The scripted drama boom is changing the entire TV industry. But is it a change for the better?
“It’s an exciting time,” is a refrain now most commonly uttered by those in the business of making content for the Us streaming services.
Not only have Netflix, Amazon and co fuelled a surge in the volume of scripted content, subscription video on demand services (SVoDs) are also doing their bit, as they expand and evolve, to change the business and art of high-end television.
“Partly it’s driven by the SVoDs, partly it’s driven by the retrenching of the feature film business,” says Ted Miller, co-head of the television department at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), whose client Matthew Weiner is among the high-profile writer-producers working on streaming series.
The Crown
“You have artists who want to tell great stories and if those stories are not being done in the movie business they are being done now...
“It’s an exciting time,” is a refrain now most commonly uttered by those in the business of making content for the Us streaming services.
Not only have Netflix, Amazon and co fuelled a surge in the volume of scripted content, subscription video on demand services (SVoDs) are also doing their bit, as they expand and evolve, to change the business and art of high-end television.
“Partly it’s driven by the SVoDs, partly it’s driven by the retrenching of the feature film business,” says Ted Miller, co-head of the television department at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), whose client Matthew Weiner is among the high-profile writer-producers working on streaming series.
The Crown
“You have artists who want to tell great stories and if those stories are not being done in the movie business they are being done now...
- 3/30/2017
- ScreenDaily
In the documentary short “Speaking is Difficult,” director Aj Schnack marries B-roll shots of public spaces where mass shootings took place with voiceover of the events’ 911 calls. It captures the mundanity of grocery parking lots, main streets, schools invaded by extreme violence, and how quickly life appears, superficially, to return to normal.
Read More: Field of Vision Founder Aj Schnack’s Powerful Short Visits Sites of Mass Shootings – Watch
Keith Maitland’s “Tower” is about the trauma that persists and how it’s sometimes possible to unearth and heal those wounds.
In broad daylight on August 1, 1966, the Austin campus of the University Texas was host to the United States’ first mass shooting at a school. From atop a tower in an open courtyard, sniper Charles Whitman held what was the equivalent of five city blocks of the campus hostage for 96 minutes, killing 17 people and wounding 32 others.
Dallas-born filmmaker Keith Maitland...
Read More: Field of Vision Founder Aj Schnack’s Powerful Short Visits Sites of Mass Shootings – Watch
Keith Maitland’s “Tower” is about the trauma that persists and how it’s sometimes possible to unearth and heal those wounds.
In broad daylight on August 1, 1966, the Austin campus of the University Texas was host to the United States’ first mass shooting at a school. From atop a tower in an open courtyard, sniper Charles Whitman held what was the equivalent of five city blocks of the campus hostage for 96 minutes, killing 17 people and wounding 32 others.
Dallas-born filmmaker Keith Maitland...
- 12/16/2016
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Festival director Jacqueline Lyanga opened this morning’s AFI Fest Awards brunch citing the record number of filmmakers who attended the festival this year, and many of those were gathered in the Cinema Lounge at the Roosevelt Hotel to recognize the achievements that made up the 30th iteration of the annual fest.
With an acting prize and two audience awards, Houda Benyamina’s “Divines” was the festival’s most-recognized film. (Judging by the reaction in the lounge, it was also a favorite among the filmmakers and patrons gathered.) When introducing the film’s New Auteurs Audience Award prize, AFI Fest Director of Programming Lane Kneedler explained how “Divines” became a festival favorite even after coming in late in the programming process.
Read More: AFI Fest 2016: 14 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at the Festival
Martin Zandvliet’s “Land of Mine” took the World Cinema Audience Award. “The movie is a hard sell,...
With an acting prize and two audience awards, Houda Benyamina’s “Divines” was the festival’s most-recognized film. (Judging by the reaction in the lounge, it was also a favorite among the filmmakers and patrons gathered.) When introducing the film’s New Auteurs Audience Award prize, AFI Fest Director of Programming Lane Kneedler explained how “Divines” became a festival favorite even after coming in late in the programming process.
Read More: AFI Fest 2016: 14 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at the Festival
Martin Zandvliet’s “Land of Mine” took the World Cinema Audience Award. “The movie is a hard sell,...
- 11/17/2016
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
In his Oscar-winning documentary “Bowling for Columbine” (2002), Michael Moore confronts Charlton Heston and Kmart executives, Michigan militiamen and the producer of “Cops,” but his quixotic search is for the structure itself, the undercarriage of American violence. Though his starting point is the 1999 massacre at Colorado’s Columbine High School, in which two students murdered one teacher, 12 classmates, and injured 21 others, Moore spins a dense web of historical connections and geopolitical comparisons: A montage of American imperialism from the overthrow of Mohammed Mossedegh to the rise of Osama bin Laden, set to “What a Wonderful World”; interviews with ordinary Canadians baffled by the American obsession with crime. “Bowling for Columbine” is, in short, the filmmaker’s most chilling and prescient polemic, framing the United States’ gun epidemic as the logical consequence of our “culture of fear,” and its concomitant economy of terror.
Nearly 14 years on from Moore’s Oscar acceptance speech,...
Nearly 14 years on from Moore’s Oscar acceptance speech,...
- 10/5/2016
- by Matt Brennan
- Indiewire
Laura Poitras isn’t waiting for traditional media to tell the stories that will change the world. One year after co-founding Field of Vision, the visual journalism unit of First Look Media, Poitras and co-founders Aj Schnack and Charlotte Cook are doubling down on their efforts to commission original works of nonfiction that address global events.
Read More: Field of Vision Launches New Website and New Slate of Short-Form Documentaries
While Poitras will be leaving The Intercept, the journalism outfit co-founded by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, to focus on expanding Field of Vision, her day-to-day work of commissioning films and short form work will not change, and the two organizations will continue their collaboration on nonfiction storytelling. Field of Vision commissioned 22 nonfiction shorts, three episodic series and two feature-length documentaries in its first year, but Poitras and her team are working to expand their collaborations with filmmakers, reporters and...
Read More: Field of Vision Launches New Website and New Slate of Short-Form Documentaries
While Poitras will be leaving The Intercept, the journalism outfit co-founded by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, to focus on expanding Field of Vision, her day-to-day work of commissioning films and short form work will not change, and the two organizations will continue their collaboration on nonfiction storytelling. Field of Vision commissioned 22 nonfiction shorts, three episodic series and two feature-length documentaries in its first year, but Poitras and her team are working to expand their collaborations with filmmakers, reporters and...
- 9/23/2016
- by Graham Winfrey
- Indiewire
It might be missing the industry saturated Park City fervor, but the smaller, shorter, and more intimate Columbia, Missouri based True/False Film Festival is the Rolls-Royce (by way of John Deere) of doc focused cinema. Filmmaker Laura Poitras is not alone in stating that her “love for True/False runs deep – from the smart programming, passionate audiences, inspired buskers, and fabulous venues.” Time and time again, selected filmmakers throughout this year’s edition expressed their love of the fest, while plenty of filmmaker personalities from prior editions could be spotted milling around town as casual filmgoers happy to pay to relive the experience.
With a highly curated program just shy of 50 films shown on 9 different screens (each of which are walkable in just 5-10 minutes of one another) over just 4 days, True/False centers its attention on quality and community, both locally and cinematically. For a city with a...
With a highly curated program just shy of 50 films shown on 9 different screens (each of which are walkable in just 5-10 minutes of one another) over just 4 days, True/False centers its attention on quality and community, both locally and cinematically. For a city with a...
- 3/15/2016
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
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