PHASE 1. BOOKS. Your First 100 Days As A Filmmaker. You've finally decided to jump headlong towards your dream and become a filmmaker. Now what? Leaving the ordinary civilian lifestyle to become a filmmaker can be a real jolt. Raindance is here to make that transition easier. Filmmaking is not just a life-style - it's a strategy, a different way of thinking and doing.
For your career as a filmmaker to really take off, you need to become a student of filmmaking. Successful filmmakers learn skills and form new habits in their first 100 days. By no means consider this as an exhaustive or final list. Let's do it. Day 1-30 1. Why go to film school when you can watch and learn from watching movies? 16 Short Films That Launched Famous Film Careers 14 Brilliant Short Films You Can Watch at Lunchtime There are some pretty polished shorts on these links, and some pretty rough ones. Excercise Watch at least one short a day for the next 100 days. 2. Filmmakers like Tarantino aren't just handed a camera and told to make Reservoir Dogs! 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Christopher Nolan on Aspiring Filmmaker's Responsibility and How Soderbergh Helped Him Figure Out How to Best Work Within a Studio System. During the Director Series that took place during Tribeca 2015, Christopher Nolan talked with Bennett Miller about many topics, including the challenges of becoming risk-averse as your career expands, and how he learned how to deal deal with the Studio System to keep his creative freedom all the while maintaining a sustainable relationship for all parties.
Nolan, whose roots come from the DIY/indie filmmaking philosophy had been in the past very generous about the lessons he had learned making his first feature film. This time, talking to Miller, he opens up about other aspects that are as interesting and insightful. About New Filmmakers’ Responsibility and Energy “When you’re starting out I think the energy you have is a wonderful thing that is untouched.
And then as you learn more and more, it becomes harder and harder to forget the rules, to push them aside. It’s something you have to keep striving on doing but I think it’s harder as you get more experienced. How To Hire An Actor When You Have No Budget | Indie Tips. 10 Tips for Holding Better Auditions. One of the most difficult things about making a movie is casting the right actors for a role.
But before you even start to think about the daunting task of choosing the right people, you're going to have to think about how to set up an audition that will help get those people in front of you. Catherine Farrington Garcia, RocketJump's Director of Operations and in-house casting director for VGHS walks us through her entire casting process, providing specific details of how to prepare for, conduct, and assess an audition. Catherine gives us tons of useful information, but here are 10 things you should probably commit to memory: Read the script This is a no-brainer.
If you're inviting actors to come in and perform a scene, you're going to need to be an expert on the story -- understanding their character, the emotion of the scene, and the context of the scene you're giving them. They might have questions, so you'd better be able to answer them. Draft a "casting breakdown" Pool your resources. To Short or Not to Short? 20 Filmmakers Who Successfully Transitioned from Short to Feature. To Short or Not to Short? It sometimes feels like the eternal question without a definitive answer every filmmaker asks herself/himself at some point, when dreaming of making a feature film.
Every year, an unknown filmmaker creates the buzz with a short film that looks a million bucks and unlocks him the doors to Paradise (getting representation and a Studio deal to make a feature film). It doesn’t matter if half of those filmmakers disappear in development hell and that we never actually see the feature film, those stories feed our collective imagination, pushing us to ask again: to short or not to short? A handful of filmmakers have successfully adapted their short films into a feature. As we’ve seen in the past on mentorless, sometimes the short is a scene from a screenplay that can’t get financed, and sometimes it becomes the inspiration for a back-up plan after a project failed. Sometimes it’s also a way for a crew to find out if they’re fit to work together on a bigger project. The Complete Mark Duplass Filmmaking Bible on Becoming a Successful Director.
