So imagine a room full of cameras able to capture performance from every conceivable angle, then reproduce the images inside a digital 360-degree environment, with VR users able to freely roam around the space and observe the action from a comprehensive set of vantage points. Phew! Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s delve into how volumetric capture plays a critical part in Runnin’—the new interactive VR music video from musician Reggie Watts, director Kiira Benzing and Intel Studios....

During Film Independent’s recent Screenwriting Lab, we asked a few of the Fellows to tell us about the experience and what they learned. Here’s the first post, by Jonathan Parks-Ramage. Writing is kind of like a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. When my writing partner Marla and I work on a screenplay, we speak in voices, occupy alternate realities and inhabit multiple personalities. Which is why it was an incredible relief to find out that we were accepted into the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab....

When someone asks a film producer what it is they actually do, it’s easy to get flustered. After all, “Producer” isn’t a single job. It’s dozens of highly intensive individualized jobs, each with their own ticking clock and list of critical action items. As a producer, you’re well aware that your role during all stages of filmmaking is to help others—to creatively envision a full and complete project down to the smallest logistics....

The subject? A discussion of the myriad challenges faced by nonfiction filmmakers due to the current state of COVID-19. Four Film Independent Documentary Lab Fellows brought us up to speed on their new “normal,” the challenges of creatives during a pandemic and their favorite film cameras. Panelists included: director Jeff Bemiss (Missing in Brooks County), director Amy Goldstein (Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl), director Katy Scoggin (The Flood) and producer Fredrick Thornton (L....

If social media chatter and the anecdotal testimony of bleary-eyed binge-watchers can be trusted, the #1 phenomenon of the summer has been Netflix’s Stranger Things—an eight-episode pastiche of early-’80s adventure flicks and sci-fi thrillers, perfectly calibrated to ping the nostalgia receptors of pretty much any human being weaned on a pre-adolescent diet of VHS-era Stephen King novels and Steven Spielberg movies. At times Stranger Things (created by the sibling show-runners Matt and Ross Duffer) is so uncanny in its approximation of small-town America circa 1983 that the show almost feels like a genuine artifact of the era—as if the original Betamax master tapes had been lost and only recently unearthed along with the original E....

By now you don’t need us to tell you about this year’s awesome and amazing slate of world premieres, competition categories and special events. But if that wasn’t enough, this morning sees the release of still more exclusive, can’t-miss events. Today, the LA Film Festival (June 1-9) announced still more reasons to come out and be part of this year’s fun—from special event screenings, to live performances, filmmaker panels and (for the thrifty shopper) this year’s free screening series....

“10 Questions with LA Film Fest Filmmaker Spotlights” is a series of posts to help you get to know our Festival filmmakers and their films just a little bit better. In this installment, we feature Jeff Broadway, director of the music doc Our Vinyl Weighs A Ton (This Is Stones Throw Records). Jeff Broadway FILM: Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton / Summer Showcase Before he was an internationally acclaimed DJ and the founder of a legendary Los Angeles record label, Peanut Butter Wolf, a....

Making a film isn’t easy, and making the film YOU want to make without millions of dollars is even more challenging. That said, here we present our fourth installment of this Best Indies Ever series, featuring six of our favorite Spirit Award-winning films that were made on miniscule budgets, yet packed a big Hollywood punch, proving great material and passion have no price tag. Spirit Awards trivia: In 2000, the Best Feature category was split in two—one for films made for $500,000 or less, and one for the rest....

You are, after all, a human being alive in the year 2017. And while that fact certainly has its fair share of drawbacks (mostly geo-political), a lack of on-demand access to ambitious, high-quality, auteur-driven small screen entertainment isn’t one of them. People say it all the time: we’re living in the golden age of TV. But “TV” doesn’t just mean TV. It means streaming and social media. It means DVDs, DVR and YouTube....

Following the staggering $326.7M worldwide box office of last year’s John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, studio Lionsgate wasted no time in committing to both a fourth and fifth installment of the hit action franchise, with star Keanu Reeves once again slated to return as the titular puppy-loving, revenge-seeking assassin. COVID-19 restrictions permitting, Chapters 4 and 5 will reportedly be shot back-to-back when film production resumes next year. Over three films, the Wick series has managed to enthrall fans with its unique amalgamation of pulp storytelling and videogame-esque stylized violence — neither of which would be possible without Wick’s expert action choreography, which in recent years has reinvented the genre....

