Advice

Happy Wednesday Creative Army! Here's hoping you are having a creative and productive week so far. As you know, the Stage 32 community has recently been featured in news outlets like Entrepreneur, Forbes, and The Wrap (to name a few). Now, I am thrilled to present an amazing conversation I had with Dorie Clark on her Newsweek show, Better.  Dorie is one of the Top 50 Business Thinkers in the world, has graced the TEDx stage, and is a multi best selling author. In this live conversation, Do...

Networking is too often associated with adjectives such as uncomfortable, artificial or intimidating. However, there are concrete ways to change your mindset and navigate these situations effectively so it goes back to what it was originally intended for: creating and solidifying meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships, in your industry and beyond.     1) Think About Your Purpose As a film producer, I have always wanted to work with people from all over the world to make authe...

Happy Sunday Creative Army! The 2021 Emmy awards ceremony is today, so I have some piping hot Emmy's content for you today! Grab your coffee and let's dive in.  First up, Variety shared a conversation between 2021 Emmy-nominated actors Kaley Cuoco (The Flight Attendant) and Elizabeth Olson (WandaVision) as part of the series "Actors on Actors". They chat about navigating sitcoms, producing their own content, and more.  Next up, the Writers Guild Foundation shares a fascinating look inside...

Controlled chaos. Calculated risks. Strategic fun. The juggle, the marathon, the tornado - whatever circulatory movement you visualize the entertainment industry to be, it entices us in and sweeps us off our feet. Our eyes bulge wide to look at it, swirling, bustling, booming with activity. But when you’re in it? It just feels like “the groove.” Athletes reference this term as being in “the zone,” which is often defined as “a state of supreme focus [that] helps athletes perform at their peak pot...

Stage 32’s Film Finance Summit rocked. The panelists were “unfiltered and unhinged,” said one of the Stage 32 moderators, Amanda Toney. Another Stage 32 moderator, Harrison Glaser called them, “unvarnished,” and personally, I loved the speaker’s honesty and transparency. With three panels on producing, finance, and distribution, the Summit took a complex and open look at the state of the film and TV industry in 2021. I’ve remixed the wisdom from all three panels together in a 3-part blog seri...

COVID-19 hit, and people stayed home. Content was consumed at a fever pitch. Platform after platform, people were running out of things to watch! And it wasn’t just movies and TV. Gaming was more popular. Just ask anybody who tried to buy a Nintendo Switch or a PS5 at the height of the pandemic. People even read more of their email than usual. And another industry that benefited from this frenzy of consumption? Podcasting. One of the key pieces of advice you hear as a writer is “Make your own...

Happy Wednesday Creative Army! Since 2011, the Stage 32 team has been working tirelessly to help you stay connected, creative, motivated, and informed. As always, we are committed to bringing you networking opportunities, education and mentoring from top-level industry executives and professionals, and access to decision-makers around the globe all from the comfort of your own home. Recently our efforts have been noticed by the media in a big way. We are incredibly proud and honored that Sta...

In 2016, I began the crazy notion of directing and writing my feature films. In my first two years, I wrote a book that’s been published that I turned into a movie and I completed 6 feature films. All totally different genres. I met an incredible mentor who supports me in ways I never thought possible. I spoke on a directors panel at Cannes Film Festival and I have won various awards at various film festivals. The reason I’m telling you this is not to brag. It’s because I want to show that an...

I just finished writing my memoir, The Unfinished Heart. It started life two years ago as a film script called BlackBird, which is currently being made (production is set to start in May next year). The script took me 24 hours to write, and 12 to edit, it has 116 pages and around 17k words. There’s a blog post - Ireland-Based Screenwriter Options her First Script through Stage 32 - about how that all went and came to be. Since this success story, that I would not have had without Stage 32,...

Happy Sunday Creative Army! The 2021 Emmy awards are a week from today, so naturally, I thought it would be nice to share some Emmy inspired TV content today. But first, in case you missed it yesterday, we shared all comedy, drama, limited/anthology, and nonfiction 2021 Emmy-nominated scripts yesterday! Now, grab your coffee and let's dive into some Emmy's content.  First up, the folks over at IndieWire have put together a great video about HBO Max's Emmy-nominated HACKS. In particular, this...