“My first professional film job was on a Certs commercial in 1974. I was the guy holding the bag just below camera so when the director yelled “Cut!” the actor could spit the candy into the bag I was holding. Ahh yes…those were the days!”

So please take a moment and think back to when you were thrust into the limelight and experienced your first paid job in this crazy industry by adding it to the comment box below.

Cheers.

“This may seem an odd post, one that might make one say “shouldn’t it be the other way ‘round?,” but bear with me. As someone who straddles both worlds (I’m a filmmaker, yes, but I ran a non-profit Foundation and both its publishing and documentary film wings), there are a few lessons I’ve learned (and applied) doing film that business owners and corporations might want to consider.”

Read the rest of this article from Multi-Hyphenate.

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“Imagine if Steve Jobs’ next trick of innovative brilliance was a whole new 3D-movie experience that was ten times better than the current offer, which didn’t require you to wear faux-1960s specs and that had the aural sensation of a hundred-piece orchestra. I think we can agree such a notion is not particularly far-fetched.

What though, if there were just one small problem with his new, funky iCinema: if the state-of-the-art movie play-back hard-drive was prone to burst into flames that couldn’t be put out with water, that emitted disgusting poisonous smoke and that might turn not only the film you were watching to ash but also the cinema and you? Would it be stretching believability to suggest that in our world of Health-and-Safety executives, the iCinema would be given the go-ahead on the basis that, barring this notable imperfection, it was otherwise terrific? Reckon so.”

Read the rest of this article from BBC News.

“There is a common adage that exists in discussing the current age: “9/11 changed everything.” This is a statement that is often linked to politics and everyday behavior, but one might be willing to ask what else 9/11 has changed.

Does a distinct and identifiable shift exist within  prominent areas of culture, altering even contemporary cultural fiction? Fictional films are arguably one of the most prominent mediums in which cultural phenomena and social commentary flourishes; therefore, this concept of 9/11 and change warrants study.”

Read the rest of this article from C Chronicle.

“The rising tide of sadistic movie violence against women has reached a climax with The Killer Inside Me – but it’s far from the only guilty party.

Michael Winterbottom’s new film, The Killer Inside Me, has achieved a certain notoriety for its rapt attention to the murder of its female leads. It’s particularly the death of a prostitute, Joyce, played by Jessica Alba, which has divided viewers. The murder hardly came as a surprise to me, given that when I went to see the film I had already read a couple of interviews with Winterbottom and a couple of assessments of the film, but even so, I was almost overwhelmed during the scene. It’s tough watching a woman whimpering “Why?” as her eye is punched out of place and her bones crunch.”

Read the rest of this article from the Guardian.

“So I’m dying to know, where did the epics go? Not just the big studio and big budget MGM epics of yesteryear’s bygone era but the thirst for an epic story in general. Even if it’s just an epically personal approach, we are drowning in half stories out here.

In 1948, 1 million televisions sets were sold in the United States; by 1951, that number had grown to 12 million. Movie going audiences had dropped by about 40 million. Film exhibitors, no longer tied to Hollywood studios, had the need and the necessary freedom to try something new to attract audiences away from their home entertainment.

This is what that damn Cinerama Dome was made for! Before your Arclight Card, The Cooking School and a 24hour Fitness there was a big parking lot, a parking lot that surrounded a technical film making milestone and marvel and an ingenious new way of filming and displaying full immersion sensory film epics. Or maybe it was just a phenomenal waste of time and energy? As our previous President of the United States used to say, “Let history decide what we got right.”

Read the rest of this article from the Huffington Post.

“I am a film major and am being given the option to focus on directing or screenwriting although I am not sure on what to do. What would you guys do?

The issue is not if you’re a people person or a loner. There are plenty of Directors I know who are very much not the life of the party and they could care less about your feelings. They care about getting the job done and everybody around them doing their jobs. So that the story can be told. Everything else is secondary.”

Read the rest of this article from Get Film Crew.

“Actor-writer-director Jorma Taccone remembers with loving fondness the gear montage from almost every ’80s action flick of his youth — Rambo movies and “Die Hard” and the “entire canon” of Arnold Schwarzenegger. “It’s people putting the big Bowie knife into the sheath, the shell belts over the chest, click-clacking the gun. It was a quintessential awesome moment. It has permeated the minds of people who grew up in that era. There are entire websites dedicated to the gear-up montage.”

Read the rest of this article from LA Times.

“Filmmaking is about respect for everything in the world around you.  The same is true for every field (in other words, “put love into it,”or “it’s all in the details”). But filmmaking is the best active metaphor for why that’s so, since what’s reflected in film is as varied as everything we see in life.”

Read the rest of this article from Baiseparapet.

“We’re about to live through one of the worst filmmaking decades all over again,” writes Gina Piccalo in The Daily Beast today. That decade – the ‘80s – is back in full force with a flood of remakes (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Clash of the Titans, Tron Legacy, The Karate Kid, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Predators, and Red Dawn, among others) and “brand-new films with plots so stale they feel as if they’ve been unearthed from some jaundiced Reagan-era slush pile.” (Piccalo mentions The Bounty Hunter, Did You Hear About the Morgans? and Cop Out as prime examples).”

Read the rest of this article from Black Book Mag.