale for your low-budget indie, Virginia will welcome you with open arms. Here, a few members of VA’s independent movie community weigh in on why the commonwealth is a great place to shoot.

Master of the Movie Prop
By Brian Malik
Just about anything an actor touches in a film that isn’t nailed down is a prop. Props serve to enhance a character’s backstory, improve the look of a location or, in the case of fake projectile vomit, simply gross out the audience. The talented artists who furnish the canvas of cinema with their treasures are called property masters. MM spoke with Kevin Hughes, an industry veteran who began his career as an assistant on Apocalypse Now, and more recently has worked on such films as Boogie Nights, Borat and Bobby.

Classic Movie Title Sequences
By Peter Weed
Take a closer look at some of the most memorable title sequences of the past few years.

Using Movie Title Sequences Effectively
By Peter Weed
Released in the mid-1950s from the relatively static role of simply assigning credit, title sequences have evolved into an art form in their own right.

Neil Jordan's Golden Rules of Moviemaking
By Neil Jordan
"Never tell the truth on a junket" and other lessons from the director of The Brave One and Interview with the Vampire, Neil Jordan.

All the Right Moves: Stabilizing Your Camera
By Matthew Power
Not every director likes to move the camera. Some simply can’t afford it. Go back and look at Kevin Smith’s Clerks, for example. Almost every shot in that movie was a locked-down tripod shot—no movement at all. At the other extreme is Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov’s mind-blowing Russian Ark, an entire feature film shot in one continous, moving shot, featuring 2,000 actors in 33 different rooms.

Features: Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris
By Daniel Nemet-Nejat
After sharpening her multi-tasking skills with Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy is writing, directing, producing, editing, scoring and starring in her own take on cross-cultural romance with 2 Days in Paris.

Random Thoughts From the Set of Jeff Garlin's I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With
By Jeff Garlin
From soundless filming to nausea on the set, Jeff Garlin relives the experience of writing, directing and starring in his directorial debut, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.

Features: Silent Movies Are Still Creating an Echo
By Bob Mastrangelo
From Griffith and Eisenstein to Chaplin and Keaton, MM revisits the 15 greatest directors of the silent era.

Features: The Robert Rodriguez Effect
By Mallory Potosky
When it comes to getting an education in film, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all option. But apparently the same can’t be said for a film school’s “model moviemaker.”

Ethan Hawke Grows Up in The Hottest State
By Ethan Hawke
When I was 21 and under the influence of books like James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, Jack Kerouac’s The Subterraneans and Larry McMurtry’s All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, I started writing a wildly autobiographical piece of fiction about my experiences upon arriving in New York. I wanted to write about trying to “make it” as an actor and centered the story on a soul-crushing, identity-defining encounter with first love.

Features: John Carpenter’s Business of Insanity
By Jason Matloff
In Hollywood these days, it sometimes seems easier to find an actor who’ll admit to having had plastic surgery than it is to find an original idea for a movie. Case in point: Legendary horror director John Carpenter.

Features: Halloween, Too
By Mallory Potosky
Given his predilection for stepping behind the lens it shouldn’t have been a surprise when Rob Zombie announced his foray into feature moviemaking with 2003’s House of 1000 Corpses. But Zombie remaking John Carpenter’s hallowed horror classic, Halloween? That announcement did shock some people… including Zombie himself.

Features: David Levien & Brian Koppelman: Ocean’s Two
By Kevin Canfield
Brian Koppelman and David Levien are among the movie business’ most sought-after screenwriters. If all falls into place, they’ll soon be turning their attention to scripts for Robert De Niro (he’ll reportedly star in the Koppelman/Levien-penned mafia tale The Winter of Frankie Machine) and Brian De Palma (the would-be director of a prequel titled The Untouchables: Capone Rising).

Notebook: Moviemaking: The Eternal Balancing Act
By Timothy Rhys

Jodie Foster: The Brave One
By Kevin Canfield
An Oscar nominee at 14 and still at the top of her game after more than four decades, Jodie Foster knows how to get what she wants--like director Neil Jordan and a killer script for her latest thriller, The Brave One.

