Film Strategy

BBC has recently launched  a series of diaries by directors . Reposted below is  part 3  of 8 journal entries filmmaker  Chris Cooke  has written to give you a glimpse of the creative thought process and the practical obstacles filmmakers have to overcome during development.  Read and see how it relates to your production life. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chris avoids Americanisation in his third video diary I am ill and tired as usual, as regular watchers of these video diaries will know already. My flat has a small and unhealthy ergonomic triangle that is bad for me when I am writing at home. I sit typing only two feet from my refrigerator and two feet from my sofa, fags and remote control... my routine seems to be: Type and smoke; walk to fridge, make sandwich; walk to sofa; chill out and smoke and watch some film or other while eating, smoking, etc... lie down and think up new script-based idea. Er,...

BBC has recently launched  a series of diaries by directors . Reposted below is  part 2  of 8 journal entries filmmaker  Chris Cooke  has written to give you a glimpse of the creative thought process and the practical obstacles filmmakers have to overcome during development.  Read and see how it relates to your life. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chris outlines outlines in his second video diary For a moment I thought I was having writer's block. You sit down to solve your writing troubles and find that there's nothing going on in your head at all... but the great thing about developing these current projects is collaboration. While we are in development you can follow us on the early stages of that process. I am writing with two people: Helen Solomon is co-writing our bleak comic road movie; and Steve Sheil and I are developing our comedy of pain set in the world of regional wrestling. He appears in the two d...

BBC has recently launched a series of diaries by directors . Reposted below is part 1 of 8 journal entries filmmaker Chris Cooke  has written to give you a glimpse of the creative thought process and the practical obstacles filmmakers have to overcome during development.  Read and see how it relates to your life. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A few introductory words by Chris... Chris Cooke has been based in Nottingham for the last ten years and has not just set films there, but drawn on local cast and crew to make the films. Previously a fine artist (terrible results), Cooke became a filmmaker when a friend took a filmmaking degree and Cooke tagged along, pretending to be a student until he had a vague grounding in film and video. Later, after five years of unemployment, Cooke found himself on a ten-month training scheme run by Intermedia Film and Video, where he learned everything he could in linear and non-linear editing, film...

There are many films that caught people's attention in TIFF this year and became the subjects of top 10 lists  but I decided to focus on an interesting experimental short I read about by way of  Daniel Kasman 's mubi notebook TIFF 2014 entries . It was the avant garde short, brouillard passage #14, directed by Alexandre Larose and the sublime little film caught my eye as well (I only got to see the trailer which I have embedded below).  Kasman: Like many avant-garde films, I don't have any idea how Alexandre Larose made  brouillard passage #14 ,  the film which opened the first program, curated around body and camera performances. I think he filmed multiple times a walk along a foliage-lined pathway until reaching a lake and superimposed those images of the corridor upon themselves—but I'm not sure. How often are you not sure of what you're watching during the festival's dramatic features? It's this kind of destabilization and lack of, to put it blu...

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI AND THE JURY ANNOUNCED THE WINNERS OF THE 17 th  CINÉFONDATION SELECTION The Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury headed by Abbas Kiarostami and including Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Noémie Lvovsky, Daniela Thomas and Joachim Trier, has awarded the 2014 Cinéfondation Prizes during a ceremony held in the Buñuel Theatre, followed by the screening of the winning films. The Cinéfondation Selection consisted of 16 student films, chosen out of 1 631 entries coming from 457 film schools around the world. First Prize: SKUNK  directed by Annie Silverstein  ( Facebook ) ( Kickstarter page ) the University of Texas at Austin, USA Second Prize: OH LUCY!  directed by Atsuko Hirayanagi  ( Facebook ) NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia, Singapore Joint Third Prize:  LIEVITO MADRE  directed by Fulvio Risuleo ( trailer ) Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy Joint Third Prize:  THE BIGGER PICTURE  directed by Daisy Jacobs ( trailer ...

LOVE NEVER DIES... Sometimes it kills! One could say that we make films because we are so haunted by the movies we saw in our past that we feel compelled to create new ones. That might explain why director/producer Peter Szabo has been wanting to make films ever since Jaws scared the wits out of him as a little boy.  It also hints at the haunted protagonist at the heart of Peter's latest short, Love Never Dies .  Thematically, Peter is attracted to dark and tragic tales so it's no surprise that he adapted "Nona" by Stephen King for Love Never Dies after acquiring the non-commercial adaptation rights through the Dollar Baby Scheme . TITLE: Love Never Dies GENRE: horror/thriller short (35 minutes) DIRECTOR:   Peter Szabo PRODUCERS: Peter Szabo and Reese Eveneshen BUDGET: $10,000 FINANCING FROM: In-kind donations and Self-financing PRODUCTION DATES: March 13 through April 3, 2011 POST PRODUCTION DATES: April 2011 through November 2012 CA...

  I-will-not-tell-you-whose voice leads us through three extreme situations that are actually the same… Will you survive? Voice-Over is an award-winning, global-spanning short film directed by Martin Rosete, written by Luiso Berdejo and produced by Koldo Zuazua, Sebastian Alvarez, and Manuel Calvo. "A short film on an epic scale, its main feature is the titular voiceover. The clearly agitated narrator informs you that the astronaut on the screen is you. And you’re in trouble. You see, you’ve crash-landed and your pressurized suit will only keep you alive for a limited amount of time. But before your air runs out, you’re whisked away to a totally different scenario. And then, with a similar race against time counting down, it happens again. Each scenario is gorgeously shot, making for three mini-action movies in one. But it’s the denouement that will have you cheering. Writer Luiso Berdejo is much more famous for his involvement with the horror films REC a...