All posts by James Kaelan
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Let the PA Direct (Almost): Why Collaborating with Your Crew is Your Greatest Strength
As a confident movie-maker, don’t hesitate to ask your film crew for help. They aren't your employees; they're your collaborators.
Bound for the Frontline: MovieMaker Senior Editor James Kaelan Steps Down to Join the Independent Film War
“In the town of Osijiek, Croatia, Eduardo Flores, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia and a follower of the Catholic...
MovieMaker Editor’s Pick: Back to the Future in Computer Chess
MovieMaker’s Editor’s Weekend Pick is Computer Chess, though we can’t resist sending a shout out to The Spectacular Now. Two is better...
Revenue Record: Yekra Crushes with Online Doc
Like everyone else trying to forecast the economic landscape of independent film, over here at the MovieMaker offices, we think a lot about innovations...
Coachella: Triumphs, failures, and lessons from the inaugural AMFM Fest
The inaugural AMFM Fest, which shares a valley with the Coachella Art and Music Festival, may have been too ambitious. But the...
Bringing Film to Coachella: AMFM Fest aims to bring film, art, and more music to the Coachella Valley
AMFM Fest, the new acronymic festival in the Coachella Valley, might just be aiming to overthrow that other four-letter film and music...
This Film Isn’t Real: Maja Milos’ Tiger Award-winning debut, Clip
On a Saturday afternoon at AFI Fest last November, I walked into a 4:15 PM screening of a Serbian film called Clip...
Nairobi Half Life: Back by popular demand!
By popular demand, Nairobi Half Life—Kenya’s first official submission for the Academy Awards ® and the 2012 AFI Fest Audience Award winner—will...
Accepting Applications: Dogfish, the world’s first film production accelerator
Back in 2005, Paul Graham and Trevor Blackwell, two tech pioneers who’d made fortunes in Silicon Valley, founded a company called Y...
The Wild Bunch: Eight new Midnight Marauder posters for Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece Western
I don’t claim to be a Sam Peckinpah expert or a film critic by any means. I am a poster designer at...
Summer 2019
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Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles...Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid...Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s...