How They Did It
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How They Did It: This Director Braved Wasps and Morning Sickness to Shoot Moko Jumbie in Trinidad While Pregnant
My first feature, Moko Jumbie, is a Gothic Caribbean love story set in rural Trinidad. Its protagonist is Asha, a young girl searching for... -
How They Did It: I Set a Start Date for My $250,000 Film, September Morning, and Stuck to it No Matter What
“How did you find the money?” That’s the question I’ve gotten most from my fellow indie filmmakers the last couple of years.... -
Family Affair: How the Director of Baby Steps Used the Making of the Film to Connect To His Mother
About six years ago, I was searching for a feature film topic. I’d already directed six short films. Making a feature was... -
On the Inside: To Make His Feature Shot Caller, Ric Roman Waugh Learned How to Shoot in a Real-Life Prison
Shot Caller was the most physically demanding film I ever shot: an authentic look at our prison gangs and the law enforcement... -
Knowing When to End It: Our Doc On a Knife Edge Took Seven Years to Make. Here’s What We Learned on the Way
For several years, our documentary On a Knife Edge had a great beginning and a wonderful middle, but no end in sight.... -
How They Did It: This Small Indie Documentary Team Tackled NASCAR in New Series Road to Race Day
Imagine an expanse of asphalt over a mile long and half a mile wide, filled with 40 race cars and thousands of... -
How They Did It: Designing the Amputee Protagonist of Ana Lily Amirpour’s Dystopian Desert Trip, The Bad Batch
There were quite a few visual effects challenges I had to tackle in making my second feature, The Bad Batch: multiple matte... -
How Far Would You Go for the Perfect Lenses? For the Director of Midnighters, These Were Worth the Effort
It’s five in the morning and I’m starting to shiver. The thermometer hovers at 10 degrees but it feels like it’s negative... -
How They Did It: Eliza Sherman’s Revenge Made, Then Ripped Off a Prosthetic Arm Without Paying an Arm and a Leg
No-budget indie moviemaking is hard enough as it is, but when you decide to throw in visual effects, it can really test... -
From Russia With Love… and Money: How Moscow Never Sleeps Secured Funds By Any Means Necessary
The Nazis reached the outskirts of Moscow. Napoleon entered it. Stalin loomed over it for decades. Monuments to past glories and tragedies...
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Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Flash Forward: Grace Van Patten Takes a Leap into the Unknown in David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake
Many actors will tell you that when you read a great script, you just know. But for Grace Van Patten, it was actually not knowing that...1Inside the Issue: Directing
Success in Succession: Matteo Garrone Shot Dogman Entirely in Sequence to Put Viewers in His Character’s Shoes
I wrote the script for my new film, Dogman, 12 years ago, and during those years I changed it many times, arriving at six or seven...Inside the Issue: How To
Journalism Plus: How Hail Satan?, The Brink, and Leaving Neverland Blend Truth-Seeking With Cinematic Storytelling
“Journalism Plus” is how Academy Award-winning moviemaker Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) characterizes making documentaries. If you’re a documentarian, you may not have a degree or credentials in...8