Lookbooks are an increasingly vital part of the filmmaking process. A good lookbook can make a pitch, just as a bad one can dissuade an investor, producer or financier from a project. Yet the creation of lookbooks is rarely discussed. The topic is missing from the many labs and tutorial programs set up to help first-time filmmakers—even though a good lookbook is perhaps the quickest way for a project to stand out. Simply put, refined visual knowledge and the skillful conveying of that knowledge is power for a director. When we interviewed Reed Morano last year about her work on […]

In the world of documentary film, where projects gestate and then are produced over the course of years, and with funding often raised in stages from a variety of different sources, the determination of producer credits can turn into something like the Wild West. There are usually one or more producers who are actually producing the film, and they are supported by a bevy of archival producers, field producers, etc. But what about all the executive producers, co-producers, presenters, etc. — how did they become involved in a film, and what do their credits mean? The question is more than […]

Sound, sadly, is not an area of filmmaking most people think of first, if at all. A new program may change that. SFFILM and the Dolby Institute have teamed up to create a fellowship that will help filmmakers all the way from development through post-production. The help will come in many ways, from providing artistic and industry guidance to negotiating introductions to key independent film players. Because Dolby is involved, it will also provide a cash grant that allows them to speak with sound designers as early as the screenwriting phase, on top of post-production support that includes a Dolby […]

Director and film critic Neville Pierce, who we interviewed several months ago around the online premiere of his shorts, has a new film, Promise, up on the interwebs, and it’s tied to the announcement of an unusual short film contest that offers filmmakers $40,000 in production funds for their winning pitch. From the press release: The Pitch is an annual online pitching competition which invites filmmakers to submit a two-minute video pitching their idea for a short film inspired by The Bible. It can be in any genre, can emerge from any perspective, and can draw on any story, passage, […]

Let’s assume you got into filmmaking because you wanted nothing to do with business school. Well, tough. Movies are the most expensive art form; even ones they call “no-budget” aren’t. You need to learn about business eventually, and in today’s world, even independent filmmakers need to understand terms like “transferable rebates,” “soft money” and “100 percent deductibility.” In fact, there’s one financing term both Hollywood and independent producers must know: “tax credits.” The studio world is continually on the lookout for states offering production rebates that will reduce the cost of their movies and TV shows, while independent producers scout […]

There’s long been an imbalance between grants available to fiction filmmakers as opposed to documentarians, and today SFFILM, the Bay Area-based nonprofit, has announced in partnership with the Westridge Foundation new biannual grants and other resources for narrative filmmakers based across the U.S. Four to five grants of $20,000 – $25,000 will be given each spring and fall, and applications are now open for the first cycle, which runs through February, 2018. From the press release: The SFFILM / Westridge program is designed specifically to support the screenwriting and development phases of narrative feature projects whose stories focus on the […]

John Finn, founder and CEO of Greenslate, remembers the good old days — and they weren’t that good. In 1995, when he first got into the independent film industry, he was a freelance production accountant, loaning himself out to productions where every penny counted. The standard practices of production accounting were daunting back then: there were seas of paperwork, year-end production company tax filings were strenuous efforts and, on set, accountants would spend entire days running around just trying to get signatures on start paperwork from producers and crew members. “I realized there was a need for financial acumen,” Finn recalls. […]

“What we’re doing is building our own Marvel universe and ecosystem of characters”: Eli Roth on Horror & CryptTV at Tribeca Raise your hand if you’re trying to get a horror film made. I thought so. That’s a lot of us — myself included. It’s been a fantastic year for the genre, too, with Get Out breaking a number of records and becoming the third highest-grossing R-rated horror film of all time — and that’s behind The Exorcist and Hannibal. I was too terrified to finish either, and I saw Get Out twice (and alone) so it wins in my […]

In my new short, Whiskey Fist — premiering Friday, September 10 at SXSW — the characters work in front of a sign that reads “Brands’ Lives Matter.” The font is ripped off from Ed Ruscha and the fluorescent ombre background is purloined from posters of the kind stapled to telephone poles advertising local reggae or salsa concerts. Such an insidious combination of high and low appropriation characterizes the vanguard of marketing today, that joking/not joking tone that one would find flourishing in the branding firm where Whiskey Fist takes place. Branding’s sophistication is more seductive than ever, and even more […]

Given the recent Presidential threats to refugees and immigrants, it seemed only fitting that The New Neighbors Project: Self-Directed Stories from the New American West, which aims to put cameras in the hands of refugees and immigrants in Montana, won the inaugural pitch competition for Tribeca Film Institute’s IF/Then Pitch competition during the recent 14th annual Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. Directed and produced by Bryan Bello, The New Neighbors Project plans to create a series of short documentaries through workshops which teach refugees media production skills so they can direct their own stories. Developed by Tribeca Film Institute (TFI), IF/Then is designed to support short […]