Hello Creative Army! For 15 years, everything we’ve built at Stage 32 has come back to one mission: Connect. Learn. Develop. Rise. When I launched Stage 32, I wanted to level the playing field for creatives and professionals around the world. Geography, access, representation, and who you happened to know had dictated opportunity in this business for far too long. Today, our community is more than 1.5 million members strong, and over the years we’ve helped launch thousands of careers and...

All for the love of the craft… Filmmaking is no easy feat. Some may say it’s an act of endurance: from screenwriting to directing actors, managing the whole production, post-production edits, and navigating distribution and marketing; it's quite an incredible process to be a part of. However, in developing media ecosystems like Botswana, the creative energy usually collides with institutional bottlenecks. This means that independent filmmakers like myself often deal with situations such as fra...

Hey, Y’all! The Bash is BACK, and this year, it lands on Halloween weekend. Every year during the Austin Film Festival, the Stage 32 community takes over a rooftop in downtown Austin for one night of celebrating, connecting, and finally meeting the people we’ve been talking to online all year. This is our 13th year doing it, and it remains one of my favorite nights on the entire Stage 32 calendar. You’re invited. Stage 32’s 13th Annual Austin Film Festival Rooftop BashFriday, October 30t...

Happy Sunday, Creative Army! Let’s kick things off with a huge shoutout to everyone who has already jumped into this month’s Introduce Yourself Weekend. Thousands of creatives from around the world are connecting, sharing their stories, and building relationships that can lead to collaborations, opportunities, and lifelong friendships. If you haven’t made your introduction yet, you still have time. Be bold. Introduce yourself. Your next great opportunity could be just one connection away. Now,...

It is thrilling after all your work on a film, to have the exhilarating experience of a dynamic and successful Q&A at a film festival with a packed audience. Conversely, most of us have experienced the shock of seeing a Q&A where no questions were asked. Worse is having your short-screened with others and ending up the only one not having a question asked after hearing, “Well, guys, that’s all we have time for as the next film is coming in.” You Can Pack Those Screenings You can have jammed-p...

Happy Friday, Creative Community! The 33rd Austin Film Festival & Writers Conference kicks off in less than two weeks, and if you’re going, I want you walking into downtown Austin with comfortable shoes, confidence, and a plan. AFF is one of my favorite weeks of the year. It’s also one of the most overwhelming. Eight days of film screenings. More than 175 panels, roundtables, and meet and greets. Parties every night, pitch competitions, and hallways full of working screenwriters, showrunners...

As filmmakers, we can sometimes forget what it’s like to be the audience. We focus so much on how the film looks, the color, the lighting, the shot composition, the performance, the sound, but we forget how many people first interact with our film. We forget about the poster. It becomes an afterthought, kit bashed together around an image we grabbed from the footage that doesn’t quite work, but we force it to. The movie poster often sets the first impression the potential audience makes of you...

Hey everyone, Sam here. I’ve been watching this wave build from my seat at Stage 32, where I work every day with writers and filmmakers trying to find their footing in a changing industry. What’s happening right now isn’t just a trend. It’s a shift in how movies get made, and who gets to make them. For years, Hollywood has worried about streaming killing cinema, IP fatigue, and the death of the mid-budget movie. Meanwhile, the people making the most interesting work are rewriting the rules i...

I'm a Venezuelan writer who grew up devouring stories and learning from the great masters of the genre. The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Matrix, and other works taught me that suspense and fantasy can coexist with a strong sense of poetic justice. These stories didn't just entertain me; they showed me how to build worlds, how to keep characters human in the midst of the epic, and how to close a story with the emotion audiences deserve. When I started writing my own trilogy, I discov...

Ever dreamt of seeing your comedy feature come to life on the big screen or stream on flat-screens in living rooms across the country? This is your chance to turn that dream into reality! We're proud to announce the 11th Annual Comedy Feature Screenwriting Contest to help discover the next great comedy script! Our Grand Prize Winner will win a Career Accelerator prize package that includes script & career development, writer branding and an education package and will be first in line for VIP M...