David Schonauer
FILMMAKER Monday October 7, 2013
The news that James Schamus is leaving Focus Features, the company he co-founded 11 years ago, and that company’s New York office is being shut down, comes as a blow to the city that was once
the center of the indie world, notes Filmmaker, which features an interview with Schamus about the changes that have taken place in the film business in recent years. Focus’s move to LA now
leaves the Weinstein Company and Sony Pictures Classics as the only entities on the East Coast that can make a mid-sized independent film, adds Indiewire. Read the full Story >>
NPPA Monday April 1, 2013
As the Elite Eight become the Final Four, Rich Clarkson will be providing photographic coverage … for the 59th consecutive year, which must a be a journalistic record of some kind.
Clarkson—photographer, former National Geographic photo editor, and photo workshop impresario—talks with National Press Photographers Association columnist Jimmy Colton in a two-part
interview, discussing his long association with the NCAA basketball tournament and his storied career as a masterful spotter of photographic talent. Read the full Story >>
FILMMAKER Thursday February 20, 2014
A look at homophobia in the black community, director Yoruba Richen’s documentary The New Black asks who gets to define civil rights, notes Filmmaker. The film focuses on the passage of a
landmark gay marriage law in Maryland last year, as Richen talks to black Marylanders from all walks of life and activists on both sides of the issue. In an interview, she talks about how she
conceived the film on election night in 2008, when Californians passed Proposition 8, a law banning gay marriage that was supported heavily by black voters. Read the full Story >>
FILMMAKER IQ Thursday March 20, 2014
Things change, except when they don’t: Filmmaker IQ has unearthed a short interview from a 1925 issue of Photoplay magazine in which silent-film director Marshall Neilan (1916’s Rebecca
of Sunnybrook Farm, starring Mary Pickford) offered advice to aspiring moviemakers. The essential qualification for becoming a director? “The ability to convince producers that you are a
better director than your pictures show you to be,” declares Neilan. How should a director act in public? “Like a nut or like an owl. Both methods have proved successful.” Read the full Story >>
nofilmschool Wednesday October 2, 2013
The blog of the Lights Film School, an online filmmaking course, is a valuable resource with top-notch advice, notes
NoFilmSchool. Recently, the blog featured an interview with acclaimed music-video cinematographer Matthias Koenigswieser, who talks about a number of topics, from gaining representation to his ideas
about light. “Atmosphere and lighting go hand in hand for me. I feel it makes everything more natural and relatable,” he says. As Fstoppers notes,
Koenigswieser's brilliant use of natural light is on display in his new video Rolling Stone. Read the full Story >>
TIME LightBox Thursday December 6, 2012
VII photojournalist Christopher Morris’s new book, Americans, a follow-up to his 2006 book My America, examines the country’s deep political divisions.
“Traveling across America in several road trips, I found that the mood among citizens wasn’t upbeat or lively; people are really polarized in their political positions, yet everyone is
concerned about the economy and what that means for the welfare of their families,” notes Morris at Time’s LightBox photo blog, which features a video interview with the photographer. Read the full Story >>
TODAY News Thursday October 24, 2013
It is now one of the most famous photographs ever taken. But in a recent interview on the Today Show, photographer Steve McCurry revealed that his portrait of Sharbat Gula, the Afghan girl with
piercing green eyes, was nearly passed over for the cover of the June, 1985 edition National Geographic magazine. The photo editor at the time, says McCurry, chose an image with Gula’s hands
covering her face. You can see the alternative image at DP Review. The
magazine’s editor in chief changed the cover at the last minute. Read the full Story >>
Vimeo Blog Monday March 13, 2017
Filmmaker A.V.
Rockwell’s new short film The Gospel, a collaborative project with Alicia Keys, is “a beautiful ode to the diversity of New York’s hard-working, hard-loving inhabitants
— especially its strong women, who must constantly wear a protective shield to deal with catcalls and lingering looks, all while never feeling completely safe,” notes the Vimeo blog. In an
interview, Rockwell says her goal is to “make people feel a little bit better about moving through this big, complicated world.” Read the full Story >>
FILMMAKER Tuesday November 24, 2015
Over the course of her 30-year career, Bethany Rooney has worked on almost every genre of TV show, from dramas (Nashville, Scandal) and action (NCIS) to youth-oriented genre programs
like Arrow and The Originals. “The starting point for everything is, ‘What is the story?’ I can easily adapt my work to the story I’m telling, both
stylistically and in terms of intent – that’s my job, to embrace that 1,000 percent,” she tells Filmmaker in an enlightening interview. The hard part of television: “I have
hour days to edit my director’s cut,” she says. Read the full Story >>
By
Peggy Roalf Thursday January 24, 2013
Howard Greenberg has been an art dealer for thirty years and is considered today one of the pillars of the New York photography scene. The Howard Greenberg Gallery, in the Fuller Building on East 57th Street, has
continuously presented major exhibitions, including a recent two-part retrospective on Joel Meyerowitz, with a hotly anticipated show on William Klein opening on March 1. Until recently, though,
his passion for … Read the full Story >>
Motionographer Tuesday October 13, 2015
Motionographer says that Saschka Unseld, the creative director of Oculus Story Studio, is an “emerging master of
virtual-reality storytelling.” In an interview, Unseld offers practical insights about the evolving art form, discussing its challenges and the new grammar of VR. (Note: Unself says
“build” rather than “cut” or “edit.”) He also talks about two new short-form “experiences” released by the studio, including one called Henry,
which, as he notes, started as a comedy but ended up being more sad than funny. Read the full Story >>
FILMMAKER Thursday May 8, 2014
As we noted earlier this week, photographer-turned-filmmaker Vincent Laforet has begun a workshop series called “Directing
Motion,” in which he shows other transitioning photogs and budding filmmakers how to move the camera in a dynamic way to help tell stories. “It’s a look back at everything
that I’ve learned and applied, from both my work and working with other directors and cinematographers,” he tells Filmmaker in an interview. Laforet, whose short Reverie introduced the world to the video capabilities of the Canon D5 Mark II, talks about how he creates movement in his shots, how he communicates with his crew,
and the importance of planning. Read the full Story >>
npr Friday August 16, 2013
Seattle-based businessman Robert E. Jackson has amassed one of the world’s important collections of vintage, vernacular photography—he currently owns about 11,000 one-of-a-kind prints.
