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Get your film in cinemas with our unique competition

By on April 13, 2012 in Competitions, Distribution, Screenplay, Screenwriters Festival

50 Kisses Competition – Write Film / Make Film / Distribute Film: a unique competition from The London Screenwriters’ Festival. Get your script produced and get your movie released in cinemas. A unique competition that guarantees 50 scripts will be shot and 50 films will be theatrically released next year. Are you in? Read on… [...]

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Why make your film if you can’t get distribution?

By on April 12, 2012 in Distribution

Just a quick heads up, we are bringing film distribution legend Jon Reiss back to the UK to run his two day 21st Century Distribution Masterclass. If you are making a film this year or have just completed one, this workshop is essential. You will learn loads of new ideas and strategies from the guy [...]

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The Art of the Short Film

By on April 12, 2012 in Inspiration

Over the course of the Gone Fishing festival run, I met tons of very cool film makers. Once such person is Jason Van Genderen who I met in Australia, when I was in competition with him at the Heart Of Gold Film Festival – he has mad an extraordinary short film, shot on a cell [...]

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Have you resisted social media? I say jump onboard the evolution revolution.

By on April 10, 2012 in Social Media

I am sitting here reading an article about how some boffins who have developed a DIY 3D printer have reached $50k of their $300k goal on IndieGoGo in just two days – I am sure they will reach their goal. Only five years ago they would have been pitching to venture capitalists, or worse, getting [...]

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Who is in your crew? A guide to low budget film crews

By on April 4, 2012 in Crew, Production

In advance of the Producers Masterclass in June, I thought I would share the first part of the chapter on crewing from The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint. It’s a template for a low budget feature film crew and exactly who you will need at various budget bumps. Of course every film is different and [...]

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Is TV where the best drama is produced?

By on April 2, 2012 in Screenplay, Screenwriters Festival

News that Aaron Sorkin is back in the saddle (The Newsroom ,this summer – trailer above) did give me a little bit of a heart flutter because for me at least, the best writing in drama is now in TV. I suspect this is largely down to the fact that long form TV drama can [...]

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If everyone has everything, how do you compete? In praise of Actors…

By on March 23, 2012 in Actors

Everyone can now get a great camera and lenses. Post production at home in native 2k, with full After Effects integration opens up endless grading and VFX possibilities. Technology has transformed film making. A few hours on Vimeo will illustrate just how mind bogglingly sophisticated the world has become. So, when working in drama, how [...]

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A filmmakers guide to Tumblr

By on March 18, 2012 in Social Media

If blogging is where you share your thoughts, Facebook is where you connect with friends and Twitter is where engage in short conversation, Tumblr, is kind of like that shoebox under your bed, full of random but very cool stuff. Tumblr is a microblog with a strong emphasis on images and video, though it can [...]

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Film makers, want your own branded daily newspaper? Get YOUR Paper.li to promote your work or brand.

By on March 16, 2012 in Marketing, Social Media

Paper.li is an online newspaper that is published, automatically, every day. The content for YOUR paper.li is generated by feeds from your Twitter and Facebook accounts, plus other sources you setup – so it’s personal to you. If you follow people with great content, it will draw from that stuff to create your branded, daily [...]

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Making viral web comedy… Meet ‘The Teddynator’

By on March 15, 2012 in Web/Tech

Misery Bear has a new episode out, and if you are a lover of genre movies, you will love this homage to TheTerminaror. And as usually, it’s terrific fun. Creators of the massive Misery Bear viral franchise are Nat Saunders and Chris Hayward, and we ran a terrific session with them at the last Comedy [...]

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The Producer On An Indie Film… A Timeline

By on March 13, 2012 in Production

Ahead of the Producers Masterclass in June, I though I would share a chapter from my book, The Guerilla Film Makers Movieblueprint. It breaks down the jobs of everyone in a production and creates a timeline for their work… and here is the job timeline for the Producer. I hope it helps you make better [...]

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How to release your movie in UK cinemas yourself… by the guy who doing it right now!

By on March 12, 2012 in Distribution

Guest blog by Bryan O’Neil After three and a half years of making my film, Booked Out, today it’s being released in cinemas, blu-ray, DVD and online and I organised the release myself, so if I can do it then you can too. I’ll explain how below! Background to the film Booked Out is an [...]

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A Masterclass In Story…

By on March 9, 2012 in Inspiration

Andrew Stanton on Pixar presents a short masterclass in ‘Story’ at TED. I was just sent this by editor friend of mine, Mark Talbot Butler. So many powerful truths compacted into such a short presentation. Gold dust. For those of you who have not seen it, sit back and enjoy… Onwards and upwards Chris Jones, [...]

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How to spot a liar when negotiating a deal… (and maybe that liar is YOU!)

By on March 7, 2012 in Inspiration

When I wrote the last Guerilla Film Makers Handbook, I asked Brit producer Richard Holmes what was the most important advice he could offer an emerging film maker. He said ‘Learn to make the distinction between what is real, and what you want to be real’. This resonated with me at the time, and it [...]

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Back when visual effects were created by magicians and not programmers…

By on March 5, 2012 in SFX, VFX

Following the tragic news over the weekend, about the passing of Ralph McQuarrie, I thought I would repost this documentary about the genesis of ILM (Horizon – How To Film The Impossible) – I posted this a year or so ago but at the time I didn’t have a YouTube account that could upload clips [...]

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