What's pre-production and why should I care about it?
When do I have to worry about performance rights and permissions?
Videography FAQ
Contracts are a very serious aspect of making movies.
Many screenplay contests are available to the aspiring screenwriter.
After the blockbuster era in animation, what lies ahead for independent studios?
I’m a big believer in getting the right tools for the right job, but sometimes you just can’t afford the right tools.
Ideas are the bricks, mortar and timber of a screenplay.
On the micro-budget level, where the funding for the DV short may be in the tens of dollars, there is the mythology that you should edit your own movie.
JDAF Nagoya is a competition for 3D student films that has been run every two years since 1999 and is supported by The Nagoya Chamber of Commerce, The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, The NHK Japan Broadcasting Group, the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper and the AnimeExpo among others.
Bravo’s latest series about the world of burlesque receives the reality show treatment. Like the art form itself, a slow striptease with the emphasis on tease rather than strip, the show is designed to titillate viewers without revealing too much.
Blake Snyder joined the family business at age 8 working as a voice talent for his father, Emmy-award winning TV producer, Ken Snyder (Roger Ramjet, Big Blue Marble).
I read the coolest story about how some foreign countries are producing "original" TV shows using scripts from old American TV shows. As a writer, you would think I would be insulted by this or at least upset that there was that much less work, but I really wasn't getting much writing work in Peru (If they find humor in a Spanish speaking Al Bundy, that's fine with me. I would love to see the Algerian Fred Sanford, or the Columbian Potsie).
TV Worldwide, a web-based global TV network, announced that it has signed an agreement with Blair Witch creator Dan Myrick of Gear Head Pictures to stream "The Strand," the first full length, live-action, independently produced- narrative episodic intended specifically for the web.
150 years after the Civil War the way video editors approach a part of our craft has forever been changed.
After years of tapelessness in editing, camcorders are finally catching up. That, and the arrival of CMOS to challenge the hegemony of CCDs, made this year's NAB noteworthy.
We all became addicted when neighborhood antics no longer seemed so exciting and the kids in class thought OUR glasses sat funny on (then) bulbous noses . . .
Robert Rodriguez relates that even as production of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3D entered the 11th hour, he decided to make a major change in the postproduction process.
Who would have thought that pint-sized camcorders could cause such a stir? It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to find the crowds stuffing the booths that showed hot new rigs from Sony, Panasonic, and JVC at NAB.
Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, is based on investigative journalist Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind’s non-fiction book.
Producers and studios will frequently discover an existing literary property (such as a completed book, short story, stage play or magazine article) which they would like to acquire and use as the basis for a motion picture or television production.
Comic book heroes strike a nerve with readers because people see what the characters have in common with themselves. Instances of strife in a hero's life remind the reader of their own struggle.
"The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" is a must-see for people with even the slightest interest in comic books.
With the popularity and demand of online animated episodes - or "webisodes" - still in a state of infancy, these new "artistic efforts" are becoming more and more addictive for comic cartoon and anime enthusiasts around the globe.
Why does Hollywood love to make sequels? The premiere of Batman Begins marks the sixth in the series and that's only counting the "modern" era of Batman flicks, dating from 1989's Batman from director Tim Burton.
Being a screenwriter in Hollywood has never been a walk in the park and if your eyes are open at billboards and bus stops, you must have noticed that more and more movies are being remade, reworked and adapted from existing stories.
Most experimentation occurs within short film format productions, whether they are high-budgeted commercials, low-budgeted independent shorts or something in between.
Will Americans see the astonishing imagery and supernatural logic and realize that Howl’s Moving Castle is Miyazaki’s greatest phantasmagorical film?
Independent director Abraham Lim’s feature film debut, Roads and Bridges, wrestles with hard and uncomfortable issues of race and friendship in a contemporary western landscape. Made over the course of five years on a stop-and-go schedule, utilizing a minimal number of professional crewmembers, writer/editor/actor Lim’s Super16 film came in on an estimated out-of-pocket budget of just over $150,000.