The Signal: A Collaboration in Three Parts
by Dan Bush, David Bruckner and Jacob Gentry
A hit at Sundance, The Signal offers a new chapter in the world of cinematic collaboration as three directors each take a turn in the director's chair.



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Issue #71 [Complete Guide to Making Movies 2008]

Power Writer: Bringing a Blank Page to Life
by Mark Fergus
The Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Children of Men says that as a writer, digging down deep is the only way you're going to bring a blank page to life.

Writing Backwards: Plot Construction Using Reverse Cause and Effect
by Jeffrey Kitchen
Every script has a beginning, middle and end - but sometimes it can be helpful to write them in reverse order.

Coming Clean: Confessions of a Hollywood Hack
by John Weidner
Know thyself. A Hollywood screenwriter comes clean on the freedom he found when he got his mind and his talent in alignment.

Great Adaptations: A Winning Script Doesn’t Have to be Totally Original
By Christina Hamlett
With so many of today's successful movies based on existing material, it pays to know how to translate a literary work into a cinematic one.

Script Criteria Checklist
by Devorah Cutler-Rubenstein & Laura Scheiner
Whether you're looking for investors for your latest project or getting ready to finance it yourself, make sure your script has these six essential elements - which translate to audience appeal.

Cycle of the Screenwriter
by Craig Mazin
Just like the stories they write, a screenwriter's life is one based on cycles. One of Hollywood's most in-demand scribes sounds off about his own.

The Context of Innovative Film Finance
by Nelson Gayton
You have a great script, an incredible director, cast and team and you're passionate about making this film. Sounds like a slam dunk, right? Wrong! You still need the money - and, in an ideal world, the distribution to pay it back.

Casting is Everything: Expert Advice on How to Cast for Success
By Phillip Williams
Warren Beatty may have said it best when he declared that "Casting is everything." And sometimes type-casting is the way to go.

Balancing the Roles of Writer and Director
By Billy Ray
Determining the roles of "writer" and "director" begins and ends with one simple question: What is the story I'm telling?

Other People’s Money
By Dov S-S Simens
You've learned how to block a scene, move a dolly, mix a soundtrack, cut a negative, color-correct a work print, watch Hitchcock and critique Spielberg - but you don't know how to make money. Here's how.

Cinematic Storytelling
by Jennifer Van Sijll
From Citizen Kane to American Beauty, the history of cinema is filled with examples of "cinematic storytelling" - films that use the full complement of moviemaking tools to tell theis stories.



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Issue #69 [Future of Moviemaking 2007]

Features: Judgment Day for Movie Theaters
by Mark Sells
The traditional movie theater is battling for its very existence in a volatile environment comprised of advances in technology and rapidly changing consumer tastes.

Features: Tomorrow’s Technologies
By Nick Dager
Just how is last year's co-financed arthouse affair an "independent" film if it makes The Ten Commandments look like a kitchen-sink drama? Not long ago there was no such thing as an "indie studio." Things have changed.

Features: Big Little Indies
By Jerry Weinstein
In the 1990s, the six major studios owned specialty divisions and shed them. But today's "indie studios" exist in the context of an industry that finds itself negotiating art against a backdrop of both a technological flux and an austere bottom line.

Features: The Future of Moviemaking
By Henry Jaglom
What does the future hold for the moviemakers of tomorrow? One of film's most fiercely independent players takes a moment to play prognosticator.



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Issue #68 [Spring 2007]

Arrested Development
By David Fear
British writer-director Edgar Wright and actor-writer Simon Pegg's affectionate satire of zombie movies, 2004's Shaun of the Dead, revolved around a simple question: what would happen if an average bloke was suddenly thrust into your typical the-dead-have-risen- and-they-crave-our- delicious-flesh scenario? with their latest film, Hot Fuzz, they reverse the equation: what would happen if an extraordinary man-in this case, London's most dedicated supercop-suddenly found himself stuck in a town where nothing ever happened?