You want to be a successful filmmaker, but you’re a nobody in nowheresville with no connections. Well, the Duplass Brothers started out just the same way, and now they are admired, household names in the independent film world. How did they do it? On the ground at SXSW 2015, No Film School covered Mark Duplass’ entertaining keynote address on his career and compiled it into an easy-to-follow 9-step plan. [Update] The full keynote has been uploaded online and we've added it above. As he described it in his Keynote address, Mark Duplass started his career in Austin, where he and his brother Jay had lots of ideas and excitement about filmmaking, but absolutely no connections. After enough odd editing jobs, they had raised enough money to shoot a feature for $65k. Instead of giving up, Duplass started over by making short films that recaptured the feeling he and his brother had making movies for fun as kids.
Step 1: Find Your Voice by Playing Around And make sure it is a short film. "Hmm. 7 Things I Learned This Year As A Filmmaker. Process, Patience & Trust: Josh Mond on the Importance of Making Films with His Friends. It's something we all want: infinite love and trust in the people we work with. The specialness of that kind of rare and precious collaborative energy undoubtedly shows up on the screen.
So what's the key to finding that? Josh Mond says simply, "Love. " In case you didn't know, Borderline Films is a production company comprised of some of the best American independent filmmakers working today, including Antonio Campos (Afterschool, Simon Killer) and Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene). Founded in 2003, it's been a long journey for Josh Mond, a heavy-lifting producer on the Borderline crew, to rotate into the director's chair and make his first film. James White is the story of a self-destructive New Yorker dealing with tumult in his family and a complicated mother-son relationship.
We caught up with Josh in Park City last month to discuss his film, working with his friends and coming to terms with the often long and arduous process of creating. Josh: That was 'Kids in Love'. NFS: Yeah. Salomon Ligthelm — Love School - Inspiring People to Live Boldly for God. How does your faith in Jesus play into who you are? I think for me, it happens in a very unintentional, a very unmotivated way, in the sense that for me I just want to stay close to the heart of God, and then let life happen as it does without feeling like I need to intentionally show Him in anything that I do. I just want to stay close to the heart of God. And I hope that relationally and through what I do, that people understand and can see Christ in my life. And for me, that often means when I'm driving to work. I don't drive with music, so when I drive to work I don't listen to the radio.
I sometimes carpool with another guy, but if I'm not I just try and spend time in the morning with God. I've gotta say you do a great job of powerfully conveying your faith through your filmmaking. Yeah, well man, he definitely does use it, so thank you for using your creativity that way. Since you've had your little boy, Haryn, how have you noticed your faith being strengthened? I love it too. Director Antonio Campos Talks About Finding 'The Right Amount of Perfect & Sloppy' Ever wondered what was going through the director's head as they set up on a shot? Antonio Campos, a filmmaker on the forefront of American independent film, sits down with Filmmaker Magazine to discuss his process and aesthetic method. Here they look at some scenes from Campos's latest film Simon Killer, and break down the filmmaking in terms of composition, intent, and performance.
Hit the jump to watch the full interview: Props to Zachary Wigon for creating this, it's great to see a filmmaker able to break down their approach, and it makes me want to see more interviews made this way. The interview itself even gets a little avant-garde during the last 3 minutes. I'm always interested in the way directors control their camera, and here, Campos discusses the "conscious camera" and the difference between the camera being one step behind or one step ahead of the action. His approach is marked with rigorous composition, yet free-flowing performances. Christopher Nolan Talks About His Writing Process. By Erik Amaya Following a screening of The Dark Knight on Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Film Festival, director Christopher Nolan took time to answer questions from the audience and LA Times writer Geoff Boucher. The first audience question, in particular, stuck out: Prompted by a recent reading of the published script for The Prestige, writer Ed Brubaker wanted Nolan to talk about his writing process.
“Your stuff is pretty bullet-proof,” Brubaker said. “How far do you outline stuff before you actually start scripting?” Nolan was quick to excuse the apparent flawlessness as a quirk of constant revision. “When you’re reading a screenplay that’s been published,” he explained, “you’re reading something that’s 14, 15 drafts in, because what they publish is the shooting draft including all the shooting revisions you made while on production.” As for his process: “I don’t really outline.” Nolan’s films are known for their unconventional structures and tight plots.