R.I.P. Miramax

Ready to be consolidated?

Nothing seems to signify the end of an era better than the news that Miramax is closing its New York and Los Angeles offices.  It will continue to operate on a small scale after being "consolidated" within Disney Studios.

3D Converges on Us

Technology marches on at an amazing pace.  I will be focusing this year on how to integrate storytelling into interactivity and multi-platform delivery rather than worrying about more new technology to buy.  3D, literally, gives me headaches.  I think engaging the audience is more important than employing another technology to enhance the passive viewing experience.

I can't wait for the first 3D wedding videography.

Indie Apocalypse

For a particularly bleak outlook for independent film, check out this article, extracts from the diary kept by director John Hillcoat during the making of The Road.   The diary ends with this epilogue:

My own new project – with a much-loved script by Nick Cave and a dream all-star cast – has fallen apart. The finance company that we began The Road with has also fallen apart, having to radically downsize to one remaining staff member. The great divide has begun, with only very low-budget films being made or huge 3-D franchise films – the birth of brand films such as Barbie, Monopoly: The Movie – who knows what’s next, Coca-Cola: The Movie?

I end the year appropriately – gazing into the apocalypse of my own industry.

Nice analysis here of the backstory on Cinemablend.  Further signs that the only indie films will be no-budget this year?  While I do think we shouldn't extrapolate too much from the emotional state of one obviously very tired director, I do believe that it is time for the non-mainstream cinema to embrace change and to embrace its changing audience and new economic circumstances.  The cinematic experience, as it is currently exists, is over a century old and stuck in the past.  Funding/distribution?  Maybe not as old of a model, but rooted in an outdated command and control mentality (I am being extremely polite here) that seems destined for a shake-up, analogous to what the record industry went through during the past decade.

Blurring the Line Between Fiction and Non-Fiction

HBO hearththrob?

We all know that a lot of "reality" TV is largely scripted.  And I've spoken before about documentary filmmakers (Herzog, Morris) taking liberties with factual truths in their own obsessive searches for more poetic Truth.  But what about narrative filmmaking that blends non-fiction/documentary aspects?

I recently made my way through two TV series produced by Section 8 (George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh), Unscripted and K Street.  Both were limited run, one-offs for HBO, K Street directed by Soderbergh and Unscripted directed by Clooney and Grant Heslov.  They are similar in their blending of real people (James Carville, Mary Matalin, Krista Allen, Bryan Greenberg, lots of famous politicians and actors), using real events mixed with fictitious characters and storylines to give authentic experiences of certain aspects of Hollywood and Washington D.C.  I have to admit that I was quite skeptical when I started watching them but found them both engaging and wanted more when I reached the last episodes.  The cinematography in both is, well, what I will call Soderberghian (if you've seen The Girlfriend Experience or Bubble, you'll know what I'm talking about).  That is to say, they were shot with almost only available light and almost taunting you with their homeliness at times (particularly in K Street).  They were both shot primarily by Tom Inskeep.

They are interesting variations on Soderbergh using "real" people to play fictitious characters (Bubble).  For Unscripted, there was no written dialogue, it was largely improvised from incidents in the actors' lives.  Each episode of K Street was based on a breaking news story and shot within days of airing on HBO.  I'd like to do a little deeper analysis at some point, but for now wanted to point out these interesting experiments.  They are all worth a watch and available on Netflix: Bubble, K Street, Unscripted.

Old and New

My New Year's resolution is to spend less time running to keep up with technology and finding more time to creatively explore the technologies to which I already have access.  Speaking of old technology, I finally got to operate a carbon arc lamp recently (thank you, Corwin Nunes at Mole Richardson).  The light that they generate is incredible.  It wraps around faces beautifully and creates incredible eye highlights, little teeny diamonds.   No creepy HMI spectral discontinuities, just pure lighting goodness.  Sigh. 

I also got to go to screen dailies for a project that I worked on that was shot in 35mm on the new Fuji Vivid Eterna 500.  It is a quite nice stock. It's color reproduction struck me as a little more subdued than with the Vision 3, with very subtle flesh tone gradations, especially to black.  Word that I heard is that Fuji is committed to film (it is a very small part of their overall business) for the long-term.  It's nice to remind yourself of the subtle joys of "analog" now and then.

Next week I will be color grading my first 5D Mark II project (the same camera that took this still).  I'm very curious as to how well it will hold up.

Film Joke

An AC and a grip are out fishing, catching lots of fish.  The AC pulls out some tape and marks an X on the bottom of the boat. 

Grip: "What did you do that for?"
AC: "So we know where our spot is so we can come back to it."
Grip: "That's dumb, how can you be sure we'll get the same boat?"

I Bring What I Love

If you're in L.A., I highly recommend getting to the FREE screening of Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love on November 17.  There will be a discussion afterwards with the Director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.  I recommend also staying for that; she is an extremely bright and engaging person.  This film explores someone who knows exactly who they are are (in a profound sense), what they believe and their journey to give voice to that experience.  It's no understatement to say that during that journey, he risks all that really matters to him to spread the message.

I have been a fan of Youssou N'Dour's for 25 years or so, but after watching this film I realized how little I really knew about him and his music.  Structurally, the film is not perfect, the filmmaker clearly had to include enough back-story to engage the uninitiated.  But the upside is, even if this is the first time you've ever heard of Youssou, you will enjoy this film.  His personal charisma is quite engaging, as is his amazing music.  It's definitely worth seeing on a big screen because a lot of it is shot in Africa and it's great to be able to absorb it all at the theatrical scale.



It's been a very good year for music documentaries.  Two others that I can recommend are: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (now out on dvd) and It Might Get Loud.  Anvil is kind of a real-life Spinal Tap story, except by the end of the film you love them, instead of just laughing at them.  Anvil is a Canadian heavy metal band that inspired the likes of Metallica, Lemmy Loud (Motorhead), Slash (Guns n' Roses) but somehow never seemed to find a payday.  The film documents their ongoing struggle to make it back to the top of the music world.



It Might Get Loud struck me personally as sort of an odd duck.  First, it is directed by Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth). The premise is that Jimmy Page, Jack White and The Edge are brought together in a room and talk about guitars, music and play together.  The film weaves together that footage with archival and contemporary footage of the three. It's an interesting film and is definitely worth watching, if nothing else, for the insights about each of them individually as artists.  And you do realize by the end that they are each a serious artist.  The Edge comes off as surprisingly insecure.  Watching Jimmy Page's fingers play the guitar is the definition of fluency.  And Jack White is surprisingly upfront about being a white kid who just wants to play the blues.