Last week I wrote about the fact that small cameras are getting better and better, and wondered if I could shoot a decent piece with some of these smaller cameras. The idea is to take a kind of minimalist approach to filmmaking.   As I said before, I grabbed a couple of small cameras based on recommendations from friends, and a couple of small audio recording devices. I ended up with a Sony A6500 with a 35mm lens. I also picked up a Sony RX100V, which has it’s own built in zeiss zoom lens.   For audio recording I picked up the new Zoom H2N handy recorder, which has a great set of internal microphones.               Presently, an opportunity presented itself to try out this new minimalistic approach. I have a musician friend, Bernie, who happened to be putting together a Christmas album with his wife Rachel and a group of singers/musicians that have become known as the Reindeer Tribe. Every year they get together and make a Christmas album for their family and friends, and release it to the world. This year they were recording in Bernie’s studio, and invited me to come […]

As I see it, the project of this blog is to promote good documentary film, both from the perspective of the consumer (pointing you guys in the direction of good films to watch, and providing you with critical tools for engaging with them), and the filmmaker (helping you find your artistic and spiritual voice through nonfiction film).   I’d like to take a moment to talk about the business side of things.  The fact is that while we are living in what many call a “golden age” of documentary film (more media outlets than ever before, cheap and accessible equipment and access to knowledge) the task of making a film is nevertheless extremely difficult, time consuming and STILL expensive. So those of us that are looking to develop our voice often need to get creative with funding opportunities.   Every couple of years, it seems like new methods for raising money for creative projects (and indeed, monetizing existing content) breaks on to the scene. It was probably about ten years ago now that Kickstarter burst on the scene, and essentially provided a way to ask strangers, friends and, mostly if we are honest, family members, for money through an on−line […]

This is a great short documentary by Marshall Curry called A Night At the Garden, and it details a Nazi rally held in America, in New York, at the Madison Square Garden in 1939. Curry doesn’t force any commentary on us in the film, but rather allows the chilling images to speak for themselves. Often, when considering historical events, especially world changing events like those of the World War periods of the last century, we want to try to put ourselves inside the minds of those involved. What, we wonder, would that really be like? Something that we may forget is that it is truly impossible to do this exercise with any real accuracy, because the background, or the water, if you will, that we swim in in each age is slightly different. Anti-Semitism certainly existed in America in the 1930’s in a way or degree that it did not in the period after the war. The fact that 20,000 Americans showed up at this New York ralley, and the symbols of the Nazi swastika were displayed right along side the American flag, and the Nazi salute was instigated along with the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem, shows […]

I spent a couple of days last week at the AFI Fest in Hollywood, which is a film festival right here in Los Angeles, with a lineup of some of the year’s greatest films. I was able to catch a documentary called “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond−With a special contractually obligated, mention of Tony Clifton.” It’s a Netflix original production, and in fact I just noticed that it’s already up on the site! The film is constructed with a blend of behind the scenes footage of Jim Carrey for the 1999 film, “Man on The Moon,” a biopic about Jim’s comic idol, Andy Kaufman (directed by Milos Forman), intercut with a present day interview of Carrey himself, looking back on the whole experience.   If you remember that film, or if you were around for the career of Andy Kaufman, then you will know that Kaufman tended to push the boundaries of what most people would consider “performance” and “entertainment.”  Famously, Kaufman would construct what many would consider elaborate pranks on his audience, like making it seem like the reception on the television was bad during one of his shows, or refusing to break character with certain performative personas […]