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Amazon will bankroll Terry Gilliam's cursed 'Don Quixote' movie
There are many famously unmade films, but few are as well-documented as Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. The Monty Python star has been trying to make his passion project since 1998, the most successful, erm, unsuccessful attempt being documented in the documentary Lost in La Mancha. Now, the director has revealed that Amazon will stump up cash to shoot the film as part of a deal he signed back in May. According to an interview in Indiewire, the plan is for a theatrical release in the US that'll be followed "a month or two afterwards" by a splashy premiere on Amazon Prime.
'Samsara' creators Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson discuss the digital filmmaking divide (video)
We've set up shop in a conference room above Third Avenue in Manhattan, a Canon 5D trained on Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson. I find myself apologizing awkwardly for the setup, several times. There's a long boardroom table in the middle and a customary junket breakfast spread to the right. It's about as plain as meeting rooms come, save for a few movie posters lining the walls, advertising films distributed by the indie film company that owns the space. Hardly ideal for our purposes, but here were are, all clumped into a single corner, with the director and producer of Samsara flanking a cardboard poster for their movie, leaned atop a stand. It's not the welcome befitting the creators of a big, beautiful sweeping cinematic masterpiece. But they're tired -- too tired to care about such things, perhaps. They dismiss such apologies, clip their lavaliere microphones on over their shirts and sit down. Fricke motions to the single SLR seated atop a tripod, explaining that he used the same model on a recent commercial shoot. "We have a solid background grounded in shooting in film, and that just stays with you," he adds. "When I'm shooting like with a 5D, like what you're using now to shoot this interview, I'm working with it like it's a 65 camera. It's my frame of reference, my background. I'm just wired that way." The world of filmmaking has changed dramatically in the two decades since the duo first unleashed Baraka on the world, a non-narrative journey across 25 countries that became the high-water mark for the genre and a staple in critics' lists and film school syllabi.
Sony sees RED with PMW-F3 camera, we go hands-on with the $16k "indie" (video)
In the wild, wild world of film production it's sometimes tough to separate the consumers from the prosumers from the independent filmmakers from the big studios -- especially when more affordable technology makes it easier and easier for one class to imitate the other. Sony's latest 35mm CMOS imager video camera is an attempt to cover lost ground in the "indie" realm of requisite low-budget and desired high production value, a market dominated by the RED One, and to some extent Canon's 5D Mark II and 7D, for the past couple years. Sony's PMW-F3 -- shipping in February -- is a considerable step up from the earlier EX3. The most obvious change is the inclusion of the new Exmor Super 35 CMOS sensor and interchangeable lens mounts, facilitating shallow depth of field with a fairly impressive dynamic range. But at the price of a semester's worth of film school, will this offering hold its own in the field? Read on for our full impressions -- including all the gory details -- and video of our brief encounter with the new shooter.
Guillermo del Toro working on several games with a 'big company'
Visionary filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, whose cinematic opuses include Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy films, recently told MTV Multiplayer that the "next few weeks" would bring about the announcement of his first foray into game development. Del Toro, who has long been an outspoken fan of gaming, explained he's partnering with a "big company" and is planning to "do games that are going to be technically and narratively very interesting." Given del Toro's unique cinematic and storytelling style, we'd love to see what he could do behind the helm of an interactive project. We're thinking it's either going to be a twisted, fairy tale-esque story with haunting visuals and thought-provoking mature themes, or a game about throwing sports equipment at towers of Jenga blocks.
Edge of Light Media opening Blu-ray doors for independent films
The leapfrog games played around the HD DVD / Blu-ray table are unsurprisingly continuing, as just weeks after hearing about independent filmmakers getting a crack at the former, a newly formed outfit is looking to open the doors to the latter. Edge of Light Media, a firm formed from John Daly and Erick Hansen, will be headquartered in LA and have a manufacturing facility just a bit north in Spokane, Washington. The duo hopes that this will "open the door" for indie filmmakers looking to get their creations broadcasted to consumers in the HD format without breaking their respective banks, and they also hope to "broaden consumer adoption" of the Blu-ray format. No word just yet on when these guys will get things cranked up, but if you've got an excellent B-title just waiting to make the jump to Blu-ray, here's your sign.[Via HDForIndies]