Features: Kevin Smith: My Golden Rules
By Kevin Smith
Edit while you're still shooting. 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 editing room with my footage. 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.

Features: The Duke
By Joe Leydon
His gritty, gruff demeanor and that this-is-a-man-coming-through swagger defined not only the Western for decades (and in many ways still does), but American manhood in general. Wayne's roles in Westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, True Grit, Red River and Rio Bravo, along with war movies like The Longest Day, The High and the Mighty and Sands of Iwo Jima, created an image of Man unlike any seen before. Man was action, Man was the leader, Man simply was.

Features: The Universal Language of Film Has a Mexican Accent
By Bob Fisher
Whether he's raising $7,000 to shoot an indie film in Mexico with a group of friends or helping alfonso Cuarón spend a $70 million budget on Children of Men, for cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, it's all about the images.

Features: Celebrating An Icon
By Joe Leydon
A man can die, but his movies will always remain in the present tense. That is why, in the case of John Wayne-whose centennial we celebrate on May 26, nearly 28 years after his demise-you can point to the precise moment when the man became an icon.

Features: Sarah Polley's Uncompromising Vision
By Daniel Nemet-Nejat
After becoming a child star in her native Canada, Sarah Polley captured the attention of the world with her quietly powerful performance as a paralyzed girl in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Now she's making her feature film debut as a writer-director and, true to form, her choice of subject matter is against the grain.



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Issue #67 [Winter 2007]

Features: Tom DiCillo, DI Guy
By Tom DiCillo
The auteur behind such cult classics as Johnny Suede and Living in Oblivion discovers the power of a digital intermediate on his Sundance-bound Delirious, starring Steve Buscemi and Michael Pitt.

Features: Dern on Lynch
By Daniel Nemet-Nejat
In the wake of her third collaboration with David Lynch, Laura Dern offers her interpretation of Inland Empire and riffs on their creative relationship.

Features: David Lynch’s Empire
By Daniel Nemet-Nejat
The only predictable thing about David Lynch is that he is always looking to surprise us. But Lynch's boldest move yet could be his decision to selfdistribute his latest film, Inland Empire.

Features: Vancouver Film School Scholarship Competition
By MovieMaker Staff
For 20 years, the Vancouver Film School has been at the forefront of film education. Now MovieMaker is honoring that tradition by co-sponsoring the first ever Vancouver Film School Scholarship Competition.

In Gear: The Power of Plug-Ins
By Matthew Power
From realistic gunfire to a snowstorm of your own making, some of the most useful post-production tools come in the form of "plug-ins," which add features to compositing software in a fraction of the time.

Features: From YouTube to Borat: The Jackass Generation
By Dave Roos
It sounds like a far cry from the "Golden Age" of the '40s or the "New Hollywood" of the '70s, but an astoundingly popular new aesthetic is proving that today's up-and-coming moviemakers are proud to be a part of "The Jackass Generation."

Features: Top 10 Cities to Make Movies 2007
By Lily Percy
Several factors go into choosing where you will ultimately shoot your film. MovieMaker breaks down the best places for indie moviemakers to do it!

Cate Blanchett’s Golden Age
By Timothy Rhys
Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, never your typical Hollywood ingénue, never looked back from her Academy Award-winning turn as Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. Now, on the heels of her stunning performance in Babel, and with powerful roles in four highly anticipated new films (Notes on a Scandal, The Good German, I'm Not There and The Golden Age), this Aussie's star has never shone brighter.



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Issue #65 [Guide to Making Movies 2007]

Writing A Screenplay With A Full Deck
By Joe Mefford
All it takes is a stack of index cards and a ballpoint pen to start your screenplay.

Directing Tips
By Mark Travis
The real challenge of being a director is that you have to do so much-yet you get to do so little. You are a storyteller and you have elected to tell this story through the medium of film-which means you must collaborate.


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