Latest Blogs

Nobody tells you the honest version of this when you're starting. You hear about residuals and royalties the way you hear about compound interest, abstractly, admiringly, as something that happens to other people. And then one day, you negotiate your first reuse clause and the abstraction collapses into something real and irritating and completely learnable. The irritating part is this: the information is buried under a thick layer of people who'd rather sell you a framework than explain...

Happy Sunday, Creative Army! I hope your weekend has been a creative one so far. Whether you have been writing, filming, editing, or sketching out the next spark of an idea, I have something today that will give you a boost. So grab your coffee, and let’s dive in. This week's featured video comes from The Movie Rabbit Hole- NOLAN'S CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI. The truth, as the video lays out, is that Nolan uses plenty of visual effects. He just uses them invisibly. Rather than leanin...

If you had told me a while ago that I'd be where I am today, I would've said you were wrong. But "wrong" and "right" are subjective, aren't they? They depend on your goals, ideas, and beliefs. Today, I want to share my filmmaking journey with you, along with some tips that might help you if you're dreaming of directing your own short film. My Unexpected Path to Directing I pioneered female entrepreneurship in Portugal and won the most significant awards a businesswoman could win worldwid...

Well, Stage 32 Community, here we are. The finale of our third annual July Filmmakers Club. Before we talk about what comes next, I want you to do something for me. Stop and look back at the last five weeks. Really look. Because if you showed up this month, you did something a lot of people only ever talk about doing. You set goals out loud. You took on challenges. You put your work and your voice in front of a global community of your peers. You reached out and learned from working industry p...

Something remarkable happened at the box office this year, and if you're a filmmaker, it might be the most important lesson of 2026. Two films. Together, they've earned more than $750 million. Neither was built the way Hollywood traditionally builds a hit. They weren't sold on a star's name or a studio's marketing budget. They were built on something far more powerful, and far more available to you than you might think. They were built on an audience that came first. The Thing These Two Fi...

As I mentioned in my previous two blogs, the first part of this journey covered the grueling pre-production of our first no-budget feature film, and the second dove into the absolute fantastic and fun chaos of production. This chapter deals with the madness, the triumphs, and the unexpected twists of the post-production grind. If you missed the first two parts of our journey, you can catch up here: Part 1: The Pure Vortex Journey Begins Part 2: The Pure Vortex Production Chaos Taming...

Writers spend years imagining what success will feel like. We picture the phone call. The option agreement. The producer who falls in love with our script. The first real step forward. We imagine a moment where everything suddenly makes sense. Recently, I asked members of the Stage 32 Writers' Room to share something unexpected they learned once their projects started gaining traction. Their answers revealed something fascinating. Almost nobody talked about success the way they imagined it bef...

My co-founder (in Venture Studio, Vortex), Adam Morley, recently penned a peer-reviewed paper called Beyond Streaming: The New Geography of Audience Value. It's a data-led analysis that highlights the historical to present-day changes in audience behaviours, in how and where they're consuming their entertainment. As much as this statement could feel harsh to a creative ear, "content consumption," I can hear the wails and see the hands to foreheads as I'm writing. It's never been more important...

Happy Sunday, Creative Army! I hope your weekend has been a creative one so far. Whether you have been writing, filming, editing, or sketching out the next spark of an idea, I have something today that will give you a boost. So grab your coffee, and let’s dive in. This week's featured video comes from FilmStack- When an Actor Saved His Career More Than Once. Ben Affleck’s career is one of Hollywood’s most fascinating examples of reinvention. After co-writing Good Will Hunting with Matt Dam...

So you want to create your own content for social media, what do you need? Your phone. The end. Now that’s probably the shortest blog ever, so I’ll elaborate. Your smartphone is an incredibly powerful tool, and if you have nothing else in your arsenal, your phone can do just about anything. There are three important aspects needed to create good content. You need to be clearly seen, clearly heard, and clearly understood. 1- Be Clearly Seen (Video, Lighting) If you’re an actor, you’ve...