How to Create a Franchise, Indie-Style
Transmedia is a buzzword that has been used quite a lot in the last couple of years to define all sorts of things, from the independent movie that has a companion Website and a Facebook fan page to the...
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Fictionalizing Truth: Lee Daniel’s The Butler & More
We’ve all seen those stately biopics (usually with Oscar aspirations), in which renowned actors portray real-life historical figures (Patton, Queen Elizabeth, Gandhi, etc). They are often interesting...
View ArticleWe Make Movies (Better): Please Don’t Have the Following Conversation About...
When I talk to filmmakers, way too often I have a version of the following conversation: Sam Mestman (MM): What’s your movie about? Filmmaker (FM): Well, it’s a love story. Sort of a When Harry Met...
View ArticleWe Make Movies: How I Started an Indie Film Collective
My name is Sam Mestman, and I run a film collective in Los Angeles and Toronto called We Make Movies. Moviemaker asked us to write a weekly DIY filmmaking blog about tips and issues facing...
View ArticleAFI is a wrap, but Maja Milos’ CLIP is still haunting me
My girlfriend and I managed to attend eight films at AFI this year over the course of the seven-day festival: Amour; Rust and Bone; Clip; Caesar Must Die; Starlet; Beyond the Hills; Leviathan; and...
View ArticleResurrecting Sixto Rodriguez: Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching For Sugarman
In the 1970s, the music of a mysterious singer-songwriter named Rodriguez became the anthem for a generation of Afrikaners increasingly isolated from the outside world by the international response to...
View ArticleLights, Camera, Social Action: The Disposable Film Festival
With our world’s amazing technology making spectacular cameras small, cheap and ubiquitous, new types of moviemaking (and, by extension, moviemakers) are proliferating. From the highest-powered film...
View ArticleJennifer Fox Turns to Crowdfunding for My Reincarnation
When moviemaker Jennifer Fox (“Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman”) completed her latest project—the documentary My Reincarnation, about a Tibetan Buddhism Master and his Western-born son—a...
View ArticleJames Franco vs. the Fact Checkers Unit
Director Dan Beers' moviemaking success story began with his short film FCU: Fact Checkers Unit, which premiered at Sundance in 2008. The film, about two magazine fact checkers tasked with confirming...
View ArticleWhat The Dictator Learned from Borat
From Cannes to Hollywood, Sacha Baron Cohen is back in the news this week as his latest mash-up of humor and political commentary makes it way into theaters, courtesy of The Dictator. If the moviemaker...
View ArticleFrom Penguins to Pirates: The Best of Aardman
After taking a detour into the world of CGI for last year's Arthur Christmas, Aardman Animations—the studio behind the Wallace and Gromit films, Chicken Run, "Shaun the Sheep" and more—has returned to...
View ArticleBecome a Professional Producer with the ProShow Competition
It doesn't matter whether your film dream job is directing, writing or producing—if your goal is to break into the industry, it's nice to have some help along the way. Luckily, the Producers Guild of...
View ArticleBringing Suspicion to the Big Screen
When I moved to Los Angeles in 2007, I didn’t know I wanted to be a director. I thought I just wanted to produce. Like everyone else who moves to L.A. to pursue their dream, I figured that said dream...
View ArticleHooray for The Artist!
Awards season is over for another year. Last night's Oscars saw the big award go to—surprise, surprise—The Artist, which picked up a total of five wins (Best Film, Actor, Costume Design, Original Score...
View ArticleThe Artist Dominates at the 2012 BAFTA Awards
As expected, The Artist was the big winner at last night's Orange British Academy Film Awards—or, as they're better known, the BAFTAs—winning seven of the 12 categories in which it was nominated,...
View ArticleAnnie ♥s Rango
It's not time for the Oscars yet, but the Annies have already rolled into town. Last Saturday saw the Annie Awards, which honors the year's highest achievements in (you guessed it) animation, take...
View ArticleSay Hello to Your 2012 Oscar Nominees
This morning saw the announcement of the 2012 Academy Award nominations, and while many of the films to have their names called out by nominee presenters Jennifer Lawrence and Academy of Motion Picture...
View ArticlePGA Win Helps The Artist Break (Further) from the Pack
The Artist continued its intermittent awards season domination on Saturday, winning the Producers Guild of America (PGA) Award for Best Feature Film and shoring up its (already considerably good)...
View ArticleExploring the Mystery of Creativity with Old School New School
My documentary Old School New School explores the nature of creativity, all within the context of storytelling through various crafts, including acting, cinematography, music, theater, dance and...
View ArticleThe Artist, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Lead 2012 BAFTA Award Nominations
Though Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has been notably absent from much of the awards season hoopla—it's done well in various critics groups' awards but has received no SAG, PGA, DGA, WGA...
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