Your film is almost done. All you need is that scene in the pyramids. Or on a submarine. Or in space. A seat on NASA's next shuttle is out of the budget, though. What's a desperate director to do? Build your own virtual set, of course...     Nick Jushchyshyn will show you how. And at less than $30, chances are it can be done on even the tightest of budgets. He posted the s…

Come in come in. Is anyone there?Just lost a whole page of data when I went to upload it. PHUT. gone, finito, marrungad, kaputo. I was logged in, but when the upload completed it told me I could not have access to that page without being registered and shuit me out! And my data went west, wasting a whiole precious hour of work Oh boy am, I not nice to know at the moment..... I have some…

  Jon Williams and his creative team spent in excess of two years crafting their underground comedy Diary of a Bad Lad and a further year taking it through post, producing a film that many film luminaries have acknowledged to be fresh, original and different. After getting endorsement for their product from people like Chris Bernard, Alex Cox and Nik Powell, you would think th…

Jon H from Finland at JonHs.net has pulled together a remarkable list of 9-11 related documentaries online. All are free to watch and most are created by unfunded groups and individuals. There's a few extreme conspiracy theories but it's is still an impresive collective example of citzen filmmaking. So much seems to have happened in the five years since Tom ran up the stairs…

 The only people who truly know how much blood sweat and tears go into the making of a feature length movie are those who have done it themselves. The effort required is also in indirect proportion to the size of the budget - the smaller the budget the greater will be the effort required.  This particular story is that of Neil Oseman ("Hereford's Stephen Speilberg…

From LazyFilm: There are only two things that can make any motion graphic artist flinch and that's rotoscoping and chroma keying. Why? Mainly because both processes are time consuming and arm numbing. However despite all these, rotoscoping and chroma keying still remains to be very important in the industry we move in. Which is why, lately, software companies are launching new…

2006 was certainly a year of trailer mashups. To quote the Misshaken Pictures' Mashifesto: "As our collective history burrows deeper into the digital coalface we begin to see it recombined, re-imagined, re-invented and e-rased. Heirachies of media code are becoming silly putty in the hands of the majority and the global mirror increases at an unprecedented rate, a miasma of Id…

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, most famous for his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, and for collaborating with director Stanley Kubrick on the film of the same name, has also died at his home in Sri Lanka.Clarke served in the&nbs…

The beaches of Goa are a bit like the United Nations, so many pepople from around the world, so many ambassadors of peace. They mostly seem lovely wise souls who will probably one day run companies and countries. Meanwhile in the US a very real battle continues, the ultimate in a way. And it is a battle which - if the Clintons push it too hard, could perhaps split the Democratic party…

I'll never forget watching Truly Madly Deeply as a kid, a film I hold responsible for a crush on cellists (Altman's Shortcuts also playing a part). Anthony Minghella did much more besides making deeply heartfelt and tender films - from chairing the BFI to Grange Hill, Inspector Morse and promoting the family ice cream business on the Isle of Wight. All thoughts to Hannah, Max, Carolyn and the res…

  Tom Swanston Reports from  the NORDIC CO-PRODUCTION FORUM Haugesund, Norway  21-23 August 2006 This year the beautiful coastal town of Haugesund, Norway was host to the first ever Nordic Co-Production Forum, held from 21st to 23rd August. The town is situated on a long sea inlet in the South West of the country, a 45-minute flight from Oslo.   The…

Some very important occasions in your life only comes ones and that's all. Such happening like your wedding, high school graduation party, a trip to a far country or an abnormal happening that you happen to witness are things you will never love to forget. One important thing that is of great important to help you record such occasions is a camera. Now, with a camera in hand, the next thing that…

I stumbled across some of my old writing still online on Netribution from over two decades years ago that was so bad I wanted to cancel myself before anyone else had a chance to. I was scrolling down my old year 2001 design for old raw HTML Netribution pages untouched in 20 years, and still looking much like it did then (other than screens are much bigger so there's a lot of left/right padding)…

  It's 3 AM in central London - dark and quiet except for the odd car and the hum of generators huddled round the outside of Westminster Cathedral. But here, inside, light is flooding in through the windows as though it was midday. And in the minds of the 150 or so people here it is midday and this isn't London, it's the Escorial Palace in Spain in the year 1588. King Philip…

Roy Disney, nephew of Walt and general protector of Disney, has passed away. I was lucky enough to meet Roy in 2000 at the Belfast Cinemagic Conference, and it has stood as one of the more memorable encounters of my working life. I was quite nervous beforehand yet without need - he was warm and genuine in his convictions, unassuming with a quiet strength. [Netribution, Dec 2000] Roy worked for…

"This is a short film about my job as a Projectionist. I am quite proud of this film, mostly because I’m so proud of my job – it seems like a fulfilment of my childhood romantic notions of what I wanted to be when I grew up. Nonetheless what it most discernibly omits is how truly magnificent all the other staff are who work there too. It is dedicated to the other projectio…

Sydney Pollack, director, actor and writer, has passed away from cancer aged 73, and surrounded by his family. Link to LA Times obituary , Wikipedia page, IMDB page. Pollack was a friend and business partner to Anthony Minghella, who also sadly passed away earlier this year. Back in 2001, filmmaker and blogger Tim Clague caught the two legends in conversation at BAFTA, republished below…

"Is a very powerful love story. There is man. There is woman. Man falls over. Woman falls in love. Man wears funny hat. Oh no! Is woman dying of disease? Yes. Then man fall over some more. She get better. They get married. The end." Roberto Benitio is best know as the Italian comedian and film maker who directed ‘Wasn’t World War Two Fun?’ which swept the board at the Oscars two years ago. He c…

“Our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.&rd…

Dead pan and wry are often traits associated with the national character of Edinburgh International Film Festival’s own natives, the Scots. So it’s intriguing to witness Argentinian and Greek directors – Ana Katz and Filippos Tsitos respectively - tackling family drama or existential inevitability in a dry-as-a-bone manner. Whether Argentinians or Greeks are noted for irony is moot, but consideri…

  Hollywood producer Alan Haft, former Vice President of Breakheart Films, gives the low down on what Tinsel Town taught him about how to succeed in the business of making movies. In the early 90's,  Haft, with veteran actor James Woods, formed Breakheart Films. While serving as Vice President of Breakheart, Haft was involved with numerous feature films and televis…

How Do I Sell My Film Part One - DEMOGRAPHICS Netribution and film distributors WYSIWYG have joined forces to present on-line WYSIWYG's essential Guide to Film Distribution. We're both interested in building a strong industry for independent filmmakers. This means creating films that people want to see and buy. It does not mean sacrificing creative integrity, but it means business. To do the b…

"You see he didn't start out as a robot. He was a policeman who was gunned down so naturally they transplant his head onto a robot body to keep him alive and turn him into Cybocop. But the thing they forgot was his balls, isn't it? He thought with his balls. They controlled his instincts. "Do I shoot the criminals? What are my balls telling me?" That was how he operated. Without them he's just a…

Amateur: barely a few letters from Auteur - but what, in our social media world, is the difference? If there was a dividing line of the 51st Krakow Film Festival, it was between the crowed-sourced YouTube world of Life in a Day and the personal journeys of documakers turning their lives and experiences into art. Less a debate between high and low art, as between the home movie and the knowingly…

That's a wrap; wind reel and print - but did you remember about the trailer? It's often the last thing a filmmaker thinks about, but it might be the first indication anyone has of what the feature is about, how good it is and whether or not to spend some of their hard earned pay on going to see it next week. It's your pitch to the punters, so let's make it a good one. Here's how. A trailer should…