Fabio. Cher. Dracula. From bloodsuckers to Oscar-winning chanteuses to jacked-up Milanese pigeon-pulverizers, there’s always been something inherently powerful about an individual who can be identified by a single name. The same goes for film characters and the single mononymic movie titles they inspire—from the Serpicos and Salomés of yesteryear, to the Manks, Creeds and Carols of recent vintage. In fact, a great single-name film title can serve the dual purpose of foregrounding your lead character as well as tidying up your project’s SEO....

And really, finishing your film is just the start of the journey. In the lead-up to securing distribution, our fiscally sponsored filmmakers have been premiering at festivals left and right, marketing and promoting their films and working hard to build and engage with audiences, all of which takes—you guessed it—money! The fundraising effort doesn’t stop once the picture is locked, and Film Independent Fiscal Sponsorship works with filmmakers throughout the entire lifecycle of their projects, from development to distribution and beyond....

Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program opens the door to nonprofit funding for independent filmmakers and media artists. The projects and makers participating in the program express a uniqueness of vision, celebrate diversity and advance the craft of filmmaking through the creation of these special works. To see the full range of projects that are part of our program, visit our Sponsored Projects page. If you’re already part of our Fiscal Sponsorship program and you have a production milestone you’d like to see in the next post, please email us....

This is where all of you as filmmakers can get in front of 850 million and there is no-one who can stop you from getting that content up… And filmmakers that do that old model of ‘I’m going to make my short and I’m running around to film festivals,’… it seems crazy to me that anyone’s doing that any more. -Allen DeBevoise, Chairman and CEO, Machinima, Inc. The [web] audience is ginormous, and I think it means incredible things for [independent filmmakers]....

In this special guest post, 2021 Project Involve Fellow Charmaine Cleveland talks about her experience of the program, which resulted in the production of Dear Mama, based on her original script. Directed by Winter Dunn, the film screened at SXSW and won the NAACP Image Award for Best Short Film, among other honors. Writing is often considered a lonely and solitary craft. Couple that with the fact that 2020 brought with it an even bigger wave of loneliness, amid the COVID-19 pandemic and curfews from mass protests....

We’re re-posting here to draw further attention to Hutton’s Company 3 Filmmaking Handbook—just one example of a creator’s attempt to standardize a specific set of protocols to ensure film crew safety, communication and well being. “There is only one rule: If you are sick, heartbroken, or exhausted, go home. This job is not more important than your well being.” In the not-too-distant world of Noah Hutton’s Lapsis the forests of New Jersey are overrun with independent contractors engaged in “cabling”—an esoteric system of competitive power-grid rewiring whose overworked practitioners falsely assume might be an easy way to score a quick buck....

At first, everything is dark. You look down and see your hands represented by outlines. You look up and see stars. No, you haven’t been conked on the head in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. You’re at The Portal, Film Independent’s second-year XR and immersive storytelling showcase. And over the weekend, attendees of all ages and technological acumen milled throughout LMU’s new School of Film and Television in Playa Vista, donning headsets and navigating various realities of a virtual, augmented or mixed nature....

I miss the community that accompanies sitting in a dark room for an hour or two surrounded by complete strangers. Strangers who embark on the uniquely shared but silent conversation that is watching storytelling unfold in the cinema. Every filmmaker wants to see their work on the big screen with an engaged audience. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crowd of five or five hundred. Putting your work (yourself) out there and having a dialogue about the message behind the medium makes the trials and tribulations of this industry melt away....

But few of these challenges are as progressive as the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, which stands apart from similar competitions both for its inclusion-focused conceit—each participating filmmaking team must include at least one member with a disability, either in front of or behind the camera—as well as for its amazing list of prizes and awards. Founded in 2014 by actor, producer and comedian Nic Novicki, the challenge is—as Novicki sees it—an opportunity to encourage people with disabilities to create more of their own content, as well as provide greater exposure to disabled talent....

The most committed audience members at last night’s screening of La Bamba at Union Station donned everything from stylish pompadours to bright red lipstick and red bandanas to celebrate the 1987 iconic film about rock-and-roll star Ritchie Valens. LA Film Fest Latin American programmer Hebe Tabachnick kicked off the evening by welcoming the at-capacity crowd and Dance Camera West dancers who taught the audience the steps to dance along to the film....

