Tape is dead! Long live tape!
It struck me today that For Memories’ Sake will probably be the last movie I’m involved with that uses videotape. Ashley began shooting the documentary with the venerable DVX-100 in 2006 and, for consistency’s sake, we stuck with that camera through production. All the new projects that I have on the horizon will be shot with a tapeless cinema camera, whether it’s made by Panasonic, Sony, or Red. So tape is dead to me. Or is it? One of the issues, of course, about shooting tapeless formats is what you do with the data. While editing with tapeless footage, of course, I keep lots of backups

Take the Survey: 50 States, 50 Filmmakers
The United States of America I’ve been looking over Ted Hope’s blog lately and one thing he keeps returning to is the idea that in order for cinema to be truly free (i.e., liberated), we have to do our part to help film culture. I agree. That’s part of what this blog has always been about. One of the reasons I began this blog was to champion filmmakers working regionally. But now I’d like to undertake a concrete project spec

Uwe vs. Indies
As far as boxing writing goes, it’s not quite Ring Lardner, but Karina Longworth’s “Uwe Boll and Tim League Fix The Falling Sky With Physical Violence” is still worth a read.

Final Cut Pro tips: Here Comes Mr. Jordan
I started noodling with Final Cut Pro soon after it came out (ten years ago!) and taught myself how to use it. By taught, I mean that I learned to hack my way around and accomplish what I needed. But it wasn’t pretty or fast. After a few years, I really started feeling the limitations of my abilities, so I decided to dig into some tutorials. For whatever reason — probably because I’d seen a few for free online — I chose Larry Jordan’s Lynda.com video tutorials. These helped me immensely with everything from media management tips to techniques that greatly reduced the time I’d spen

Congrats to Rooftop Films Filmmakers’ Fund Recipients
Rooftop Films today announced the four recipients of their 2009 Filmmakers’ Fund Short Film Grants. It gives me a lot of pleasure to spread the word about this because, in addition to being someone whose career benefitted greatly from a short film grant, I happen know two of the recipients. Recipients and summaries of the projects: ROOFTOP FILMS AND THE CHICKEN & EGG FUND SHORT FILM GRANT + Sara Zia Ebrahimi: Norman Schwartzkopf Made Me Gay ROOFTOP FILMMAKERS’ FUND SHORT FILM GRANTS Underwritten by Cinereach + Moon Molson: Crazy Beats Strong Every Time + James M. Johnston: Knife