This Refugee Documentary Series is Unlike Anything You’ve Seen


If you do one thing this weekend, binge-watch this series.


To my mind, there are two kinds of empathy in movies. The first, endemic to narrative fiction films, involves experiencing characters as real people. Their lives transcend the screen; after the scene ends, they’re still there, sitting on the bed, left with the thunderous silence of their thoughts. These characters matter to us because we feel like we know them. We see bits of ourselves in them—warts and all.



Then, there’s the breed of empathy that’s specific to the living, breathing people found in documentary. A great doc will chip away at your subjectivity; you’ll find yourself immersed in a life. Your emotional bandwidth will stretch to accommodate different wavelengths of the human experience.

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A Massive List of Summer 2016 Grants All Filmmakers Should Know About


Have you been meaning to get started on financing your next film? Now there’s no excuse!


If you’re just starting out, make sure to apply for grants that really fit your film. Applied before? As filmmakers who have been successfully funded can tell you, sometimes it takes multiple applications and some persistence. Of course, use your own judgment (especially where pricey application fees are concerned), consult your fellow artists, and best of luck!



The following grants, markets, and pitch opportunities are organized by deadline from June to August, with a few early September deadlines thrown in. An asterisk next to the grant title (*) means that grant is open to both doc and narrative films. To find out more specifics on a grant, click on the title and get started.




Documentary


Pacific Pioneer Fund



A grant of $1,000 – $10,000 specifically for West Coast emerging filmmakers with no more than ten years in the field. From PPF:

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Finally, a Film Contest for Editors and VFX Artists ($100k in Prizes)


Create a 60-second film using free Filmsupply footage and Musicbed tracks, and you could win up to $100,000 in prizes.


Raising money for a movie can be a chicken and egg scenario: you need to show footage to get funds, but you also need funds to shoot something. Musicbed and Filmsupply know this better than anyone. That’s why they’re teaming up to give you a chance to show off your vision without shooting a thing. You could win up to $100,000 in prizes, which range from cash to expensive gear to an all-expenses-paid trip to SXSW.



By entering their new Filmsupply Challenge, filmmakers can use the companies’ stock footage to shoot a 60-second (max) short film. The film must fall into one of three categories: ad spec, film trailer, or title sequence.



Though this competition is aimed at filmmakers in general, it is specifically valuable to editors, VFX artists, music supervisors, and colorists, as it targets these skillsets.

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Panavison Co-Builds the World’s Most Advanced Camera: 8K RAW DXL Cinema


Panavision, Light Iron, and RED have joined forces to create the world’s most technologically advanced camera.


The Panavision Millennium Digital XL 8K cinema camera is Panavision’s official entry into the high-end large format cinema camera ring, and boy did they recruit some heavy-hitting collaborators.



While Panavision focused on the optics, Light Iron took care of color and RED developed the sensor tech to create what may be the most complete system ever made. The team came together to marry the lenses to the camera and the camera to the workflow.





The Panavision DXL was designed for their Primo 70 lenses and shoots 8K .r3d RAW, which is fully supported by RED’s workflow. It is even capable of shooting 4K proxy files in ProRes and DNx at the same time.



Even with all this technology packed in, the camera only weighs about 10 pounds. Check out the video above to get the full picture of just how well this camera has been made to work with accessories, modifications, and mounts.

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Watch: How to Film a Killer Low-Budget Car Chase


How can an indie production pull off a great-looking chase sequence?


The birth of the modern car chase is usually dated to 1968’s Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen.



Today, even though a car chase looks exciting and dangerous on screen, the production is actually the opposite.



In the below video, Ryan Connolly explains some of the key techniques he used when shooting a chase sequence for a low-budget production.





Because of the economical nature of indie filmmaking, the production had to limit the number of cars and drivers to just one stunt car and driver (Zandara Kennedy) and their grip van.




They cheated with editing, camera angles, and movement.




Furthermore, the road they had to shoot on was considerably shorter than desired. In order to get around this, they shot the same terrain over and over (doing small segments, then resetting, and shooting again). They cheated with editing, camera angles, and movement to make the chase look like it was taking place on a much longer stretch of road.



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A New Grant Aims to Let Filmmakers Take Control of Distribution

Ever wished you could own your film’s release?

Distribber, a digital distribution resource for filmmakers, and the International Documentary Association (IDA) want to hand you the reigns for your documentary’s release.

The grant will empower four filmmakers per year to directly distribute their content across major platforms—like iTunes, Google Play, and Netflix—while retaining 100% of their rights and revenue. Once selected, grantees will receive counsel and technical support for the distribution of content across multiple digital distribution platforms via Distribber’s service.

The catch? You can’t apply cold. The program is only open to a film already receiving fiscal sponsorship from the IDA, Pare Lorentz grant recipients, or films nominated for the IDA Annual Documentary Awards.

The first grant recipient is Oscar-nominated director Josh Fox’s How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change. The documentary premiered at Sundance and will be touring 100 cities worldwide. It will also air on HBO on June 27.

