Lance Hammer and Ballast

Apple has a great article on Lance Hammer. Hammer wrote, directed, and edited the film festival favorite Ballast, and then gave up a distribution deal with IFC, a sure fire way to get his film seen by a LOT of people, and opted to self distribute, because he felt as though IFC took away too much creative control from the distribution process (I think we saw this first hand in their recutting of the awesome Hannah Takes The Stairs trailer that had been cut by Joe Swanberg, when they replaced it with a much more traditional, and boring, trailer). 

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure IFC, after so many years of experience, has a pretty solid way of distributing stuff. On the other hand, though, I can't completely blame Hammer for wanting a little bit more control over the project that he has put so much blood, sweat, and tears into.

FCP and The Tracey Fragments

There's an interesting article on Apple's FCP site about the use of Final Cut Pro to create the multi-frame sequences in The Tracey Fragments, a new film starring Ellen Page (ahhh... Ellen Page...). To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here's the trailer, which uses the same effect -