by Kim Adelman.

Kids today are still making Super 8 shorts. The urge to remake “Raiders of the Lost Ark” continues to be irresistible to young men. And pencil drawings have not yet lost the battle to Flash in the realm of teenage-produced animation.

A two-part screening of high school shorts at the Los Angeles Film Festival confirms that the output, hearts, and minds of teen filmmakers remain reassuringly familiar.  If these are the standard bearers for the future of filmmaking, their rallying cry seems to be back to basics.

Read the rest of this article from IndieWire.

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by Fred Wilson.

I was talking to a longtime reader of this blog, Chris Dorr, last night. Chris has been working in the film industry for a long time and blogs at the Tribeca Film Festival Blog. We were talking about changes in the film business and Chris blurted out that “filmakers and software developers need to start sleeping together and it is starting to happen.”

Filmmaking is art, particularly great filmmaking. But the art of filmmaking has always been based on a number of fundamental scientific inventions. And Chris’ point is that the art of filmmaking will continue to be impacted by scientific inventions that are happening in real time.

Read the rest of this article from Business Insider.

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by Times of India.

Having swept the top honours at the 83rd Academy Awards – including the Best Motion Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Lead Role – The King’s Speech joins a long list of critically acclaimed films that took liberty with historical facts. To expect otherwise would not be reasonable. Good cinema has never been about getting historical details right but about dramatising history in a manner that connects with audiences.

Period dramas always leave scope for nitpicking, but that is hardly the point. Unlike in the movie Braveheart William Wallace never wore kilts. Roman emperor Commodus wasn’t killed in the Colosseum as in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Perhaps the love story between emperor Akbar and Jodhaa Bai in Jodhaa Akbar was exaggerated. Gandhi wasn’t the blameless saint portrayed in the film Gandhi. So what? All these films have the power to move us, and convey history in a manner that’s relevant to large sections of the audience. And in the end, that is what matters.

Read the rest of this article from Times of India.

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by Angelo Bell.

This is an email I sent to a friend when she asked about my new position and disposition on film-making fans vs film fans.

I am a huge movie fan and my taste in movies is as eccentric and eclectic as anyone’s. I’ve spent the last week or so being a MOVIE FAN, not a FILMMAKER FAN, because a lot of the tweets and retweets and #FB status messages are from filmmakers who are fans of other filmmakers, not their movies.

Read the rest of this article from AngeloBell.

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by Valerie Williamson.

Consider ways to analyze how technology influences style and genre in filmmaking, and if digital photography is a stylistic influence in popular film & TV.

Content analysis is a primary method of investigation in film and television studies. The skills developed in the process of making analyses are very useful to a career in screen production. Genre analyses may be made through a variety of ‘lenses’, depending on what the proposed outcome of the study may be. One such ‘lens’ is that of technology.

Read more at Suite101.

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This article was written by MaryLynn Schiavi.

He peers out into the world at people, places and objects, but what he sees is something different than most. Filmmaker and photographer Harry Hillard, 55, is intrigued by, and passionate about, the use of light, and has dedicated his career to mastering it and using it to convey a particular reality.

Hillard, a lifelong resident of Bridgewater, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at New York University Film School and has worked as a professional still photographer and filmmaker for more than 30 years.

Read the rest of this article from BridgewaterPatch.

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This article was written by Amy Outland.

Many of the films nominated for Academy Awards this year are based on true stories.  Films based on true stories are often compelling for audiences but according to Steven Zeitchik, real-life stories make the filmmaking process harder for directors, actors and other industry executives.

You’re probably thinking that there can’t possibly be that many films based on true stories in theaters now right?  Wrong.  According to Zeitchik’s article From Real To Reel, there are at  least thirteen such films including 127 Hours, The Social Network, The King’s Speech, Conviction, The Fighter, and Love & Other Drugs, just to name a few.

Read the rest of this article from Entertainment.

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This article was written by Jason Brubaker.

A few weeks back, I came to the realization that selling movies on the internet was no different than any other kind of eCommerce. So using the same forumlas I utilize to market my Action Packs, I plugged some numbers into an internet marketing ROI calculator.

I did this because the prospective investors in my life often ask how their money will be spent and recouped. Given the discriminatory nature of traditional distribution, I wanted to see what it would take to make internet distribution a viable sales channel. So I started crunching numbers with one assumption – if filmmakers can make the numbers work for each project, filmmakers would no longer have to rely on the glaringly flawed: “Gee, I sure hope we get into a film festival and garner a great deal” distribution strategy.

Read the rest of this article from FilmmakingStuff.

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This article was written by Adil Sher.

There are only two kinds of films: good or bad. Anything in-between is often vague and pretentious. Now the big question is how you can make a good film when making a bad one can be just as difficult.

A good script, I believe, is the answer. However while developing a script you really believe in, it is very likely that you will lose your objectivity in the process. As parents have the tendency to believe their children are perfect and can do nothing wrong, a filmmaker can also develop the same misconception.

Read the rest of this article from Blog Dawn.

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This article was written for DesignTaxi.

Amazon Studios, a new online business, invites filmmakers and screenwriters around the world to submit their full-length movies and scripts for profit. This portal allows budding Michael Bay’s or Steven Spielberg’s to be discovered and get their movie made.  Amazon Studios will offer a total of $2.7 million to the top submissions received by 31 December 2011.

Read the rest of this article from DesignTaxi.

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