LATEST POSTS
SPARKS ~ VOL 5
13 Apr 2016 - Tracey Friesen
A Mini-Blog on the Power of Media to Ignite Change INTERVIEW QUOTES Excerpts below are from the book Story Money Impact: Funding Media for Social Change, by Tracey Friesen (released March 2016). This series of nuggets and links is designed to inspire those driven to connect art & activism. STORY Question – In what ways are you…
TV Outside the Box
03 Mar 2016 - Neil Landau
Excerpt from an interview with TOM FONTANA: The Man in the HAZMAT Suit The original trailblazer, Tom Fontana has spent much of his extraordinary 30-year career writing about crime and punishment. Accordingly, I’d be committing a felony by not starting the story of the digital television revolution with him. Not only did he create, write, and produce Oz, the…
SPARKS ~ VOL 3 ~ LATE FEB 2016
29 Feb 2016 - Tracey Friesen
INTERVIEW QUOTES Excerpts below are from the book Story Money Impact: Funding Media for Social Change, by Tracey Friesen (released March 2016). This series of nuggets and links is designed to inspire those driven to connect art & activism. STORY Question: What story ingredients do you think directors should try to hold sacred? Michelle van Beusekom…
SPARKS ~ VOL 2 ~ FEB 2016
25 Feb 2016 - Tracey Friesen
INTERVIEW QUOTES Excerpts below are from the book Story Money Impact: Funding Media for Social Change, by Tracey Friesen. This series of nuggets and links is designed to inspire those driven to connect art & activism. STORY Question: Is there one story element that for you is the most important? Elise Pearlstein (Participant Media): When I’m…
Indie Film Academy™ #32: Horror Filmmaking Masterclass with Danny Draven
19 Feb 2016 - Christine Kanownik
Indie Film Academy™ interviews author Danny Draven about horror filmmaking. See the interview below. For more from Danny Draven, see his book The Filmmaker’s Book of the Dead!
SPARKS ~ the Power of Media to Ignite Change
02 Feb 2016 - Tracey Friesen
INTERVIEW QUOTES – excerpts below from the book Story Money Impact: Funding Media for Social Change, by Tracey Friesen STORY Question: What to you are essential story ingredients for documentaries? Mark Achbar (The Corporation): I ask questions. Is it new? Are you telling me something I don’t already know? I’m always grateful for that. Are you…
Born for VFX
01 Dec 2015 - Ian Failes
By Ian Failes, author of Masters of FX When director Paul Verhoeven looked to convince studio executives that a story about a war between mankind and vicious ‘Arachnid’ insects should be greenlit, he turned to Phil Tippett. The visual effects supervisor, known for his work on George Lucas’ Star Wars films and on…
Anne Zeiser on Star Wars Marketing for HuffPo
11 Nov 2015 - Christine Kanownik
Anne Zeiser was on The Huffington Post this week to discuss the runaway success of Transmedia Marketing of the Star Wars brand. They also quoted from Anne Zeiser’s seminal text, Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media. Many successful digital and viral entertainment marketing campaigns develop content that first, creates mystery around a passion…
Martin Scorsese in 10 Scenes: Taxi Driver
27 Oct 2015 - Christine Kanownik
Excerpt from Martin Scorsese in 10 Scenes by Tim Grierson Focal Press, 2016 TAXI DRIVER, 1976 V. THE SHOOT-OUT The shoot-out scene is memorable not only for its violence, but also for a sense of ambiguity in it. This ambiguity pervades the whole movie, largely due to Schrader’s refusal to shine any solid light on…
Danny Draven’s Top 5 Horror Trailers of All Time
21 Oct 2015 - Christine Kanownik
Just in time for Halloween, Danny Draven, author of The Filmmaker’s Book of the Dead, picked the creepiest Horror film trailers ever to grace the large or small screen. Whether you’ve seen these films or not, they are sure to delight and terrify. 5. THE ENTITY 4. ROSEMARY’S BABY 3. THE CHANGELING …
Shots and Composition: A Breakdown
15 Sep 2015 - David E. Elkins
A film is made up of a series of photographic images and each image in the film is commonly referred to as a frame. Each frame contains objects and shapes arranged in a composition. A sequence of frames together is commonly referred to as a shot. Visual productions, whether they are movies, television shows, music…
Sitcom Structure – Classic 2-act vs. Modern 3-act Structure
10 Sep 2015 - Martie Cook
THE IMPORTANCE OF STORY STRUCTURE Quite simply, structure is one of the most important elements of your script. It is the glue that holds your story together. Think of structure as how you choose to tell your story. What happens in each scene and what is the order in which it happens? Let me warn…
Tips for Screenwriters – Preparing for an Agent Meeting
08 Sep 2015 - Chad Gervich
Finding the right agent or manager is like dating. You’re hoping to find someone who’s not only a creative and (in a way) spiritual partner, but someone who shares a vision for your work and career. If you see yourself as a genre writer, writing sci-fi and slasher films, but a manager sees you as…
The Successful Showrunner Checklist
03 Sep 2015 - Neil Landau
