The No Film School Podcast

In this episode of Indie Film Weekly, No Film School co-hosts Liz Nord, Jon Fusco,and Emily Buder discuss how even indie movies aren't safe from Russian interference, updates in the indie box office, the battle to save net neutrality, and a too-early goodbye to actor Nelsan Ellis. We also hear from director David Lowery about the challenges of making his summer indie hit ‘A Ghost Story.’ Charles Haine joins us for gear news, including RED’s incessant product teases and a TV that might replace movie screens for good. Charles also answers an Ask No Film School question about which affordable monitors to buy. As always, we also bring you the latest gear news, upcoming grant and festival deadlines, new indie film releases, weekly words of industry wisdom, and other notable things you might have missed while you were busy making films. You can see all the links from this show in this week’s podcast post at nofilmschool.com.

No Film School's Emily Buder sits down with prolific indie filmmaker Nathan Silver and the stars of his latest movie, Thirst Street, Lindsay Burdge and Damien Bonnard.  Silver has made a movie every year for the past 8 years. Last year, he had the film Actor Martinez at Tribeca. Needless to say, Silver is a staple in the New York indie film scene. In their conversation, they discuss how Silver manages to get his micro-budget projects off the ground, some tips for shooting with limited resources, Thirst Street's distinctive '70s psychodrama aesthetic, and the extreme emotional risks some of the main actors had to take for their roles.

In this episode of Indie Film Weekly, Emily Buder, Jon Fusco and Charles Haine discuss Hollywood studios' beef with Rotten Tomatoes and what the highest-grossing films of the year so far have to do with it all. They also talk about Canon's latest misfire with the 6D Mark II, Christopher Nolan's 70mm Dunkirk release, and Emily's favorite movie of the year thus far: David Lowery's A Ghost Story.  

When Liz Nord spoke with first time Palestinian filmmaker Maysaloun Hamoud back at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, her narrative feature In Between (or Bar Bahar in Arabic) was just about to premiere. As with any new director, she had no idea what the response would be or what the coming year would bring. But her film’s path has been particularly unpredictable, leading to three awards in San Sebastian, Hamoud being hand-chosen by Isabelle Huppert to receive the Young Talents Award at Cannes, and being issued the first religious Fatwa in Palestinian history. In their fascinating conversation, Hamoud shares her methods for trying to make audiences see themselves in her characters, working with non-actors, and what it was like to make the first film of its kind in her community.

In this episode of Indie Film Weekly, No Film School co-hosts Liz Nord, Jon Fusco, Charles Haine and Emily Buder discuss the real problem with Lucasfilm's firing of Lord & Miller, and how to protect yourself from a cyberattack. We also reveal why a promising streaming subscription was killed before it even had a chance to live, and why you might never see Albert Maysles’ final film. In Ask No Film School, we outline the best color grading software for Premiere Pro. As always, we also bring you the latest gear news, upcoming grant and festival deadlines, this week’s indie film releases, and other notable things you might have missed while you were busy making films. You can see all the links from this show in this week’s podcast post at nofilmschool.com

Ashley McKenzie is the type of director that does it all. The Canadian multi-hyphenate runs her own production company, writes her own scripts, and directs all of the company's films. When she’s on set, however, she gives up almost all notions of planning and control to make her shots as organic and in the moment as possible. For her debut feature, Werewolf, which has won awards at almost every regional Canadian festival she’s brought it to, this included throwing the actors into real-life situations, adding events into scenes without telling them, keeping the camera rolling after the scene had cut, and even casting non-actors as key characters at locations on the fly. The film itself follows a pair of outcast methadone users who push a rusty lawnmower door-to-door to cut grass for money to feed their addiction. No Film School’s Jon Fusco sat down with McKenzie and her two lead actors Andrew Gillis and Breagh MacNeil to discuss their intensely real collaboration.

In this episode of Indie Film Weekly, No Film School co-hosts Liz Nord, Jon Fusco, and Charles Haine weigh the benefits of film school against its rising cost, and debates the merits of renting out your own gear. We share some fun facts about the crossover between TV directors and the year's biggest films, say a (possibly temporary) farewell to one of the world's greatest actors, and discuss whether or not Apple is finally a serious contender in the original content game with its latest hires. What’s more, we discuss the Canon and Sony summer gear rumors, and hear from ‘Wonder Woman’ DP Matt Jensen about the differences between shooting for action and drama. As always, we bring you the latest gear news, upcoming grant and festival deadlines, this week’s indie film releases, and other notable things you might have missed while you were busy making films. You can see all the links from this show in this week’s podcast post at nofilmschool.com.

We saw a lot of movies in the Midnight Section at Sundance this year. There were a lot of weird movies. 'Bitch,' however, is a batshit insane movie. In terms of understanding what we’re dealing with here, the premise really only gets you half the way there: an underappreciated mother finds out her jerk-off husband is cheating on her and as a result, well, she turns into a dog. The real insanity, however, comes across in a near constant destruction of genre conventions. Is it a horror? Is it a comedy? Is it a relationship drama? At times it’s all of these things all together, at times it is very clearly just one. Marianna Palka wrote the script in just two days, which aside from being a remarkable achievement, is a testament to the free-wheeling nature of the film itself. She also directs and stars in the film. At Sundance, NFS Producer Jon Fusco was joined by Emily Buder, Palka, and actor/musician Zack Clark to discuss Palka’s unrivaled writing technique and the benefits of being a multi-hyphenate. If you're in New York you can check out Bitch at BAM CinemaFest this week.

In this episode of Indie Film Weekly, No Film School co-hosts Liz Nord, Jon Fusco, and Emily Buder discuss the new coalition that has longtime rivals HBO and Netflix joining forces, why producers are losing money, and a new digital filmmaking initiative in LA. Charles Haine joins us for gear news and answers an Ask No Film School question about how to buy good lenses on a budget. In Weekly Words of Wisdom, we share tips from Steven Spielberg, Game of Thrones costume designer Michele Clapton, and David Mamet himself on the three best ways to learn filmmaking. As always, we also bring you the latest gear news, upcoming grant and festival deadlines, this week’s indie film releases, and other notable things you might have missed while you were busy making films. You can see all the links from this show in this week’s podcast post at nofilmschool.com

The Emmy award-winning co-directors of Berlinale premiere ‘For Ahkeem', Jeremy S. Levine and Landon Van Soest, and one of the film’s producers, Iyabo Boyd, join No Film School’s Liz Nord for a frank and fascinating discussion about how to overcome the challenges inherent in telling the story of someone whose background is entirely different from your own. In this case, the film’s co-directors are two, middle-class white men from New York City, and their subject is a charismatic, 17-year-old African-American girl named Daje Shelton from outside of Ferguson, Missouri, where fellow black teenager Michael Brown had been famously shot and killed by police. In order to authentically portray this story as outsiders, Levine and Van Soest made Shelton a partner in the filmmaking process, and diversified the larger crew of people working on their film, including Boyd, their female, African-American producer.