Johnathan Olsheski, an up-and-coming Philadelphian filmmaker, hit the streets during the midnight hours to follow and film the nightly routine of a “scrapper” ― you may know them as those drifting individuals who push shopping carts filled with metal scraps ― these vagabonds forage around searching for discarded waste, collecting junk with little to no value, in hopes to sell it and turn a profit. The result of Jonathan’s followings is The Scrapper, a 32 minute doc
8 Interview Tactics to Borrow From Oral History
I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned from Oral History (49-3672). Here are 8 ideas to keep in mind for your next documentary interview.
Notes from Fredrick Wiseman’s lecture at DePaul
Photo: Diana Gabriel.
Frederick Wiseman has made over 30 full-length documentaries, but says he doesn’t think about his art. He came from a law background and examines institutions across the nation, but says he never does research. The ironies you find in Frederick Wiseman’s films come across when you listen to him speak. [...]
In Order Not to Be Here (2002)
In Order Not to Be Here is the inspired, award-winning vision from Chicago-based experimental filmmaker and artist Deborah Stratman. Rife with creepiness, In Order feels like a bad-dream—or a leaked surveillance video from a lurking shadow government—it’s a dreamy, objectively-haunting, quasi-surveillance video. It’s also a film that poses many questions, one being the [...]
Ask a Filmmaker: An Unfinished Dream
My thesis project, Untitled DREAM Act Film, is transitioning from casual pre-production to real pre-production. What does that mean? It means that it’s time to stop playing around and start working on this film. One way that I thought of to do this was to talk to someone who has done or is doing what [...]