*Remarks quoted are excerpts from the showrunner roundtable discussions sponsored by Variety and Hollywood Reporter (2013). According to my informal showrunner poll, the following are the most essential qualities and skills for the successful management of a scripted, episodic TV series: Staying on time and on budget: According to veteran showrunner, Jeff Melvoin (Early Edition,…
The Mathematics of Your Script
01 Sep 2015 - Mary Cybulski
Scene Count Format the cells in the scene count column (at the right of the “Total” block) for plain numbers. This option is found in the Format menu. Go to Cells, then chose the category Number. This will prevent the program from turning your numbers into dates, decimals, etc. Add a 1 in the scene…
Film Grain in Postproduction – Bringing Texture Back
27 Aug 2015 - Kurt Lancaster
A form of postproduction that can be applied to CinemaDNG files is film grain. For some, the idea of shooting in raw reflects in some ways an approach to filmmaking that harkens back to the days of working on film. What is lost in digital filmmaking involves the loss of texture. Film grain is one…
FREE eBook Excerpt – 7 Steps to Busting Writer’s Block
25 Aug 2015 - Jeff Lyons
An e-book excerpt from the soon to be published book Anatomy of a Premise Line: How to Master Premise and Story Development for Writing Success by Jeff Lyons. 7 Steps to Busting Writer’s Block There are scores of books in the marketplace telling you how to handle writer’s block, but none of them tell you…
BIG BRAINS – small budgets: Heather Donnell (Mom, Murder & Me)
20 Aug 2015 - Andy Siege (Series Editor)
Heather Donnell wrote, directed, and produced the murder mystery comedy, MOM, MURDER & ME (http://mommurderandme.com), which was an official selection of several film festivals, including the California Independent Film Festival, Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival and the Bahamas International Film Festival. At the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema in January 2015, the film was…
Cover Your Scene (and Your Butt)
18 Aug 2015 - Anthony Q Artis
The term “coverage” refers to the variety of shots you use to visually tell your story. Think of it not just as covering your scene, but covering your butt in editing. Apart from just breaking up the monotony of a single, long camera shot, getting more shots or additional coverage will provide plenty of opportunities…
Interview with Tim Bevan of Working Title Films: What a film producer does
13 Aug 2015 - Geoffrey Macnab and Sharon Swart
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Tim Bevan featured in FilmCraft:Producing. In commercial terms, Working Title Films, the production company that Tim Bevan helped found and co-chairs, is the most successful UK outfit of its generation. From Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) to Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), and…
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Featured Book
INTERVIEW QUOTES
Excerpts below are from the book Story Money Impact: Funding Media for Social Change, by Tracey Friesen. This series of nuggets and links is designed to inspire those driven to connect art & activism.
STORY Question: Is there one story element that for you is the most important?
Elise Pearlstein (Participant Media): When I’m evaluating material, I’m looking at who the characters are and what they’re engaged in. The most interesting characters tend to be in the moment of something happening to them, not past tense. Sometimes it can be really fascinating to explore recollections and memory, but there’s nothing better than being able to film somebody in the midst of action.
STORY Spark ~ Read Storytelling Matters (Participant Media)
MONEY Question: What first drew your attention to the value of documentary film?
Steve Cohen (Chicago Media Project/ Impact Partners): Impact Partners was my entree. I was always involved in grass-roots and advocacy organizations, and I certainly had the love for film, but I didn’t necessarily have an avenue that brought them both together. IP is a group of like-minded people who are spread out all over the country and have the desire to be involved in supporting impact strategies towards social change and have an orientation towards film and media as a tool for that.
MONEY Spark ~ Explore Chicago Media Project
IMPACT Question: What advice do you have for filmmakers in sourcing and approaching other partners?
Sheila Leddy (Fledgling Fund): If you are looking at nonprofit partners it’s really important to focus on the mutual benefit—not just how they can help you but how the film/campaign can help them, how it might reinforce their message, how it might help them broaden their own base, reach new audiences. It’s best not to lead with Can you send my film out to your list?, but to really think about creating authentic partnerships where you’re figuring out what the alignment is between the goals of these non-profit organizations and your own film and goals.
IMPACT Spark ~ Watch What is Film Impact? (Fledgling Fund)