Making the Movie

Your Wednesday Links: Fire The Story Artist And Fire Up Amazon Storyteller?

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to see them as they come, follow us on Twitter.

Deadline: Amazon Studios Launches Amazon Storyteller; Free Program Transforms Scripts Into Storyboards - I think this will be a really cool tool for indies who A) can't draw, B) don't have access to people who can draw, and C) can't afford to hire someone, anyone who can draw. This will not replace true story artists, but it might knock out some of the market for clip-art storyboarding programs. Also, Filmmaker mag explores Storyteller and some alternatives.

IndieWire: At Long Last: The Definitive Version of "At Long Last Love" - The unbelievable story of how an editor Peter Bogdanovich never met created a secret cut of his 1975 musical, and how Bogdanovich found out, and loved it. You can also hear Bogdanovich tell it himself on this week's episode of The Business. You'll also hear Bogdanovich's three lessons from his career: 1) Don't sue the studio. 2) Don't distribute your movie yourself. 3) Don't start talking about how much you love somebody.

AICN: "So Brad Pitt has a really manly handshake & WORLD WAR Z is a helluva movie!!!" - Early rave review for the film with a troubled production. Truly, no one geeks out like Harry Knowles geeks out.

LATimes: Finding the connection between Google searches, movie box office - and you can download Google's study directly here

Marginal Revolution dissects the decline of interest in female film stars

Laughing between takes - A gallery of behind-the-scenes convivial moments

OLD POSTS UPDATED:
Two recent projects profiled here have successfully funded on Kickstarter: Wish It, Inc. and Know How -- which is still raising funds through the 20th.

Review of Much Ado About Nothing directed by Joss Whedon - added link to great interview with d.p. Jay Hunter.

YOUR WEEKLY WISDOM:
I have a theory most people see their lifetime favorite movie between the ages of 9-17. After you become an adult, you'll never fall as hard for a film. Am I wrong?

Your Wednesday Links: Dear Ang Lee

An Open Letter to Ang Lee From VFX Artist Phillip Broste - Powerful, a must read.

BadAss Digest: Don’t Order HOLY MOTORS On VOD!

Vanity Fair: Oral History of the Making of Pulp Fiction

Paul Schrader: Film undergoing ‘total systemic change’

Hollywood Reporter: Complete List of Oscars Winners - Most of the post-Oscars articles have focused on the host, Seth Macfarlane (negative) or Best Original Screenplay winner Django Unchained (surprisingly). For example, this.

Day-Lewis Reveals His True Feelings: While I'm Glad I Won, I Personally Believe Abraham Lincoln Deserved To Die

Verge: 'Inocente' makes history as first Kickstarter-funded film to win Oscar

SPECIAL THANKS:
To reader Cameron C for donating to the site! Donations like this are great encouragement for me with my long term plans to create and maintain resources pages for filmmakers like the DSLR Filmmaking Lenses Guide.

Your Wednesday Links: Do Box Office Numbers Mean Anything Anymore?

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to see them as they come, follow us on Twitter.

Peter Bart at Variety (finally) asks 'Does being No. 1 count for anything anymore?' - A longtime hobby horse of mine, the idiotic 'horse race' reporting on apples-to-oranges box office figures. Although his model oversimplifies, read Dustin Rowles on 'Ten Movies Released in 2012 That You Had No Idea Were Hugely Profitable Successes.

Stanley Kubrick, the Elephantine Termite - Matt Singer at IndieWire explains how Kubrick trascends Farberian film criticism

"The Best Ending to an Obituary Ever" - No spoilers on this one. Read the whole obit of this Welshman. It's short. (via @DanielPink via @digg)

Presidents in movies: An infographic - No one has made movies about Warren G Harding, James Buchanan or John Tyler? Poor guys.

Bleeding Cool: Behind The Lies Of The ‘Skyfall: See It In IMAX’ Advertising Campaign - tl;dr You are getting more sky and more fall than the filmmakers intended.

SkyFall + Lincoln = SlaveFall - An original trailer mashup from tastesfunny.net

Lynda.com: An introduction to mic types and how they work

Filmmaker IQ: Right-handed people sit to the right of the movie screen to optimize neural processing of the film

YOUR WEEKLY WISDOM:
The director, the cinematographer, the production designer, the costume designer -- all rely on an editor, just as much as any actor does, to hide their mistakes. Movie editing, like carving marble, is mostly a subtractive art.