By now you should already be familiar with the concept behind Bring the Noise—inviting top musical acts to perform a brand-new live score to a classic film of their choosing. It’s been a long month, but we’re finally back! Bring the Noise returns next week to LACMA’s Bing Theater on May 11 for yet another one-of-a-kind film screening, this time with electronic indie rock duo Inc. No World reinventing the score to producer Max Fleischer’s 1939 animated adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s fantastical classic, Gulliver’s Travels....

When this year’s Ghetto Film School LA Fellows take their seats in LACMA’s Bing Theater on Friday, for many of them it will be only their second visit to the largest art museum in the western United States. “We take the students to the museum during the summer to introduce them and for a lot of them that’s their first time at LACMA,” said GFS LA Program Coordinator Alvy Johnson....

Narrative Feature Competition John Lian, Associate Producer, Animals Jennifer Grace Farmer, Executive Producer, Animals Castille Landon, Executive Producer, I Believe in Unicorns Mayuran Tiruchelvam, Line Producer, The Mend Documentary Feature Competition Aaron I. Naar, Director, Mateo Narrative Spotlight Jen McGowan, Director, Kelly & Cal Giles Andrew, Producer, Sequoia Scott Ryan, Executive Producer, She’s Lost Control Documentary Spotlight Shannon Muchow, Producer, Doc of the Dead Ryan Moore, Director, Manny Visions Billy Brooks, Associate Producer, Space Station 76 Jon Matthews, Director, Surviving Cliffside Jonathan Schwartz, Producer, The Wilderness of James...

Among other titles, Texas-based producer Liz Cardenas’s credits include Jules of Light and Dark, A Ghost Story and Never Goin’ Back, currently nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards. From journalist to actress to producer, here she talks about how a series of children’s movies starring her own dogs jump-started her career, how building friendships in the film community can lead to future collaborations and how her worn-in Converse tennis shoes help her feel like a producer....

Marisol Medrano and Chelsea Hernandez, producers of the doc Building the American Dream, which premiered at SXSW, discuss the challenges of shooting a film for 10 years, the arduous task of securing grants and prepping a film for its festival premiere, and how a filmmaker’s cultural background, understanding and sensitivities impact a project and its subjects. Marisol Medrano is a graduate from The University of Texas at Austin, and Associate Producer for the Student Academy Award Winner Fatakra....

The January 13 panel—held at The Landmark Theaters, titled “Creating the Visual Language of a Film”—featured Hustlers writer/director Scafaria (The Meddler) and a key member of her creative team, costume designer Mitchell Travers (Eighth Grade, In the Heights), offering insight into the successful creative collaboration required to bring Hustlers to the big screen. The panel was moderated by acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter and Scriptnotes podcaster John August, a friend of Scafaria’s and thoughtful appreciator of the film’s subtly complex construction and execution....

What made you want to tell this story right now? Shaka: The story came out of me very organically. I’ve been in relationships like Lyle and Nina’s before and that was a very keen inspiration for the movie. The neighborhood that I live in now and the neighborhood that I was born and raised in were very big influences. When I first started out I had this relationship story around this substance that I’m very fond of and I also, at times, have questioned it....

Make no mistake: we love talking about our Fiscal Sponsorship-supported projects no matter the time or place. We’d be lying, however, if we said that finding a link unifying the three selections spotlighted in this column each month was always easy. In fact, sometimes it’s a bit sweaty (Erm, maybe they all include characters that eat lunch? Is that a thing?). This month, however, the theme is crystal clear: moms....

As Pride celebrations continue to motor along through the month of June like a pack of Dykes on Bikes steadily weaving through parade traffic, we thought it best to use this month’s Fiscal Spotlight column to further showcase just a few of the many LGBTQIA+ related projects that Film Independent is happily supporting—from tales of asexual identity, to those of queer communities rising the meet big, existential challenges ranging from death to displacement....

It’d be an understatement to observe that most of us have spent the vast majority of 2020 worrying about our health—our respiratory health, sure, but also our mental health, which arguably has been endangered more widely and on many more fronts than our lungs. After all, the brain is as fragile as it is unknowable, a vast electrical field embedded in gooey gelatin, bound together in a vellum-thin membrane, densely packed into an organ roughly the size of Chipotle burrito....