Category: Filmmaking

  • Three Questions with Chris Cuffaro

    Three Questions with Chris Cuffaro

    Three questions is a new thing I decided to do because I like the people I work with and want to share more about them and what they do and what they care about. These brief interviews appear in my monthly newsletter (which you can subscribe to here) and I am republishing them to the blog. The following (oh so very brief) interview with photographer and filmmaker Chris Cuffaro was originally published in the October 2015 edition of the newsletter.

    Chris and I are currently producing a documentary about his career as a music photographer for the past 30+ years called Greatest Hits. He’s shot just about everyone including George Harrison, Iggy Pop, Willie Nelson, Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, and Ice Cube (above you can see a clip of Chris talking about shooting with Ice Cube for the Greatest Hits documentary project). To see more about all of it check out the official site for the Greatest Hits project Cuffarohits.com.

    What do you do?

    I’m a photographer, director and all around creative fuck.  I love what I do and have been doing it for a very long time.  If all goes well, I will keep doing it for even longer.

    Why do you do it?

    First, cuz its fun.  Second, cuz I love doing it.  Third, I’m very good at it.  Fourth, I don’t know what else to do.  Fifth, did I say it was fun?

    What do you want to share?

    That’s a tough question, but I will start with this.  My Greatest Hits project!  Go to CuffaroHits.com to read all about it!  Its my my baby and I’m so proud of my baby.  I love photography more than anything, but music is a very close second.

  • Three Questions with Carolyn Maher

    Three Questions with Carolyn Maher

    Producer, AD, bounce holder ... Carolyn Maher does it all!
    Producer, AD, bounce holder … Carolyn Maher does it all!

    Three questions is a new thing I decided to do because I like the people I work with and want to share more about them and what they do and what they care about. These brief interviews appear in my monthly newsletter (which you can subscribe to here) and I am republishing them to the blog. This interview with Meme Producer Carolyn Maher was first published in my September 2015 Newsletter.

    Carolyn was my Assistant Director for Time Signature, she is the Producer and AD for Meme, and she’s Producing and performing AD duties again on Maybe Sunshine.

    What do you do?

    I produce things! I take steps to bring different parts of the filmmaking process together to actually shoot things like scheduling, organizing, planning and communicating what needs to get done. I also keep one eye on the “bigger picture” to make sure a project is ready for the next phase of its life and what we can do now to help that next phase.

    Why do you do it?

    Film is a powerful storytelling medium and my objective as a filmmaker and producer is to tell stories that spread empathy, promote understanding and creative expression. Stories are one of our most important ways of creating a common ground and platform for discussion, debate and understanding. There’s also a joy I get from bringing someone else’s vision to life.

    What do you want to share?

    SO MUCH! My first feature as producer Trichster just got accepted to Cucalorus (which is the best festival on the planet) and is soon entering the wonderful world of distribution! Meme just wrapped principal photography and I’m always so impressed when I think about all the amazing people who were so generous with their time and talent to make it happen. The Cape House (feature #3) is starting to come together and it’s a whole different kind of challenge than anything I’ve done before. And if you want to spend 10 seconds watching some ridiculous stop motion animation, check out my Vimeo page.

  • Wotan Lager Commercials

    Wotan Lager Commercials

    Jeff H. Davis as Wotan

    Meme has a couple of videos or films that are intercut with the main narrative. There is the film-within-a-film Beneath the Black Moon. There is also the Meme videotape, which the film is named after. Then, there are the beer commercials for our fake brand: Wotan Brewing. Unlike the first two these weren’t conceived with the rest of the story, but rather came out of making props for the film.

    Throughout the film our main character, Jennifer, drinks quite a bit. For production reasons it was easiest to make this a bottled beer and it seemed advisable to do it with a fake brand. So, I invented Wotan Brewing Co. If you’ve watched any of my projects since 2012, you may recognize the ouroboros encircling the tree of life design, which I have slipped into a lot of projects along with references to Norse mythology.

    After creating the beer bottles for the shoot it occurred to me it would be interesting to shoot a couple of commercials for the beer to intersperse throughout the film or put on TVs people are watching. The ideas for what the commercials would be like developed over the course of shooting Meme and finally in October 2015, following the end of principal photography for Meme, we shot the commercials at a bar in Brooklyn.

    Among the cast for the project are fellow filmmaker Lars Fuchs whose film Honk! I recently edited, Myles Tyrer-Vassell the director of photography for Maybe Sunshine, and the very funny Jeff H. Davis as the brand’s mascot Wotan. I also slipped in Ginny Leise, the heroine of Beneath the Black Moon, just as a fun little connection between the two videos and to help cement a larger world beyond the story in Meme. It’s just a little thing, but something that makes me happy, even if no one else ever notices it.

    We shot what amounts to six commercials for the beer. Two basic commercials: one involving a man at a bar being encouraged to try the superior Wotan brand and the second being essentially a “beer will make you a fun party person” commercial. For each of these two commercials we shot three versions: one in English, one in German, and one in Spanish. I won’t go into the exact reasons why we did three versions but I will say that it was a fun experiment.

    Over much of the last month we’ve been teasing clips of the first of these commercials on the Meme Facebook Page. Last Friday we shared the first full commercial. We start teasing the second commercial this Friday. Like Meme on Facebook to keep up with that and other news and fun things from our project.