All posts tagged: filmmakers

Runway started by helping filmmakers. Now it wants to beat Google at AI.

Runway started by helping filmmakers. Now it wants to beat Google at AI.

Published by skeptic

AI video generation startup Runway doesn’t have the typical Silicon Valley pedigree. No Stanford founders, no ex-Google founders, no nine-figure seed round that bought them time to ignore revenue. Its three founders — two from Chile, one from Greece —  met at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and built the company in New York. Runway also could be, depending on who you ask, one of the most consequential AI companies today. Not because of what it has built, but because of what it is trying to build next.  For the past several years, the AI industry has largely operated on the premise that intelligence lives in language. Large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude reflect that bet.  Runway, alongside other competitors, is making a different one. Its founders believe the next form of AI intelligence won’t be built from text, but from video and world models that learn how the world works, not just how humans describe it. That distinction sounds academic. Its implications are not.  Runway co-Founder and co-CEO Anastasis Germanidis …

Slovenia To Broadcast Palestinian Filmmakers’ Work On Eurovision Night

Slovenia To Broadcast Palestinian Filmmakers’ Work On Eurovision Night

Published by Sam Flores

Slovenia’s national broadcaster has announced plans to honour Palestinian artists rather than airing this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Last year, Slovenia was one of five countries to announce it was withdrawing from Eurovision due to the decision to invite Israel back to the competition, despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. “As a public service broadcaster, RTV Slovenia is committed to upholding ethical principles and expects that equal rules and standards apply to all EBU members and all participating countries,” the Slovenian broadcaster said at the time. On Thursday, RTVSLO’s director told AP: “We will not be broadcasting the Eurovision Song Contest. We will be airing the film series Voices of Palestine, featuring Palestinian documentaries and feature films.” After the news that Israel would be competing at Eurovision 2026 – amid widespread calls for them to be banned, similar to how Russia was expelled from the contest in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine – The Netherlands became the first country to withdraw in solidarity with Palestine, followed by Spain, Ireland and Slovenia. Iceland …

The 17 worst movies by great filmmakers, from Spielberg to Scorsese

The 17 worst movies by great filmmakers, from Spielberg to Scorsese

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter In every industry and walk of life, even the best of us sometimes fail to hit the mark. For professional filmmakers, however, mistakes can be costly. Unlike most people, their slip-ups can be witnessed by millions of people – a bad film can tar someone’s reputation for years or even decades. This isn’t just a list about bad films, however. This is a tribute to the rare instances when great filmmakers just got it wrong. For every Kelly Reichardt or Paul Thomas Anderson out there – artists who have managed to go their whole careers without ever really letting the quality slide – there are countless others who haven’t quite managed it. Even giants of the medium  have found themselves prone to the occasional bum note. And it’s not just directors either; some of the best actors around have also been …

These Documentary Filmmakers Set Out to Make an Honest Film About BTS—and Got More Than They’d Hoped For

These Documentary Filmmakers Set Out to Make an Honest Film About BTS—and Got More Than They’d Hoped For

Published by Sam Flores

In one of the most highly anticipated comebacks in recent memory, global superstar group BTS has surged back into the spotlight after a nearly four-year hiatus. The K-pop boy band’s long-awaited return, following its members’ military service, has dominated news headlines—while its fans, known as ARMY, have once again set social media ablaze. The septet’s latest album, Arirang, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with lead single “Swim” topping the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release. Jimin, RM, and V.Courtesy of Netflix. But BTS’s return to the pinnacle of pop wasn’t easy, as revealed in the new documentary BTS: The Return. Directed by Bao Nguyen (Be Water, The Greatest Night in Pop) and produced by This Machine, Hybe, and East Films, the 93-minute film follows members RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook as they gather in a Los Angeles studio to work on their comeback album, Arirang. The result is a raw, intimate portrait of their creative process—and the doubts and pressures that come with global fame as they attempt …

‘Undertone’ Director Ian Tuason on the Films, Filmmakers, and Creepypastas That Influenced His A24 Debut

‘Undertone’ Director Ian Tuason on the Films, Filmmakers, and Creepypastas That Influenced His A24 Debut

Published by Jenni Sidey

Tuason: I watch their stuff. I see a shot that really hits me, then I write it down, and then I have this list, and then I draw from that list when I’m writing because once an idea comes to my mind to shoot a certain scene, if I’m clear on the intention of that scene, I feel like it’s the same intention as this other scene like in a Danny Boyle film, I’ll use it then. And then I don’t know if anyone would catch it, but feel free to match my shots with someone else’s and I’ll admit it if you get it right. Everett Collection I was drawing quite a bit from Psycho, but mostly just [Hitchcock’s] philosophy… I pretty much just told you there was a bomb under the table, but there was never an explosion. GQ: Without giving too much away, what was the hardest—or the most fun—sequence in the movie to pull off? Tuason: Well, hands down, it starts when we have that ghost POV that floats from upstairs …

