One of the great joys of directing a film is to work with actors, and when you make an ensemble film, you get to work with a lot of actors! But working with any big group of people — especially actors! — can come with a host of unique challenges. So, whether you’re making a blockbuster like the Russo Brother’s recent uber-ensemble Avengers: Infinity Wars or you’re making a web series in your back yard with all your high school drama class friends, many of the lessons are the same. My current film, Bernard and Huey may sound like a […]

As filmmakers, we sometimes get so concerned with what film festivals can do for us and for our films that we forget about what our films can do for the festivals, and more importantly, for their local audiences. This year more than ever, I’ve seen festivals in communities around the world overcome violence, natural disasters and other communal sources of anxiety to put on amazing celebrations of cinema. They’re helping to spark conversations, rebuild damaged economies and in general just get people celebrating again with their neighbors, friends and visiting filmmakers. I’ve had a first-hand look at some of these […]

In an excerpt from his recently released and highly recommended book, The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking, filmmaker Dan Mirvish explains how to work with — or deputize — a film set photographer. The Cheerful Subversives Guide to Independent Filmmaking is now available from Amazon and other retailers. Back in the pre-digital days, still photographers used SLR cameras buried in giant, black, soundproof boxes, so that the shutter-mirror click didn’t interfere with sound takes. Usually they were shooting black-and-white stills and sometimes color slide film. The main reason you needed a separate still photographer was that many distributors and […]

If you’re like most young-ish filmmakers, you grew up and matured in an open source world of Napster, YouTube and BitTorrent. Whether it was making mixtapes for your college girlfriend, or ripping CDs and DVDs with your film school pals, “appropriating media” might have been a way of life for you to consume and share your favorite songs, films and TV. You scoffed at FBI warnings on VHS tapes and mocked MPAA PSAs. You’ve mashed up, mixed up and just plain stolen your way through the early 21st century with nary a tinge of regret. Hell, we’re living in an […]

As one of the pillars of the Golden Age of the ’70s, Mike Nichols’ film Carnal Knowledge was a big influence on my own last movie, Between Us. So during post-production on Between Us, I happened upon a biography of Carnal Knowledge screenwriter Jules Feiffer that mentioned that he had several unproduced screenplays. Hmm, I thought: Feiffer had won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoon strip in the Village Voice, he’d won a couple of Obies for his plays, and as a screenwriter, he’d written Popeye for Robert Altman, Little Murders, that Alan Arkin had directed, and won a Best […]

Okay, you’ve spent seven years making your indie opus, another two years playing the festival circuit, and somewhere along the way you even managed to sell your film and get distribution. Hooray, you’re done and the party’s over! Your goal by this point is undoubtedly to move on and start working on the next film. But, wait a second, just because you’ve “sold” your film and you “got” distribution doesn’t mean your job as a filmmaker is “done” (or that you need to stop using “air quotes”). On the contrary, you’re still staring at a 20-to-life sentence for your film. […]

Some filmmakers spend their summer vacations on a Greek island, lounging with their Peloponnesian lover while watching old VHS bootlegs of Cassevetes films. I, on the other hand, spent my summer vacation going to an average of one meeting a day in order to become a TV director. Mind you, I’m not giving up on indie film, but we all know the drill by now: TV is the new indie film. It pays well, it’s more creative, it’s more instantly gratifying and all the cool kids are doing TV now. Hell, the Amazon pilot list alone has more Sundance alumni […]

One friend on Facebook mentioned that offering an opinion on the Woody Allen scandal is like sticking your head into a turboprop plane on takeoff. That’s nothing — I say we might as well stick our collective heads into an Airbus A380 jet engine by throwing into the discussion the Olympics, Nazis, the scarcity of women directors and the Hollywood Blacklist. Let’s bring on the awkward! You see, last July, Entertainment Weekly — arguably the only national popular magazine devoted in large part to film coverage and criticism — did a list of their “All-Time Greatest Movies.” To be sure, […]

Feeling self-satisfied and/or congested from your annual Sundance winter camp? I’ve got news for you: Hollywood doesn’t care about another head-scratching indie with pigs in it, or an over-hyped VOD deal from a company you’ve never heard of for a film no one will ever see. Nope. Hollywood counts success in dollars, rubles and yuans. The films in Park City may not spin the world’s turnstyles, but the filmmakers who make them most definitely will. At the Slamdance Film Festival, a snowball’s throw across the street from Sundance, we’ve been saying for 20 years that our focus is on discovering […]

As the Slamdance Film Festival celebrates its 20th year in Utah, it’s worth noting the festival’s unique connection to a state one time zone to the east: Nebraska. Founded largely by two teams of filmmakers who’d shot their first movies in the Cornhusker state — paving the way for filmmakers like Oscar-nominee Alexander Payne — Slamdance has had a long history intertwined with the film movement known as “New Husker Cinema.” As a Nebraska native doing my USC thesis in late 1993, I teamed up with Omaha-based producer Dana Altman, grandson of Robert Altman, to make Omaha (the movie) — […]