Advice

Good morning Stage 32 Crew! I hope you had a productive weekend and were able to tackle some of your creative goals. We are cruising through February and spring is just around the corner. I know for a lot of us (myself included) now is the time where distractions creep in and start to derail the resolutions we made for the new year. Are you still doing the work? Remember that success in this highly competitive business is a combination of talent and work ethic.   LA-based Stage 32 members...

Happy Sunday Creative Army! With the Oscars behind us and inspiration at an all-time high, it is time to get back to work and get creative. I've got my coffee and am ready to bring you some piping-hot content. This week, we are going to dive into some real-talk truths and advice about building an amazing career in entertainment for the long-term. Let's go.  First up, Vanity Fair interviews an amazing line up of A-list, Emmy-nominated actors about how to "make it" in Hollywood. Hear from Edie...

We all need a little help, every now and then. One of the greatest things about being a writer is that there are so many tools out there designed to help us. The problem is, people don’t know they exist. When you’re a writer, you have to be a Jack (or Jill) of many trades and learn not just about writing, but about editing, and the business itself. It’s all part of honing our craft. And while, at times, the task may seem daunting, I’ve discovered a lot of online resources that I’ve found to...

Many people, even in the film business, don’t know the difference between a development producer and line producer. In this article, we are going to dive into different types of producers in film production such as development producer, line producer, executive producer, assistant producer, and co-producer. Then we will talk about the role of creativity in film and how it is practiced. Development Producer and Executive Producer in Film Production A Development producer is responsible for br...

There is a particular thrill when your screenwriting career is moving. When you win a contest, option a feature, connect with great talent, or make a new collaborative connection there’s a jolt of creative adrenaline. Last summer, I optioned a feature screenplay. I made a short with an incredible director and cast. I attached a top-level director to one of my TV shows in development who, as a bonus, is absolutely the kind of person it has been incredible to work with. I saw positive interest...

Last year I wrote the blog post How I Shot a No-Budget Ghost Comedy Feature in One Week. The TL;DR of it is I’d been dying to make a movie, I’d been writing a lot and waiting on news, got sick of waiting, so I wrote a script, assembled a team, rented a house, fed everyone, and then shot the thing with very little sleep. I also amassed a fair amount of credit card debt. Why? Because this is what I love and I wanted to do it. I’d tried crowdfunding campaigns in the past, but I was never successf...

Happy Post-Oscar Monday Stage 32 Crew! There were a lot of great moments during the ceremony and some very deserving winners. If you participated in our annual Oscar picks contest, I hope you did well. I wanted to kick off this week with a great story I have been tracking for a while. It reminds us that every professional relationship starts with a pitch. For those who doubt the power of the pitch, take note of this story. It might just change your mind. It comes from Stage 32 member Emily...

Happy Oscar Sunday Creative Army! Get your coffee ready, because we are about to dive into some white-hot content that will amp you up before the big show tonight. As you have likely seen, The Hollywood Reporter hosts some amazing filmmaker roundtables. This week, our first piece of content is a Writer's Roundtable featuring 2020 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar-nominees Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) and Anthony McCarten (The Two Popes). Taika and Anthony are joined by fellow screenwriters Lorene...

The first great movie I ever saw was Dead Poets Society at around the age of eight, two years before I decided I wanted to make movies. There was just something about it that raised the bar compared to other movies. Its excellence involved vocabulary and concepts that I wasn’t familiar with at the time—cinematography, casting, score. But when I found out what an Oscar was, I knew that Dead Poets Society deserved one. When I started to write screenplays two years later, I knew that people would...

We signed up to work in a pretty crazy industry. As rewarding as being an artist is, it can also be quite stressful. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the workload or become disheartened and depressed by things not working out the way we planned. An important part of being an artist is the ability to be vulnerable, yet at the same time, be thick-skinned and able to take rejection, criticism, and failure. However, if we are not in a good headspace this can be quite difficult. That’s why it is...