Inspirational

The first great movie I ever saw was Dead Poets Society at around the age of eight, two years before I decided I wanted to make movies. There was just something about it that raised the bar compared to other movies. Its excellence involved vocabulary and concepts that I wasn’t familiar with at the time—cinematography, casting, score. But when I found out what an Oscar was, I knew that Dead Poets Society deserved one. When I started to write screenplays two years later, I knew that people would...

As we get ready to take in the Academy Awards this Sunday, I am tempted to think about some of my own memorable Oscar Moments and the lessons that those moments have taught me over the years. And, not only are they some of my fondest memories to date, but they read like a list of what to do and what not to do.   Sam, Oscar, and Ernie …   As you can see above, I got to hoist Ernie Borgnine’s Best Actor Oscar from 1956 that he won for portraying the title character in Marty. That was nea...

We signed up to work in a pretty crazy industry. As rewarding as being an artist is, it can also be quite stressful. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the workload or become disheartened and depressed by things not working out the way we planned. An important part of being an artist is the ability to be vulnerable, yet at the same time, be thick-skinned and able to take rejection, criticism, and failure. However, if we are not in a good headspace this can be quite difficult. That’s why it is...

We are all familiar with the vanity that is deeply threaded in the tapestry of the entertainment industry. This vanity often makes us feel we need to look a certain way or pretend to be 26 years old forever to achieve success in the industry. However, especially when it comes to screenwriting, we have often found that being older is not only irrelevant, it may actually be an advantage.  In this week's episode our FREE webinar "Ask Me Anything", Stage 32 Founder and CEO Richard "RB" Botto and S...

Good morning Stage 32 family! Happy Monday! I hope you are all ready to kick off another exciting and action-packed week in creative greatness! To help get us rolling and inspired, I want to share an update from a dear friend in the Stage 32 community. Late last year, I shared the story of Greg Mania, the winner of our 4th Annual Comedy Writing Contest, who wowed the judges with his hilarious semi-autobiographical pilot, “Mania”. Greg is a very talented writer who has written an independently...

Happy Sunday Creative Army! You have your coffee ready? In true Sunday fashion, we have some boiling hot content coming your way. Drink it in before your Superbowl Sunday festivities.  First up, let's get down to basics. When you are on set, it can get a little hectic and overwhelming if you are unprepared. Everyone has a specific job in order to help the production run smoothly and efficiently. In our next video, Cinematic J covers How to Use a Clapper Board. While this job is typically don...

With the Oscars one week away, it is nice to look back on The Academy's collection of Oscar-winners over the years. This impressive library features everything from soul-crushing dramas, to light-hearted musicals. Today, we are going to zoom in on some of the inspirational moments that have come from decades of masterful filmmaking.  Entrepreneur has put together a list of seventeen Oscar-winning films that champion unforgettable inspirational moments. From classics like Laurence of Arabia and...

Creatives usually don’t like being limited or bound by time. Expressing your creative thoughts through words, imagining worlds, coming up with plots and twists, and giving life to characters isn’t something you should rush. But what happens when you face the challenge of rewriting the screenplay? This task usually comes with a deadline that you need to respect. You can be the most talented screenwriter but if you don’t act respectfully towards the people who are willing to bring your play to l...

Yesterday, we were thrilled to announce that Stage 32 CEO RB's book Crowdsourcing for Filmmakers: Indie Film and The Power of the Crowd is the textbook for the first-ever crowdsourcing class to be taught at a major US university! This triumphant news is the product of a powerful industry relationship that has been years in the making between RB and fellow filmmaker, Marty Lang.  Now, it's time for you to meet the actual students from University of Central Arkansas who will be taking Marty's cl...

Today in the video below, you're going to see Stage 32 networking at it's finest which resulted in something very cool for our fearless leader, Richard Botto and fellow award-winning filmmaker and Stage 32er Marty Lang.   Back in 2014, RB and Marty met at the Austin Film Festival after being connected through our Stage 32 platform. A friendship grew as Marty went on to be a production manager at Chapman University and RB went on to start writing his book Crowdsourcing for Filmmakers: Indie Fil...