Producers/Agencies/Managers are all looking for that one particular next great SPECIAL screenplay. Query and pitch your project...
Ask A Film Or TV Industry Professional Questions About Writing And Selling To Hollywood!
A spec screenplay probably the only way a new writer can break into the film business. Another way is by marrying the studio head's daughter or son.
New Australian research suggests that Desperate Housewives and other TV soap operas may help make adolescent girls desperate for a thinness few can healthily achieve.
There once was a show on TV called Father Knows Best. My father always knew best also. My dad encouraged me to go to college.
Before showing clips of his upcoming feature The Island to an L. A. press gathering, director Michael Bay apologized profusely for the “unfinished quality” of the imagery he was about to show. He jokingly said that he searched his DGA handbook of rules and regulations fruitlessly for some way out of having to show the material.
The fourth annual Digital Video Expo East conference and exhibition will return to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, in New York, Monday through Thursday, July 18-21, 2005. Conference session descriptions and registration are available at www.dvexpo.com.
Those shooting HDV are actively looking for solutions that allow them to distribute HD productions.
Ironically, one of the most popular titles on today's bootleg video circuit is one of the least popular titles of the 1970s: "The Paul Lynde Show". This sitcom limped its way unloved through a single season, but somehow gained a cult following thanks entirely to the posthumous gay icon stature of its zany star.
With a camera, a computer and a lunch budget, the "1 person production company" can make a feature film. The question after that is can you make a feature film of quality?
This is an excellent period piece where you genuinely feel transformed to Ireland in 1924.
George Lucas figures that this is the ideal time to receive the American Film Institute's life-achievement award, now that he's finished his "Star Wars" series and is embarking on a second career as an avant-garde filmmaker.
Director Brad Bird regularly reviewed images for The Incredibles, and used a new tool — the Review Sketch tool to draw on top of a projected image with a digitizing pen. His drawings were then accessible online by other members of his team.
When moviemaker Robert Rodriguez needed an idea for a family movie, his son threw him to the sharks.
For the DVD author outputting primarily to recordable media (DVD-R (+R), the cheap fifteen-dollar DVD player is more than a nuisance - it's a scourge. They play PAL as well as NTSC titles; most are region-free - and almost all are subject to poor playback of DVD-R (+R) discs.
In a groundbreaking response to combat movie piracy, Warner Bros. Entertainment released its latest film on DVD in China the same day it debuted in U.S. theaters.
With the Lucas Dream Team at Skywalker Ranch
I keep encountering people who are using the Soundminer asset management software system to organize and track their SFX. Sound designer Eugene Gearty recording vintage planes for The Aviator, raved about how Soundminer had made his job easier.
Scott was born and raised in Washington State, working in everything from corporate video to music video. In the early nineties his focus became music. Later, he participated in a number of local film productions as an editor and music composer.
Realizing that most of the opportunities are here in NY., Student filmmakers ask this question in the forum...
George Lucas isn't ready to view his career in terms of his “legacy” just yet.
The first time I met Bill Gates, I was richer than he was.
Larry Fessenden follows his horror trilogy — Habit, No Telling and Wendigo — with a chilling cautionary tale about oil company advance men trapped in a remote corner of Alaska.
Independent filmmakers CAN make films... “So I was broke again, and pissed, and I just wrote a movie for myself,” Richard Shepard says. “A movie that was outrageous and would never get bought. I was prepared to make it on my own. Raise a hundred grand or so, borrow a digital camera and film it in Mexico.”
Gregg Araki’s new film, Mysterious Skin uses cinematic form to explore sexuality.
With tourist-friendly phenomena like Bombay Dreams, the Bollywood brand is quickly finding its place in American pop culture's mainstream masala.
One never knows what might turn up in "To Save and Project," MOMA's annual festival of recently preserved films, but it's always satisfying to find an obscure, late-'60s genre flick produced by a now defunct studio that has been redeemed from the red-on-red color deterioration that ravaged the period's celluloid artifacts.
