Tips

We all need a little help, every now and then. One of the greatest things about being a writer is that there are so many tools out there designed to help us. The problem is, people don’t know they exist. When you’re a writer, you have to be a Jack (or Jill) of many trades and learn not just about writing, but about editing, and the business itself. It’s all part of honing our craft. And while, at times, the task may seem daunting, I’ve discovered a lot of online resources that I’ve found to...

Many people, even in the film business, don’t know the difference between a development producer and line producer. In this article, we are going to dive into different types of producers in film production such as development producer, line producer, executive producer, assistant producer, and co-producer. Then we will talk about the role of creativity in film and how it is practiced. Development Producer and Executive Producer in Film Production A Development producer is responsible for br...

There is a particular thrill when your screenwriting career is moving. When you win a contest, option a feature, connect with great talent, or make a new collaborative connection there’s a jolt of creative adrenaline. Last summer, I optioned a feature screenplay. I made a short with an incredible director and cast. I attached a top-level director to one of my TV shows in development who, as a bonus, is absolutely the kind of person it has been incredible to work with. I saw positive interest...

It is an honor and a privilege to bring you the worldwide premiere of the 4th Annual Stage 32 Short Film Program! Below you will find six amazing short films to watch that were carefully curated by Stage 32's panel of leading industry executives. Our esteemed panel of judges is made up of top producers, managers, development executives, and Oscar-winning filmmakers.    These films are only available for viewing for 48 hours.   Our six winning filmmakers hail from all over the world, and...

Last year I wrote the blog post How I Shot a No-Budget Ghost Comedy Feature in One Week. The TL;DR of it is I’d been dying to make a movie, I’d been writing a lot and waiting on news, got sick of waiting, so I wrote a script, assembled a team, rented a house, fed everyone, and then shot the thing with very little sleep. I also amassed a fair amount of credit card debt. Why? Because this is what I love and I wanted to do it. I’d tried crowdfunding campaigns in the past, but I was never successf...

Happy Oscar Sunday Creative Army! Get your coffee ready, because we are about to dive into some white-hot content that will amp you up before the big show tonight. As you have likely seen, The Hollywood Reporter hosts some amazing filmmaker roundtables. This week, our first piece of content is a Writer's Roundtable featuring 2020 Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar-nominees Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) and Anthony McCarten (The Two Popes). Taika and Anthony are joined by fellow screenwriters Lorene...

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...