Advice

5 Ways You’re Using Twitter Incorrectly to Promote Your Film’s Crowdfunding Campaign Avoid these costly mistakes and get those cameras rolling With the advent of new technology, including the capability to shoot and edit a movie on your smartphone, the barrier of entry for making a film has never been lower. And, with the advent of various crowdfunding platforms, raising funds for a film has, seemingly, never been easier. That’s the good news. However, a lower barrier of entry and technolo...

Let me take you back to the summer of '07, where a father takes his little 12-year old son with him to his work. They had never really talked about his fathers’ work. Of course, the boy kind of knew what his father did, but he was never this close. The father explained to him how he was working on this particular project and that maybe the boy would like to see how everything worked. The big day, as his father called it, was in Amsterdam. Dad asked the little boy to prepare a movie scene wit...

Today is August 5, 2014. My name is David Rountree and I am ranked 5th on the Top 10 Up-and-Coming Directors under 40 on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).    With two films of completely different genres receiving theatrical releases this year, and winning the Best Film and Best Director award at the 2014 Independent Film and Television Festival, I was recently interviewed about how I became an overnight success as a writer/producer/director. The irony is that my journey in achieving moder...

When I was asked to write a blog for Stage 32 I was extremely honored, but worried that I, as a writer/actor, would have NOTHING to say. Nothing that hasn’t been said before. Nothing unique, fresh or original, but I remembered that so much of what I teach to actors is: WALK THROUGH THE DOOR! My entire career has been based on the “YES” principle. Yes, I’ll take that role, yes, I’ll commit to the path, yes, I’ll write the blog. Yes, Yes, YES. Actress Ruth Gordon got booted out of The Acad...

INT. ANDY’S HOUSE – MORNING. CAPTION: Saturday 19th April 7:00am. I picked up the final item - the camera bag and drove down to the cricket club field. The sky was part cloudy. It looked like it might be a good day. Once at the pavilion I unpacked the essentials. The batteries in the biscuit tin were replaced with biscuits. By 8:30am all the crew were there and things were looking busy. The first scene’s details were written onto the clapperboard. The actors appeared around 9:00a...

FADE IN: INT. ANDY’S HOUSE – MORNING. CAPTION: Saturday 19th April 6:30am. It’s all a bit messy… I’ve never had quite so much stuff in such an assortment of bags as when Saturday the 19th of April 2014 rolled around. The GoPro, Nikon D610 and lenses were in there somewhere, along with their various memory cards.  I was putting spare batteries into a biscuit tin when I realized… things were getting out of hand. All this because I was about to cut my teeth directing a short fil...

1st AD: Theory, Thought and Practice: the position, power, responsibility, trials, tribulations, and troubles of being a 1st Assistant Director (1st AD). The 1st Assistant Director position is widely regarded as the most difficult and least enviable on set. It is one fraught with compromises and negotiations; where politics and artistic visions collide with practical realities and necessities. What exactly does that mean and why is it that so few people seem to know how to do the job compete...

Hello Stage 32ers!   We have now posted the video of On Stage With RB-May 2014, hosted by our Founder & CEO, Richard "RB" Botto.   We opened 1,000 spots for this exclusive Stage 32 Next Level Webinar and we were humbled when all 1,000 spots were filled! We had Stage 32 members from 82 countries in attendance. A huge thanks to all who showed up and asked such great questions.   All in all, RB spoke for 2-1/2 hours including a 20 minute tutorial on how to best utilize the Stage 3...

I’ve just watched the director’s cut of Amadeus. I must have watched it close to sixty times over the years. To me, if there is such thing as perfection in films, then Amadeus is it. I must admit to have had a special connection to Mozart’s music since I was very young. My father belonged to the generation of people who listened to the radio well after traditional evening family conversations were replaced by the fascination with TV. He played radio before going to work in the morning so as...

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours. -Richard Bach Excuses. Sometimes the most creative thing we do as creatives is make creative excuses for why we can’t be creative (trust me, it makes sense.) Over our last few Happy Writers / Stage 32 Online Pitchfests, we’ve had some amazing success stories. Today I’d like to highlight one of them courtesy of a creative who never argued for his limitations and only made excuses to keep on creating and believing in his skill...