A few weeks ago, I headed over to a hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to sit down with directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundebrg (who prefers to be called Annie). No doubt the setting was picked to appease the eponymous subject of their new documentary, Joan Rivers — A Piece of Work, who actually lives a few blocks from where we met. The day started with a roundtable with Ms. Rivers, who unleashed her token scathing wit. Bits of that session, and the one you are about to hear, were for a piece I wrote for Heeb Magazine. The real story of any documentary, however, comes not from the subject but from the filmmakers themselves, which is why I was delighted to talk to Ricki and Annie about their latest project.

The film is a solid study of an extraordinary woman, and it avoids the pitfalls an trappings many similar documentaries fall victim too. There are limited talking heads and archival footage is used in a very organic manner; it is neither reality show nor biography, but something more. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the Ms. Stern and Ms. Sunberg’s previous works deal in much weightier material, such as Darfur. As they explain, they are simply after a good story and Joan provided one for them. They simply wanted to capture something compelling. Listen in for some fascinating insight from these excellent filmmakers.

 
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Certainly new media has changed the way we approach filmmaking, but how does that mentality actually manifest itself? To find out, I talked to Todd Tue of Milk Products Media this week. Where once makers would upload their work to the web in hopes of gaining exposure to head down a traditional distribution path, Todd is now finding that the internet may be the best outlet for his work, period.

The bulk of our conversation is about Milk Products’ latest documentary endeavor, a feature film about a family owned and operated dairy farm in Ohio. You can view the short documentary on Vimeo right now, then head on over to their Kickstarter page to learn more about the feature they plan to make. As Todd tells me in our interview, the fact that over 10,000 people have already viewed a short piece he made is pretty satisfying, but he hopes they will get to make the full length story. Listen in as we talk about making films on the cheap, bringing some creativity to paying gigs, and why it is such a great time to be making media.

 
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Photo Credit: Mary-Claire Runchey on flickr

This week we’re delving back into the world of tech for a nice chat with Andrew Kippen, VP of Marketing for Boxee. For those who are unaware of Boxee, it is a free piece of software that allows you to experience any kind of digital content, be it local or streaming, from the comfort of your couch. It is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and AppleTV, and they will soon be releasing the Boxee Box in conjunction with D-Link. If it is still unclear what Boxee is, first go to boxee.tv and click around, maybe install the app. Then listen to the podcast to hear why this scrappy little company is on the front lines of a major media distribution revolution.

This summer, Boxee plans to roll out a payments system. Imagine, if you will, paying only for the channels you actually watch instead of dishing out around $70 per month for hundreds of channels you don’t watch. Better still, given the openness of the web and Boxee, almost any content maker can get in on the fun. As has become painfully honest to networks and studios over the years, you know longer need to be a major corporation to create content that people want. With the advent of digital workflows, content creation is already democratized. Boxee is working to even the playing field for content distribution.

I’ve said too much already. Click and listen, and tell us your thoughts on Boxee, streaming video, and the media revolution in the comments.

 
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If you travel in meme circles, then you’ve probably heard of Parry Gripp. If not, then let me fill you in. Gripp is a singer and songwriter who, before 2008 at least, is known for starting the band Nerf Herder, whose music was featured as the theme song for Joss Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. On January 1, 2008, he launched a website, Parry Gripp Song of the Week, whose purpose is self explanatory. Since then, he has kept true to his promise, uploading at least one song every week. He has also written jingles that go along with some of the most popular Youtube videos, which in turn become even more popular Youtube videos. As such he has become something of a web phenom, most recently with his iPad/Nachos song and video featured below. I recently had a chat with Parry about his career, the oddities of internet-creation, and some of the darker legal corridors that come with trying to have a good time online. It’s worth a listen and features some of his silliest work.

 
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Read on…

The sweet irony of Paul Osborne’s documentary, Official Rejection, a backstage tell-all of American film festival culture, is that the film has gone on to be something of a fest favorite around the country. I first reviewed the film at last year’s Deadcenter Film Festival in Oklahoma City, where Paul and I agreed we would find time for an interview. Finally, we have come together to chat about his film, which is still running the festival circuit, and movies in general. As Sundance 2010 begins, we thought it would be a perfect time to discuss what festivals represent in the dreams of filmmakers and what they really are. Believe it or not, a lot has changed since Paul made the film, so listen in as he explains where we stand today. Other points of interest: my own bitching about Blu-Ray, the films Paul is most excited to see, and the two of us compare war stories on both sides of the critic-filmmaker lines.

 
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Ed. Note: My microphone suffered some fits of serious crackling for this one. I’ve been trying to scrub it out but I’m finding it impossible. I’ll fix the problem by the next Candlercast. Sorry for the ear-strain.

Continuing our discussion of the last decade, Sunrise and I move on to the best writers ofthe decade. To reiterate, instead of making a definitive list, we have opted to simply name a person we think is deserving, and discuss their competition and why they came out on top.

The term “best of the decade” should be defined. We are not just looking for someone whose creative output was particularly impressive over the last 10 years. Instead, in all the categories we discuss we are looking for someone who is the best for the decade, someone who was as important to the aughts as the aughts were to him/her.

The best way to explain is to tell you who our Best Writers of the Decade are (sorry, Sunrise and I couldn’t agree so there are two), since I absolutely despise one of the writers we chose. But it’s not about me, it’s about all of us.

 
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O’ Brother Where Art Thou, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, kicked the decade off with cinema’s first feature digital intermediate.

Recently, frequent candler blog collaborator Sunrise Tippeconnie and I sat down to record a podcast titled “Bests of the Decade”. Instead of making a list of the best films of the decade, we thought it would be interesting to decipher who and what were the most notable people and events in cinema of the last ten years. We would name a best writer, best actor and actress, and best director while discussing their competition as a means of justifying our picks. The plan was to get all of this recorded in one ninety minute show, but instead we ended up blabbing for over 3 hours. As a courtesy, I have gone to the trouble of cutting our conversation up into segments, the first of which covers the most notable developments in cinema during the 2000s. We also go over our methodology and reasoning for composing a list in this manner.

It was one hell of a decade for filmmaking. We saw the proliferation of high definition and the legitimization of video as a screening format. The digital intermediate was introduced, the comic book film re-exploded in Hollywood, the movement once called Mumblecore found a way to speak to an entirely new generation of art-house audiences and filmmakers the world over struggled to translate the nuance of a post-9/11 reality. When you lay out all of the advances and struggles of the last ten years, you might be amazed at how much has actually happened and changed while we were all busy at work. Sunrise and I discuss just a few of these changes in Part I of the Bests of the Decade Candlercast. Since we know we missed a few, we’d love it if you left some more in the comments.

 
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You may not have heard about AnyClip yet, but you should definitely prick up your ears and listen to this interview with their VP of Product, Nate Westheimer. This tenacious tech startup’s plans for video search have been causing a lot of buzz in the tech community ever since they won the Audience Choice Award at TechCrunch50 (think American Idol for tech companies). The short of their idea: cataloguing every clip ever. Their flagship site, anyclip.com, is currently in private beta, but if you land an invite it is definitely a lot of fun to poke around. You can search through moments in their growing collection of films using simple terminology, just like any other search engine. Nate describes it better in our conversation (and on the anyclip blog), so you really ought to download the audio below.

 
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