OLD POSTS UPDATED:
List of Film Collaboration Websites - Completely reorganized, with Scripped and Yekra added.
Movie Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild - added link to a great KCRW interview with director Benh Zeitlin

Your Wednesday Links: The Brain Chemicals of Storytelling

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to see them as they come, follow us on Twitter.

Brain Pickings: The Neurochemistry of Empathy, Storytelling, and the Dramatic Arc - The graphic in the image shows exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denoument as being of equal length. But rising action should be most of story.

Pajiba: The 50 Worst Opening Weekends of All Time, Adjusted for Inflation

The Onion: Hope In Students' Eyes Too Much For Screenwriting Teacher To Handle This Week

The Wrap: Kickstarter Co-Founder Yancey Strickler: ‘We Don’t Care About Money’

LATimes: MPAA's Chris Dodd extends olive branch to Silicon Valley - If I were Silicon Valley, this would worry me. Dodd is a snake, and more likely he is buttering them up, trying to lay the groundwork for a SOPA sequel.

Variety: MoviePass is back, and this time it looks like there's nothing exhibitors can do to stop it - If you do sign up for the service, do me a favor and use my link: http://movi.ps/QGehy6. I don't make any money, but it helps increase my chances of being part of the early tests.

BuzzFeed: 19 Things That Prove "Aladdin" And "Titanic" Are Basically The Same Movie - via @juniperjenny

If you've seen Looper, you have to watch Germain Lussier's interview with Rian Johnson

Vulture: Liv Ullmann on Her Ingmar Bergman Documentary, Liv and Ingmar: Painfully Connected

Dr. StrangeLEGO (video)

Guardian: Looper opens with bigger box office in China than US

Reddit's commentary on Tim Burton's career arc

YOUR WEEKLY WISDOM:
Don't make movies the world is ready for. Make movies the world should be ready for.

OLD POSTS UPDATED:
- The reviews of Looper and The Master have been updated numerous times with great links to other interpretations of the films.
- Film Collaboration Websites - added PUMit.com

Your Wednesday Links: Dark Knight Reax

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to see 'em as soon as anyone, follow us on Twitter.

Apologies to anyone who tried to visit Monday morning and found the site down. An old post about naked ladies hidden in the poster for Silence of the Lambs got linked on Reddit.

Scott Tobias: Best films of 2012 so far: an annotated checklist

EOSHD: A new hands-on report with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

FirstShowing/FOD: Evidence That Every Summer Blockbuster is Exactly the Same

Onion: Fan Prefers Tarantino's Early Work When He Was Shelving Movies All Day At Video Store

YOUR WEEKLY WISDOM:
If you think there are too many bad movies out there, then you think filmmaking must be easy. Maybe for you it is -- but there's only one way to prove it. Make a movie!

OLD POSTS UPDATED:
The Dark Knight Rises Review - added more links to some of the excellent discussions generated by the film

Your Wednesday Links: 100 Ideas That Changed Film

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to see them as they come, follow us on Twitter.

The Atlantic: 100 Ideas That Changed Film - Brain Pickings editor Maria Popova reviews the new book by David Parkinson

LATimes: Comcast gets FCC approval to charge for data usage - Most observers see this as the first step toward Comcast and other cable companies forcing third-party movie streaming services like Netflix out of the market

Total Film: Rick Baker on Rick Baker

The Guardian: Edible Cinema

The New Yorker: Hollywood's Favorite Fake Newscaster

YOUR WEEKLY WISDOM:
"Hollywood is where they shoot too many pictures and not enough actors." - Walter Winchell

OLD POSTS UPDATED:
List of Film Collaboration Websites - added MoviePals, Stage32.com

Your Wednesday Links: Indie Novice vs. Snooty Hollywood Pro

Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to see them as they come, follow us on Twitter.

Princess Scribe: The Great Divide - Great story of indie filmmaker vs. snooty Hollywood person. Never lose the love!

John Carter Trailer fan edit - I've heard of fans re-editing a movie... but not a trailer. [via @andrewstanton]

Down with Film: Sex in the Movies - A double-standard?

Movies.com: A Navy SEAL rates movies about Navy SEALs for accuracy [via @PeterSHall]

LATimes: Who votes on the Academy Awards? [via @chriskrewson]

Malaika Mose's slides on crowdfunding

Have you crowdfunded a film project? - Take the crowdfunding survey to see how your campaign compares to others

The six rules of modern movie poster design [via @kottke]

YOUR WEEKLY WISDOM:
Filmmaking is the art of creating massive chaos to immortalize a tiny structured moment.