The work was featured in a 2007 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and in a current show at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York. "I look for things that have an immediate dramatic impact,"
Jackson tells NPR photo blogger Claire O’Neill in an enlightening interview. Jackson warns that the glory days of the snapshot may be coming to an end. Read the full Story >>
Montana Public Radio Tuesday January 25, 2022
Tailyr Irvine is a Salish and Kootenai photojournalist from the Flathead Indian Reservation whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, CNN and Smithsonian magazine. She is also a National Geographic Explorer and the co-founder of Indigenous Photograph, a global database aimed at elevating the work of Indigenous visual journalists. “Historically, native communities have been represented by stereotypical photos in regalia,” she tells Montana Public Radio in an interview. “When I have a moment where someone's just human, that's what I look for the most.” Read the full Story >>
The Guardian Thursday August 19, 2021
“Bolivia’s cholitas luchadoras began wrestling in the early 2000s. The women, indigenous Aymara Indians who have traditionally been marginalized and oppressed, took to Mexican-style lucha libre wrestling for mental and physical health – and to stick two fingers up to a culture where wrestling was strictly a male preserve.” So notes photography Todd Antony, discussing his remarkable image of two wrestlers in mid-flight as part of The Guardian’s ongoing “My Best Shot” interview series. Read the full Story >>
CNN Wednesday April 14, 2021
US media group Vice has removed altered photographs of Khmer Rouge genocide victims from its website after a furious backlash in Cambodia and on social media, notes CNN Business. Vice recently published an interview with artist Matt Loughrey, who had colorized images of photos from the notorious Tuol Sleng S-21 torture prison in Phnom Penh, where at least 14,000 people lost their lives. The article came under heavy criticism from readers, who said the artist had added smiles to some of the shots. See the company's statement. Read the full Story >>
Motionographer Tuesday March 15, 2016
The Night Manager is a hit Brit TV series (coming to AMC in the US) about the manager of a European hotel (Tom Hiddleston) recruited by intelligence agents to infiltrate an
international arms dealer’s network. Matching the show’s ambiance are beautifully sinister titles from Elastic director Patrick
Clair. As Motionographer notes, the sequence smashes up the worlds of elegance and warfare in James Bondian fashion. The work started by searching through jewelry ads, says Clair in an interview.
Read the full Story >>
The Huffington Post Friday April 26, 2013
One of the most iconic faces of the 20th century is about to be rediscovered: On May 3, lost images of pop art icon Andy Warhol will be unveiled in Manhattan in an exhibition sponsored by Interview
magazine, which the artist founded in 1969 . “Lost, then Found” features circa-1981 shots of Warhol by British photographer Steve Wood, one of the chief photographers of the Brit national
newspaper Daily Express. BTW: Christie’s is launching a virtual auction of
Warhol’s Studio 54 images today. Read the full Story >>
PetaPixel Thursday April 9, 2015
The art (and business) of high-school yearbook photography is getting an update with the introduction of a new service called Live Portrait:
The platform uses augmented reality created to add a video element to every photograph in a yearbook, notes PetaPixel. How it works: During a school picture shoot, the student sits down for a portrait
and then for an additional 10 to 15 second video interview. The photo is printed as usual in a yearbook; but if you load the Live Portrait app to your smartphone and point it at the photo, the
embedded video appears on your screen. Read the full Story >>
The Los Angeles Times Wednesday January 30, 2013
“When I initially started in photography, I thought this was going to be a cool hobby, and then very quickly I found out it was way more powerful than just the act of taking pictures,”
says Ian Ruhter in an interview with the LA Times’s Framework photo blog, which spotlights his ambitious and arduous project “Silver and Light.” Ruhter, who learned photography by
being photographed (as a snowboard competitor), has set out to tell the stories of people across America through various mediums, including wet plate photography. Read the full Story >>
