As some of you know, I haunt Twitter somewhat regularly. Malak Faour, a young filmmaker from the Twitterverse, asked me to comment on her short film… by now probably several months ago. I watched it, thought that there was enough here to comment on, and finally got around to writing down …
Filmmaking itself isn’t a business. It takes business savvy to support filmmaking. That said, how can filmmakers make money with short film to support the habit? I’m always on the lookout for examples of how independent filmmakers make money, and new ideas that filmmakers might try. There’s no high-dollar commercial path for …
My favorite music videos generally tell a story, and are essentially silent movies. Since the featured song fills the audio track, the filmmaker’s job is to create a narrative through visual means only. Spike Jonze has directed a really interesting portfolio of music videos. Some of them are mainly neat …
Independent film director Hal Hartley has been making movies, including many shorts, since the 1980s beginning with “The Unbelievable Truth“. His first short, “Theory of Achievement“, was made with money left over from an art grant funding another of his films (“Surviving Desire“). Hal Hartley monetizes his short films by collecting them …
A short film can be a vehicle to illuminate the special talents or unappreciated, against-type abilities of an actor or actress. Without waiting for a director or producer to notice your potential, just craft a project with yourself in mind. This is why several projects I’ve written are vehicles to …
The entertainment industry is a notoriously difficult place to build a paying career. I encourage people who want to break in to do something else for a living, and use the income from that other thing to finance their creative careers. Here are some ways that emerging actors and actresses …