Things I’ve Learned: Paul Haggis

By Paul Haggis on June 18, 2014 MovieMaker Magazine

Today, on Wisdom Wednesday, Academy Award-winning writer/director Paul Haggis stopped by to share a whopping 55 critical moviemaking lessons he’s learned (our most ever!).

Inspired by the works of Hitchcock and Godard, London, Ontario native Paul Haggis immersed himself early on in art, fashion photography, and eventually film studies at Fanshawe College. After graduating, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he began a successful career as a television writer of such hit shows as The Love Boat, Diff’rent Strokes, and The Facts of Life. And even created series like Walker, Texas Ranger, Family Law, and Due South.
As a moviemaker, it was his adaptation of F.X. Toole’s Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner that solidified his status as a big Hollywood contender. The result was Million Dollar Baby, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, and Hilary Swank. The film took home the Oscar for Best Picture (2004) and earned him a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Then, as an encore, his gripping tale of racial and social tension in Crash (2005) would send him back to the red carpet for more. Not only did he receive the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, but he became the first individual to write back-to-back Oscar Best Picture winners. MORE...

 

Horror Stories: Examining the Business of Genre Filmmaking

By David Grove on November 4, 2014 MovieMaker Magazine

A decade ago, the primary focus of independent horror moviemakers was making a good horror movie, knowing that if they did their job well, they were virtually guaranteed to find an audience and make their money back (and then some). Horror was the Teflon genre—or so it seemed.

“In the last decade it’s gotten cheaper to make movies, and harder to make money off of them,” says J.T. Petty, writer-director of horror features The Burrowers (2008) and Hellbenders (2012). “The ‘guarantee’ most people took for granted was the DVD market, and that’s all but gone.” Today, the business of independent horror moviemaking has changed dramatically, and while making a good movie is still paramount, the moviemaker of 2014 must wear other hats just as well in order to survive: branding expert, distributor, producer, publicist, sales agent. “And,” as Eduardo Sanchez, director of 1999’s game-changing The Blair Witch Project and the upcoming Exists, says, “most of us didn’t get into this to become distributors.” MORE...

Make Your Smartphone Smarter: What Goes in Your iPhone Filmmaking Kit?

By Ricky Fosheim on December 2, 2014 MovieMaker Magazine

 “Shot on a smartphone” rarely means just a smartphone. So what goes in your kit? Director Ricky Fosheim, of the entirely iPhone-shot feature And Uneasy Lies the Mind, walks us through his favorite hardware and software for efficient, low-budget smartphone filmmaking.

Two years ago a group of friends asked me to direct an indie feature they had written called And Uneasy Lies the Mind. Their David Lynch-inspired script called for a very unconventional aesthetic. After research and testing, I fell in love with the look and feel of the iPhone 5 images when attached to a 35mm lens adapter, shooting through 35mm lenses. It was grainy, textured, heavily vignetted and saturated, with high contrast.
An iPhone’s unique characteristics are its size, ease of use, high-contrast image, and adaptability to all sorts of aftermarket lenses. Sure, you’re not going to shoot Lawrence of Arabia with your smartphone, but in the right context, it can make for powerful, cutting-edge cinema. And the recently released iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, with their 240-fps-capable cameras, have just opened up a wealth of new possibilities. Make the most of your phone’s versatility with the following tools, many of which I used on my own set. MORE...