Filmmaking

  The very best way to learn the art of directing is from those who have learned from the very best. David Rountree, an award-winning feature film director (108 Stitches, CUT!) stopped by the Stage 32 offices to share some sound advice.   David Rountree is the President of Psyco Rock Productions and is a director, producer, screenwriter, and actor based in Los Angeles. He is listed in Hollywood Reporter and IMDb as a Top 10 Up-and-Coming Hollywood Director Under 40.   The advice he stoppe...

I’m overwhelmed by the response of my first blog I wrote and all the filmmakers out there who reached out to me. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, please visit the following link: Follow Your Heart. I want to start where my last blog ended and share with you my personal experiences working on my first professional attempt at making a short film back in 2012. I struggled (like most filmmakers) through my earlier film projects. For me it was a lack of self-confidence, which saw me...

Hey, guys.  Hope you're having a terrific Sunday and cultivating the seed of fantastic and meaningful relationships during Introduce Yourself Weekend. Today, I have 2 videos designed to educate, motivate and inspire. First up, from the Royal Ocean Film society, one fantastic video essay:  Lessons for the No-Budget Filmmaker.  We hear many excuses around these parts regarding the reasons not to pick up a camera and start shooting.  This video will make those excuses moot. Next, it's inargua...

Last week I published a post that talked about the launch of a subscription based service for short form video. That same week, my writing partner sent me a link to an article about an app called BlackPills, another platform for short form content. He did this because we're in the midst of our creating a 10-episode web series called OutSkirts and we're looking for different ways to garner attention. Yes, we'll do the festival circuit. Yes, we'll chase producers down at Starbucks. (No, we won't...

If you’ve shot a film and either edited it yourself or watched an editor do it, than you know that editing different shots together can create a whole new meaning not already present in the original shots. It’s called the Kuleshov Effect, and when it was birthed in the early 1920’s by soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, it changed the way filmmakers told their story. According to independent filmmaker Mark Duggan, actors can learn from this historic, cinematic effect, and apply it to their own acti...

  The Old West is generally considered the territories west of the Mississippi River between the years 1850 and 1900. The West, however, has also been defined more broadly to include the earlier period of the Spanish colonies of California and New Mexico (1800-1849) and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, as well as western Canadian history of the 1800s. So, let’s accept that the American Old West covers the westward pioneer movement and development across the North American continent during th...

One of the questions that comes up time and time again for screenwriters is – Do you have to live in LA to have a career? Nope. Obviously, it makes life a lot easier if you live in a creative hub like LA or London or New York, but the world’s a big place and there are artists EVERYWHERE. You can live where you like, but the real truth of the matter is that at some point in your career (if you want a career rather than a hobby), you will need to network with the kind of people who can actu...

Family feuds, bad blood, near bankruptcy, and stories that would shake the #metoo movement today, all aided in what author Leonard Maltin calls the Death of 20th Century Fox. His words come after the July 27th sale of Fox to Disney. Maltin recollects the massive movies made on today's Century City lot with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Movie attendance was at an all time high after the Second World War, but sank incredibly after the introduction of television. But is the acquisiti...

Happy Sunday, everyone.  Let's get to the action, shall we? We start this edition of Coffee & Content with a video from our friends at StudioBinder and Dan Harmon. Dan has been quite prolific over the last decade plus and here he explains his 8 proven steps to better stories. Next up, a look at cuts and transitions with examples from some iconic, classic, and recent films designed to help your editing skills. As always, I ask that you share this content with those you believe would benefit...

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” This is what indie filmmaker and actress Sonja O'Hara kept in the back of her mind as she navigated the choppy waters of getting repped. After meaningful encounters and interest in her original series at ITVFest in Vermont put her on top of the world, she floated on cloud nine, quite certain that THIS would be her moment. It wasn’t. Despite encouragement from HBO’s VP of Talent Development Kelly Edwards, Sonja found herself riding...