Netflix Buys Ben Affleck’s AI Company InterPositive for Filmmakers

Netflix Buys Ben Affleck’s AI Company InterPositive for Filmmakers

Published by Daniella Wilson

Netflix is getting into the AI business with Ben Affleck. This isn’t an output deal, it’s a business deal, with the streaming giant set to acquire an AI-powered filmmaking technology company that Affleck quietly founded a few years ago: InterPositive. Affleck will join Netflix as a senior adviser in the deal, alongside all of InterPositive’s staff. The company declined to comment on the terms of the acquisition. “I knew I had a responsibility to my peers and our industry, to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it. In creating InterPositive, I sought to do just that,” Affleck wrote in a Netflix post Thursday. “From the invention of the moving image to the transition to digital, from motion capture to virtual production, technology has evolved alongside the artists who use it. Our shared commitment to continuing this legacy makes joining together a natural next step, in addition to Netflix’s decades of experience applying and scaling technology responsibly.” InterPositive traces its origin story 2022, when Affleck decided that he wanted to explore the …

Scream filmmakers reveal original brutal plan for Scream 7 before production overhaul

Scream filmmakers reveal original brutal plan for Scream 7 before production overhaul

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter The new Scream sequel has been savaged by critics – but the originally planned version of the film would have been something entirely different. Scream 7, the latest entry in the popular horror franchise, is directed by original Scream writer Kevin Williamson, and sees the return of Neve Campbell in the role of Sidney Prescott. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who directed the fifth and sixth Scream films, were originally poised to direct the latest entry, before handing over the reins to Happy Death Day’s Christopher Landon, who subsequently departed the project amid star Melissa Barrera’s controversial firing. In the wake of the new film’s release, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett have revealed their original plans for the film. “We never read a draft of any version of Scream 7 that we were going to do because we had left to do Abigail …

Dozens of filmmakers slam Berlin Film Festival’s ‘silence’ on Gaza

Dozens of filmmakers slam Berlin Film Festival’s ‘silence’ on Gaza

Published by Sam Flores

More than 80 film industry figures including Oscar-winning actors Javier Bardem and Tilda Swinton issued a statement on Tuesday slamming the Berlin Film Festival’s “silence” on Gaza.  The signatories to the open letter said they were “appalled” by the festival’s “institutional silence” and “dismayed” at its “involvement in censoring artists who oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza”. Their statement came after the Berlinale’s jury president, German director Wim Wenders, answered a question on Gaza last week by saying: “We cannot really enter the field of politics.” Prominent directors who signed Tuesday’s letter, coordinated by the Film Workers for Palestine collective, include British filmmaker Mike Leigh and the American Adam McKay. The signatories include many artists who have presented work at the Berlin Film Festival. Swinton was herself last year awarded its prestigious Honorary Golden Bear award. They said they “fervently disagree” with Wenders’s comments, arguing that filmmaking and politics cannot be separated.  “Just as the festival has made clear statements in the past about atrocities carried out against people in Iran and Ukraine, we call on the …

The Real Secret to a Filmmaker’s Success

The Real Secret to a Filmmaker’s Success

Published by José Betancourt

Steven Spielberg likes to tell a story that captures the tension between art and commerce in 1970s Hollywood: In January 1973, the young filmmaker George Lucas screened a preview of American Graffiti, his movie about hot rods and ’60s kids. Among the hundreds of raucous fans filling San Francisco’s Northpoint Theatre was the Universal Pictures executive Ned Tanen, who was there to review changes requested by the studio. The audience loved what they saw, but Tanen hated it. “This film is a disaster,” he told Lucas in the theater. “I’m so disappointed in you, George.” Francis Ford Coppola, Lucas’s friend and the film’s producer, exploded at Tanen, telling him he should get down on his knees to thank Lucas. Dramatically reaching into his pocket for his checkbook, Coppola offered to buy out the movie rights then and there. The anecdote—which Paul Fischer recounts in his excellent new book, The Last Kings of Hollywood—encapsulates the complex relationship between Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg. There was Coppola’s over-the-top defense of his friend with a grandiloquent gesture (Tanen declined …

Sundance Filmmakers on How the Festival Changed Their Lives

Sundance Filmmakers on How the Festival Changed Their Lives

Published by Daniella Wilson

“There’s no place like it.” So said filmmaker Todd Field when asked to qualify the Sundance Film Festival’s impact on his life and career. He knows the fest’s landscape well after having debuted his In The Bedroom there in 2001. Field had that magical Sundance experience most aspiring auteurs only dream about: His feature directorial debut got accepted, screened to rave reviews, got acquired by a distributor out of the festival, earned a special jury prize for actors Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson, and went on to land five Oscar nominations including one for best picture. “I wouldn’t be the filmmaker I am today without Sundance, and there are many people who would say the same,” Field explained. He was right about that, too, as we found dozens of others who agree. As part of The Hollywood Reporter’s ultimate oral history to mark the festival’s final bow in Park City, Utah, before it moves to a new home in Boulder, Colorado, we asked auteurs to sound off on how Sundance changed them. Below is a …