Filmmaker Christen Clifford is at work on her 10-part autobiographical doc series, Cancer: A Love Story, and recently participated in the 2018 IFP Screen Forward Labs, which is devoted to serialized content. Below is her first-person report of her week spent with mentors, fellow filmmakers and advisors. Day 1: Screening and General Overview The day starts with a meet-and-greet breakfast. I’m late. My first day and I’m late. I resist the temptation to hate myself and get a cup of tea. I want a latte, but all they have is brew and that can make me jittery. Proud of myself […]
by Christen Clifford on Jun 27, 2018The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Filmmaker‘s parent organization, has announced the 12 serialized projects comprising its 2018 Screen Forward Labs. Now in its fourth year, the Screen Forward Labs were created to support the increasingly large number of early-career creators making web, series or app-based work. Notably, says IFP Executive Director Joana Vicente in the press release, 73% of this year’s projects are from female creators, and 50% are led by all-female teams. For the first time this year, fiction and non-fiction projects co-exist in the same program, and genres and themes include post-apocalyptic science fiction, a personal drama involving […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 4, 2018On April 27 at the Made in New York Media Center, IFP hosted a panel on serialized content moderated by Kuye Youngblood, Head of Development and Production at BRIC TV, a public access station in Brooklyn. BRIC’s mission is to present and incubate work by artists and mediamakers who reflect the diversity of its borough, and it presents numerous shows via its cable and digital network. At the event, Youngblood was joined onstage by two web series creators, Rae Leone Allen and Christopher Poindexter, who shared the challenges and opportunities they each encountered while making the first season of their […]
by Audrey Ewell on May 9, 2017It’s 8:45 am on a drizzly Monday morning, day one of the 2017 IFP Screen Forward labs. We arrive early enough to get coffee across the street and stumble onto one of the strangest things I have ever seen: a small temperature-controlled vacuum-sealed doghouse to seal your dog inside while you grab a coffee. Is this a New York thing? I don’t know how I feel about it. 9:00 am. We cross the threshold of the Made in New York Media Center by IFP for the very first time. I clutch the shoulder straps of my dorky new backpack while my […]
by Tess Sweet on May 4, 2017The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Filmmaker‘s publisher, announced today the ten projects taking part in its third annual Screen Forward Lab for story-driven, serialized projects. Among the projects, which span web series, VR and cross-platform storytelling, are works set in the world of extreme sports, gentrified Brooklyn, and a youth rehab center. Characters include young scouts and their scoutmasters, a gay-curious heterosexual woman, and angry black women — the latter in the series, Angry Black Women. Screen Forward Lab creators begin their program today with five days of workshops and seminars at the Made in New York Media Center, where […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2017Monday night’s event at the Made in NY Media Center — “Inside the IFP Labs: How to Claim Your Emerging Voice” — brought together three film directors and an episodic series producer, all of whom had gone through the various Labs, to talk about the process. A bit of background: the IFP Filmmaker Labs — the Narrative Lab and Documentary Lab — are open to first-time feature directors with works in post-production. Films must be budgeted under $1 million. The Screen Forward Lab is geared toward episodic media intended for any platform. All applicants must be IFP members. Sessions are […]
by Audrey Ewell on Feb 15, 2017[Editor’s note: this is a guest post from Taylor Cohan, the creator/director/producer/writer of the webseries Newtopia and a partcipant in this year’s IFP Screen Forward Labs.] Before the IFP Screen Forward Labs started, we received a sheet asking us to rank the different workshops taking place at the lab in terms of our interest. We hadn’t ever thought about incorporating VR into our project, but I still ranked the VR workshop as #2. Our first activity at the labs was a group screening of our films for the fellows and IFP staff. Our project screened and then we got feedback from […]
by Taylor Cohan on Aug 15, 2016