Simien went back to his cubicle and created a Twitter account. “Dear white people,” he tweeted, “the ‘Single Ladies’ dance is dead.” Last night’s Directors Close-Up, the last one of this year’s program, featured Simien, Dear White People’s editor Phillip J. Bartell, composer Kathryn Bostic and cinematographer Topher Osborn. Los Angeles Film Festival Director Stephanie Allain, who also produced the movie, moderated the panel, which focused on the film’s unique approach to storytelling across multiple platforms—starting with the @DearWhitePeople Twitter account....

“One thing some filmmakers do is they don’t fully disclose things to their brokers, which is not a good idea,” says Callif. “You want your broker to fully understand what you’re doing, what you’re shooting and the circumstances around it because you don’t want to have coverage that doesn’t actually protect you. Watch Lisa Callif explain the basics of production insurance: What insurance you’ll need and why you need it are just a few of the questions Callif tackles in Film Independent’s monthly video blog LEGAL EASE....

“It’s so good to be back. It’s just so much more fun than directing movies,” Jason Reitman pronounced as he took his seat on stage last night for the Live Read of the Sam Mendes 1999 film American Beauty at Film Independent at LACMA— the first Live Read of the season. “I can’t even begin to tell you.” “This is not recorded tonight,” Jason explained for the Live Read newbies in the sold-out house....

Cuban-born Director and Producer Sonia Machado-Hines (short films Hapshepsut, Karbouj and LA, It’s Contagious) came by her film career via a rather unlikely route. She had already been a successful career and life coach for many years before she was inspired to step behind the camera. With her coaching business focused on entertainment professionals–and the fact that her husband is actor Terence Bernie Hines (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Marcus in Motion)–she soon found herself thinking about getting into the business as well....

Having just nabbed 10 prizes at the British Independent Film Awards (“BIFA”) and recently nominated for five Golden Globes, Greek editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis’ latest project—unpredictable royal intrigue tragi-comic period piece The Favourite—is making a huge splash as awards season heats up. Mavropsaridis and director Yorgos Lanthimos go way back to the latter’s early commercial work, with Marvropsardis editing all of the critically acclaimed Lanthimos’s feature films to date, including 2015’s The Lobster and 2017’s Film Independent Spirit Award nominated The Killing of a Sacred Deer....

“You never know where the next great story will come from.” That’s how Alex Brunner, Deputy Chief Operating Officer at Exclusive Media, parent company of Spitfire Pictures, describes the idea behind The Spitfire Documentary Project. The project kicked off in September, when Tongal and Spitfire launched an experiment/competition based on the concept of “creative populism.“ The goal was to find the next great story with the potential of becoming the next great documentary feature film....

Movie lovers of all stripes can be found at the downtown Regal Theater at LA Live this week during the LA Film Fest. We showed up at a screening of Catching the Sun, to see who we would find, where they’re from, what brought them to the Festival, and while we’re at it,… What movie would you love to have been cast in? “Black Swan” —Margarita, 19, Russia What bought her to LA Film Fest: She wants to be a director....

And in 2022, no camera is quite so ubiquitous as the smartphone, even though we don’t always think of them exclusively as such. But consider this—today, the average non-filmmaker civilian is going about their routine with more advanced cinema tech jangling around in their pocket than Orson Welles had to make all of Citizen Kane. And when you put that kind of firepower in the hands of creators as talented as 2022 Global Media Makers Fellows Archana Borhade, Anup Poudel and Sriram Raja, remarkable things tend to happen....

The 2015 Los Angeles Film Festival is looking a lot closer now that we’re on this side of the New Year! The official submission deadline is today, but if your film still isn’t quite ready, there’s still some time before the late deadline on January 30, so send us your movie! (And if you need even more time, Film Independent Members get the exclusive late deadline of February 10.) Ten of the films from the 2014 Festival have already sold, and many others have been making the rounds on the festival circuit....

So Film Independent dedicated our Filmmaker Tuesday event this week to location education with Rick Surad, a location manager who’s worked in both film (God Bless America) and television (Sons of Anarchy and The Newsroom). “Seminars like these are important basically because some people don’t know the rules or what to expect and they’ll have a false sense of reality,” said Surad, who covered everything from brainstorming the ideal location, to finding it, securing it and even leaving it....