Independent Filmmakers

Solving School Fight’s Budget Woes

Mon, 12/16/2019 - 12:34 -- Nick Dager

How do you make a full-length feature film, with flawless, cinematic values when your camera budget only stretches to the Sony FS7 cinema cameras already owned by the crew? School Fight is a low budget, independent feature film, but you’d be forgiven for assuming the investment in the on-screen image was far more high-end. This comes from the crew’s unwavering commitment to achieving the highest possible production values by squeezing everything they could out of the camera equipment they had available and a minimal budget.

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Atomos Shogun 7

NYWIFT Announces Third Annual Online Shorts Festival

Tue, 11/12/2019 - 10:17 -- Nick Dager

The trade association New York Women in Film and Television has partnered with GoIndieTV to showcase showcase the work of its talented membership through the third annual NYWIFT Online Shorts Festival. Members are invited to submit their short films, TV pilots and webisodes to the festival, which will run on GoIndieTV.com and on Roku for public viewing in early 2020.

Shooting on Short Notice

Mon, 09/09/2019 - 12:07 -- Nick Dager

The Long Walk is the third feature film by director Mattie Do (Chanthaly, Dearest Sister), who was raised in Los Angeles but relocated to Laos to become the country’s first, and only, female filmmaker. In an interview in Women and Hollywood, Do described her genre-bending film as “an unconventional time-travel thriller set in a forgotten rural village in Laos, about the ethos of a man, plagued by regret and loneliness, and his downward spiral into becoming a serial killer. He also has a very complicit ghostly friend.” Cinematographer Matthew Macar shot the low-budget feature over 32 days in Vientiane, Laos with very little prep time.

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Panasonic EVA1 camera
Nikkor lenses

Crafting Sound for Single-Take Scenes

Thu, 09/05/2019 - 09:35 -- Nick Dager

The Climb, director Michael Angelo Covino’s engaging debut feature, centers on the complex friendship between two men, Michael and Kyle, played by Covino and real-life friend Kyle Martin. For its Foley team from Alchemy Post Sound (working under supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer Ryan Billia), The Climb posed unique creative and technical challenges. Its first act centers on a bike ride that Michael and Kyle take in France prior to Kyle’s wedding. As the two men ascend a long hill, Michael makes a stunning admission regarding his friend’s fiancé. The results are disastrous with the men ultimately becoming involved in a violent confrontation with a passing motorist. Adding to the tension, the whole scene is captured in a single, intricately choreographed Steadicam shot.

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Alchemy Post Sound

The Pefection Demanded Different Looks

Thu, 06/13/2019 - 14:14 -- Nick Dager

The Netflix Film The Perfection, which was shot by cinematographer Vanja Černjul, ASC (The Deuce, Crazy Rich Asians), directed by Richard Shepard (The Matador, Dom Hemingway, Girls), and written by Eric C. Charmelo, Nicole Snyder, and Richard Shepard, follows the story of a troubled musical prodigy who seeks out the new star pupil of her former school with shocking consequences.

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Cooke Anamorphic/i lenses

Overcoming Equipment Limitations

Thu, 06/13/2019 - 14:09 -- Nick Dager

San Francisco-based cinematographer/colorist Stephen Berke was director of photography for the award-winning short film Snaggletooth, which had its New York premiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. Berke was also the DP for two additional short films, The Interview (currently showing on the festival circuit and Best in Show winner at the 2019 Albany Film Fest) and The Shepherds of Cat Island, a 10-minute single-take, premiering soon. His camera of choice is the Panasonic VariCam LT.

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Panasonic VariCam LT 4K cinema camera

Gunpowder & Sky Acquires Lil Peep Documentary Everybody’s Everything

Thu, 05/09/2019 - 13:01 -- Nick Dager

Global content studio Gunpowder & Sky has acquired worldwide rights to Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan’s SXSW music documentary, Everybody’s Everything. The film follows the life and career of Lil Peep, the genre-bending rapper who was just rising to fame when he died of an accidental drug overdose at 21 years old. Dubbed the future of emo by Pitchfork, Gustav Åhr was influential in bringing emo and pop-punk to hip-hop through his mixtapes, released via SoundCloud. Ahr’s first mixtape, 2015’s Lil Peep Part One generated 4,000 plays in its first week.

Thirteen Selected for Film Independent’s 2019 Documentary Lab

Thu, 04/18/2019 - 10:38 -- Nick Dager

Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards, announced the 13 filmmakers and eight projects selected for its 2019 Documentary Lab. The Lab is an intensive two-week program designed to help filmmakers who are currently in post-production on their feature-length documentary films.

CinemaCon 2019: Netflix and PLF Theatres

Wed, 04/10/2019 - 15:13 -- Nick Dager

From the earliest days of feature length films until the 1980s, the movie going experience typically happened in a very large theatre with a really big screen. Faced with rising costs and increasing competition from television, exhibitors of that sad era cut their buildings into multi-screen complexes to increase ticket sales and maximize profits on concessions. Today, faced with a different set of economic realities, exhibitors around the world are increasingly responding by creating movie palaces that rival all but the most spectacular theatres of the turn of the last century. One trend at this year’s CinemaCon, which wrapped up last week, was the continuing rise of premium large format theatres. Another trend was the almost comical trashing of Netflix. PLF theatres and Netflix are both here to stay; we’ve been here before

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Netflix

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