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What’s Making the Film World So Angry This Week? [PODCAST]


This episode of Indie Film Weekly, we investigate two big upsets in the indie universe.




It’s been a contentious week in the film world. No Film School Producer Jon Fusco and yours truly, Managing Editor Emily Buder, dig into what’s troubling indie producers in California, who believe they’re being shortchanged by the state; after, we discuss the ethics scandal surrounding Stephanie Soechtig and Katie Couric’s anti-gun documentary Under the Gun.



As always, the episode includes our Ask No Film School segment, plus grant and festival deadlines, gear news, upcoming indie film releases, and other notable things you might have missed while you were busy making films.

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Are Films Worse Now Than They Were in 1972?

Every film buff ought to know that 1972 gave the world what many consider the best film ever made: The Godfather

Godfather

 

We also got a some pretty great films that are still discussed today:

Deliverance4

tarkovsky-poster-solaris-polish-version

Cabaret

Last Tango in Paris

 

So 1972 must have been a knock out year for cinema – way better than the crap that’s coming out in 2016.

Well… let’s go through a few “not so classic films” all which hit the public in 1972:

Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

When Santa’s sleigh gets stuck in Florida, he tells a group of kids the story of Thumbelina.

Curse of the Headless Horseman

A phantom horseman who appears every night with a human head tucked under his arm lets it be known that he is searching for eight gunfighters.

The Cremators

An alien life form that is a huge ball of living matter invades earth, and replenishes itself by absorbing people.

Hot Summer Week

Two girls on their way to a hippie encounter session pick up a crazed Vietnam veteran, who might just be the serial killer who is murdering hippies in the area.

Angels’ Wild Women

Rowdy biker women get more than they bargained for after joining a commune.

Invasion of the Blood Farmers

Somewhere in upstate New York, a young woman is terrorized by a group of rural farmers primarily interested in a harvest of blood.

The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!

The daughter in a family of werewolves decides to put an end to the family curse.

The Night of a Thousand Cats

Millionaire playboy Hugo (whose lack of facial expressions give him the appearance of a Thundercat marionette) flies around Acapulco in his private helicopter to pick up sexy young women.

Blood Freak

A biker comes upon a girl with a flat tire and offers her a ride home. He winds up at a drug party with the girl’s sister, then follows her to a turkey farm owned by her father.

The Magnificent Seven Ride! 

Marshal Chris Adams turns down a friend’s request to help stop the depredations of a gang of Mexican bandits.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

With Peter Sellers, Dudely Moore and Michael Crawford.

Terror at Orgy Castle

A young couple on a European vacation get mixed up with a countess and a hunchbacked servant at a castle where black masses are held.

Night of the Lepus

Giant mutant rabbits terrorize the southwest!!

Night of the Cobra Woman

Horror story of a beautiful girl turns into a man-eating cobra.

When Women Lost Their Tails

Two tribes of dimwitted cavemen prepare for war against each other.

The Thing with Two Heads

A rich but racist man is dying and hatches an elaborate scheme for transplanting his head onto another man’s body. His health deteriorates rapidly, and doctors are forced to transplant his head onto the only available candidate: a black man from death row.

… and then there’s a bunch of mainstream porno films like Prison GirlsRed Hot Zorro, Night Call Nurses, and Schoolgirl Report Part 4: What Drives Parents to Despair

* * * * *

 Now that’s certainly not an exhaustive list but I’m exhausted already going through it. The hair styles might be different, the budgets might be smaller, but there’s a whole lot of crap up there. The point is, every year there’s going to be a ton of shitty films. Every generation will remember the best and toss out the garbage in the dust bin of history.

Chill out – watch the films you want to watch, don’t watch the films you don’t want to watch. Film will always be film – an evolving human institution of both high and low brow. Things change, but they always stay the same, just enjoy the ride.

Watch The Title Sequence for “Empire Strikes Back” done James Bond Style

Designed, directed, and produced by Kurt Rauffer
Instructor: Daniel Oeffinger
Music: Spectre by Radiohead

Star Wars is one of Hollywood’s biggest franchises to date, containing one of the most unique universes in sci-fi fiction. Not only is the universe incredibly iconic, so is it’s title sequence (the famous title crawl). Designed by Dan Perri, the title sequence is one of the most recognizable introductions in the history of film.

Growing up in the 90s where Star Wars was released on VHS, the franchise really sparked my imagination as a child. It not only let me exercise my imagination but also supplied me with some of the happiest memories as I watched it with my family. After re-watching “The Empire Strikes Back,” I decided to use this as a chance to create a homage in the form of a title sequence. This would also serve as my senior “thesis” at SVA and took me the whole semester to complete.

The style and tone of the animation was inspired by the James Bond title sequences. The music was a rejected song from the newest Bond film, Spectre, sung by Radiohead. I really wanted to play on the concept of Luke trying to find himself and true purpose, so the music and inspiration felt fitting.

James-Bond-Star-Wars