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This summer marks the fifteen year anniversary of the production for Save the Forest. I remember much of that shoot, good and bad. Honestly, they're was not much bad, if any. The summer was hot. We were sweating even while shooting at night. And some of those nights were long ones. Save the Forest tells the story of a group of movie theater employees trying to stop their small-town theater from being sold and turned into a multiplex. Insert a romantic love story with two of o

There's a new movie coming out in March from Steven Soderbergh called Unsane. It stars Claire Foy (who is great in The Crown), Juno Temple and Amy Irving. Watch the trailer before reading on. Please. Pretty interesting, right? The entire movie is shot on an iPhone camera. All of it. Let that sink in. They used the devices that 98% of use every day and shot a movie with that camera that's attached. That's not only insane, it's unsane! (Sorry. I couldn't resist) But seriously,

Everywhere I look on LinkedIN, I find messages about scams trying to get money from writers and filmmakers. I learned a long time ago to not trust any "producer" with big ideas about my projects if I just shell out a few dollars here and there. I always knew they were full of it. If I'm going to spend my money, I'm going to make sure I'm in charge of it. But there is another kind of user that is just as destructive. These are people who use up your time and energy. They want

Editor's Note: I wrote this last week for my Project Planning class, for which I'm taking as I earn a Master's Degree in Interactive Media. Thought I'd share. I've always been a procrastinator. This goes way back to elementary school. I specifically remember my very first time. For sixth grade, I had Mr. Maguire. He was a big, burly man who wore a big mustache and loved jokes. He was an army veteran who fought in The Korean Conflict and when he spoke about how he left the arm

The rules are changing. Technology is breaking down how it used to be and leaving an empty space which very few people are willing to fill. Make a movie and get it into film festivals. That was the goal in 1991. But that game was rigged and it's even worse now. The best part is that you don't need it. You can find an audience on-line. You can connect with fans over social media. You can build your community of followers without the guise of dropping $1000 in festival submissi

Would it be fair to say that the indie film world or maybe this whole industry is based upon hope? Potential? Wishful thinking? Is the major commodity that's being traded amongst storytellers the idea of what project they could possibly be working on? I get it. This is how the business works. When we realize we want to tell stories, we naively go into it thinking: Just give me a chance and someone will see the talent. We all know the end of that story. Even the most talented

Writing is a lonely business. You can talk about story with your friends over lunch. You can watch movies with your significant other and fall in love with the dialogue. You can exchange emails with a script reader about your latest draft. You can retweet other writers on Twitter. You can like Facebook posts about how hard it is to write and commiserate with your Facebook friend. But at the end of the day, it's just you and the computer. (Or typewriter, you masochists) All yo

Write the $cript. $hoot the movie. $ubmit movie to festivals. Attend festival$. Network at partie$. Sell the movie. Repeat. While the above is a formula to getting your story seen by others, the percentage of storytellers that have found success with that idea is significantly less now than it was 30 years ago. If you persist with that formula above, you'll be broke or your parents will be broke. The hard truth is that the indie filmmaker world is made for those with money. T

I don't know if I believe in fate, but I know I don't believe in coincidences. I started my next semester for my graduate degree in Interactive Media and one of my classes is about Community Management. I'm also having multiple conversations about living and working on-line, working in a community-based ideal with certain projects and yes, I'm being vague for a good reason about thee conversations. My other class is more a production class, but the project I just worked on an

There's a double edged sword to being ambitious within the indie film world (any industry for that matter). We develop a mindset of "Get my shit done" and you really need to in order to in fact, get your shit done. No one cares about your story unless you tell them how much you care about it. So we constantly talk about ourselves and our work, even if its our least favorite topic. (That's my tragic flaw) The other side of that ambition is that you rarely succeed in championin