Producer Blog

How New Technology is Changing the Film Industry

In 2011, the first feature film shot entirely on a Smartphone was screened at a West Hills cinema in Los Angeles. Olive, by director Hooman Khalili, was filmed solely on a Nokia N8 and thanks to its cinema run, qualifies for Academy Award consideration. Olive is a reminder that the traditional days of filmmaking are now behind us. The film industry today is in a constant state of change, with a wealth {...Continue...}

Picking the Best Actors

Once your breakdown is distributed, submissions will start coming in. You should have been specific about submission guidelines, so pay attention to actors who couldn’t follow the instructions. It may be indicative of a kind of carelessness that carries across multiple areas of their lives. The best way to go through a mountain of submissions is to start organizing from the beginning. If the {...Continue...}

First Steps - Making Your Film Project

Creating a film is something that requires an immense amount of planning and preparation. One of the most common pitfalls of new filmmakers is to not allow enough time between casting and the first shoot date. For feature films, the casting process should begin three months before your first shoot date. Casting for TV shows or commercials usually progresses quicker, and can be started closer to {...Continue...}

Cameras: TV Dramas Are Finally Changing with the Times

While movie producers are usually more willing to be experimental with different types of cameras, TV producers have generally been more cautious. It’s easy for filmmakers to try a new camera on a single project (the financial risk is much lower), but TV shows already have heavy investment in their current equipment. Sometimes there’s little reason to change, much to cinematographers’ woes. {...Continue...}

Opera: New Productions for New Audiences

When thinking of a stereotypical opera audience, the mind conjures up images of an aging, white-collar crowd. However, thanks to creative innovations by opera companies around the world, this gross generalisation is now far from reality. Inventive stagings, in-school programs and fresh new works are bringing opera to the younger generations, aiming to make the art form appeal to those of all ages. Asking {...Continue...}

Crowd Funding your Film

In today’s lean economic climate, government grants and other traditional means of financing films are exceedingly difficult to come by. Luckily, however, the rise of crowd funding has allowed the production of many independent films that would otherwise go unrealised. Crowd funding is the act of raising money via donations and investments from the general public, usually in return for credits {...Continue...}

Screen Rights - Words to Film

As challenging as it may be to write, edit and publish a novel, a unique challenges arise when adapting a novel for the screen. Depending on the circumstance, authors and screenwriters may work together to various degrees, or sometimes, not at all. Managing the relationship between author and adaptor can be precarious. Some authors have minimal input for the screenwriter, adding little direction {...Continue...}