OLD POSTS UPDATED:
Timecode for Video - The importance of 23.976PsF.

Your Wednesday Links: A Defense of Film Festivals

This is a semi-regular weekly feature on Making the Movie. Most of these links come from the @makingthemovie Twitter stream. If you'd like to get them as they come, throw us a follow.

An interview with the other filmmaker affected by the Comic Con Film Festival wrong discs diss is in progress. He actually had a great experience with Comic Con (other than them mis-returning his film). But if you're looking for a unicorn chaser sooner, you can read FilmSnobbery's defense of film festivals.

It's not all roses and sunshine. In other news, some asshole smashed Lucas McNelly's window and stole his stuff. For spending a year volunteering on other people's films, you'd think McNelly would have some better karma, no pun intended. Good news is, even though his insurance left him high and dry, the indie filmmaking community pitched in and helped pay for the repairs.

My latest post for Mastering Film has been getting lots of positive feedback: The Pixar Method: Tricks of the Hit Machine. If you'd like to see me unload more of what I've discovered while researching the secrets to success of PIXAR and Disney, leave an encouraging comment or tweet.

WalMart's jujitsu move against Netflix - I see the Vudu service is now iPad-ready as well. Expect be hearing a lot more about this. With Hulu fading fast, the holy trinity of streaming is shaping up to be Netflix, Amazon and Walmart. Maybe Netflix should diversify and start selling consumer goods.

SlashFilm: The Secret Origin of ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop:’ Extortion, a Lawsuit and a Dilettante? - I heard from one of the minions employed to create his art for him that Mr. Brainwash is portrayed accurately in the film, although his eccentricities are exaggerated. While he may not have the artistic rigor of his idols, he has all the chutzpah of a Dalí or a Warhol. Undeserving or not, his fame will probably outlast 99% of contemporary artists. There's a lesson in here for filmmakers.

OLD POSTS UPDATED:

Synechdoche, New York Explained - new theory of the film in the comments

Interview with Indie 3D Pioneer Jesse Blanchard - added new info on his post process and photo of the free 3D glasses

Your Wednesday Links: Thor Revisited

Telluride Review: Enrico Casarosa's Wonderful Pixar Short 'La Luna' - Makes me pumped to see this short.

Kubrick GIFs - The master's stunning compositions, in gif form.

12 Set Etiquette Tips - from D.P. Jared Abrams. Some of them are Hollywood-specific, but many ("don't run on set, ever") are golden for indies too.

"So now everybody can film, and now we’ll see who the real filmmakers are.” - MovieScope interview with César Charlone, cinmatographer behind City of God and Blindness

io9: Apollo 18 and the attempt to make a new conspiracy theory

OLD POSTS UPDATED THIS WEEK:
Movie Review: Thor - Added a link to the Hollywood Saloon podcast which breaks the film down in super detail. Part of a larger superhero summer series from Andy Siems and John Jansen.

Final Cut X is here. What you should know. - Update with link to information on how to order the old Final Cut Studio (Final Cut 7) directly from Apple.

HD Cameras Comparison - Added info on the new Sony F65.

Your Wednesday Links: The Five Flavors

Thanks for bearing with me on the light posting. I've been slammed at work and also travelling. Of course, if you've been following @makingthemovie on Twitter, you've still been getting plenty of interesting links. Here are some of my favorites from the last week...

Free TV static and video noise stock footage - In 1080p and 720p no less. This is great stuff that you would normally pay a lot for from a stock footage company, so even though it's free, if you download I strongly urge you to donate a few bucks to these guys.

IndieWire: Three Unmade Kubrick Films In Active Development; Lunatic at Large Close to Financing - A.I. may not be the last posthumous Kubrick film produced by a longshot. You can actually read the script for Kubrick's epic never-made Napoleon movie.

Den of Geek: The surprise movie hits of 2011 - Great article that takes into a account how much was spent on a movie as well as how much it made at the box office. Every article on box office champions should take this into account, but that's a rant for another day.

"Cars merchandise sales were estimated at $10B, 51% more than the gross of all 11 Pixar movies combined.” - You wonder why Cars 2 was made?

Salon: Why Hollywood keeps white-washing the past - Matt Zoller Seitz spoils The Help

GigaOm: What happens if your web series doesn't hit it big? - What do you do if you don't break out like The Guild did?

FINALLY:
For a new take on the basics of screenwriting, check out my latest column on Mastering Film, The Five Flavors: Proven Movie Story Elements