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If I were to describe to you a movie about urban street crime—about young hustlers dippin’ up the block to rob and steal—the film you’d conjure in your mind probably wouldn’t look or feel too much like Gimme the Loot, writer/director Adam Leon’s 2012 Someone to Watch Award-winning feature debut (also nominated for Best First Feature, ultimately going to Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.) The movie’s charm stems from its complete disinterest in moralizing or, conversely, romanticizing the hardscrabble lives of its characters....

Though its protagonist is played by a standup comic (the very funny Atsuko Okatsuka), who has a cowriting credit on the film, Mike Ott’s Littlerock (which won him the Someone to Watch award in February of 2011) isn’t a comedy. Sure, its loose plot—about a young Japanese woman stranded in a tiny, poor, desert-adjacent community in the deep, sparse, inland part of Los Angeles County—may have the ingredients for a classic fish-out-of-water tale....

CAFÉ SOCIETY A period piece set in the 1930s, Woody Allen’s latest effort seems to be a very 20th century movie. The episodic narrative follows main character Bobby Dorfman (Jesse Eisenberg), the youngest son of a New York City jeweler, on a cross-country odyssey from Brooklyn to glamorous Hollywood, where he lands a job working for his uncle Phil (Steve Carrell), a powerful talent agent, and befriends Uncle Phil’s secretary “Vonnie” (Kristen Stewart)....

Practically overnight the possibilities seemed limitless, and gradually a new cinematic form began to emerge online: the web series, which basically included everything from miniature sitcoms, to sketch comedy, to video essays, experimental film, documentary shorts, pop culture commentary and much, much more. Truthfully, “web series” doesn’t describe a single genre or medium as much as it describes an entire technology. And much like television a half century earlier, short-form web-only content has only slowly begun to receive the proper attention and accolades....

Why, then, does there seem to be a lack of great networking and development resources for emerging docuseries creators? Enter Film Independent’s third annual Docuseries Intensive—a three-day remote workshop starting today, aiming to give filmmakers the tools and access need to develop and present their nonfiction series to potential collaborators, broadcasters and distributors. Supported by Founding Sponsor CNN Original Series (Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy), the Intensive helps Fellows walk away with a deeper understanding of the industry through executive and peer mentorships, creative workshopping and industry networking....

Modeling This is the process of creating digital representations of the geometry of an object; think of it as defining the shape of something. Many times when reviewing a model, you’ll see it as a simple gray shaded object. Texture/Lookdev This is where you define the color, textural detail and material properties of something. In other words, what makes that table look like wood, what does the wood grain pattern look like, how does it reflect light, etc....

One of the more inexplicable performance events ever presented by Film Independent at LACMA, the evening saw the two-time Academy Award-winning actor (Mystic River, Milk) appearing solo on stage to read excerpts from an unpublished manuscript entitled Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff—purported to have been written by an obscure figure known only as “Pappy Pariah”. Some have speculated that Pappy Pariah is, in fact, a pseudonym for Penn himself....

Only a few weeks removed from its early-September premiere, Sugar has already garnered a large and enthusiastic fan base, many members of whom filled LACMA’s Bing Theater for Film Independent’s An Evening with Queen Sugar event Monday, September 26. The night featured a screening of “By Any Chance”, the fifth episode of Queen Sugar’s currently airing first season, followed by a spirited Q&A featuring Winfrey, DuVernay and cast members Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Rutina Wesley and Kofi Siriboe, moderated by Film Independent at LACMA curator Elvis Mitchell....

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief is the full title of Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s recent documentary. Both Gibney and Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who wrote the book on which the film is based, were on hand for the event. The film was rumored to be a sensational outing of a religion long cloaked in secrecy. And while the doc was a take-down of a corrupt institution, Gibney spent a large portion of the Q&A not trashing Scientology, but championing the individuals who had the strength to leave it....

Not in L.A.? Not a problem! This year’s Forum returns in a hybrid format, bringing a robust lineup of events to emerging filmmakers and cinephiles the world over. In addition to what we’ve shared about the program kicking off in person on Monday, October 24, the Forum will continue with a jam-packed week of virtual and livestream panels, case studies, workshops and a plethora of networking opportunities! Here is the full Forum Schedule and below are the three livestreamed events that we can’t wait to share with you!...

Based on the success of the film, we asked Levin for her thoughts on the making of Runoff and she came back with what she called “a semi-confessional list.” You know you’re an independent filmmaker when… Your edit bay is three feet from your bed. Your partner is jealous of your relationship with Alexa. You thought honeywagon was a type of breakfast cereal. Uncle Lester keeps asking, “When are you going to cut the crap and get your real-estate license?...

Last night, the Film Independent at LACMA screening series presented its very first world premiere with Tim Burton’s Big Eyes, which will open Christmas Day. Burton and stars Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz were in attendance. (Industry legend Harvey Weinstein was beaming in the audience.) And Film Independent curator Elvis Mitchell moderated a Q&A after the movie. Adams stars as Margaret Keane, an artist whose paintings of waifs with big eyes gained massive popularity in the ’50s and ’60s....

DI, or “color-grading,” occurs in post-production. Here, regardless of whether you’re using a complicated suite of digital techniques at a high-end Hollywood color grading facility or simply the tools available on prosumer editing programs, the colors of your film are enhanced, fine-tuned and adjusted to cement the film’s visual aesthetic. As most would argue, the DI finishing process enhances your film’s identity to a profound extent and is a crucial step toward making a visually striking motion picture....

1. When asked how it felt to win Best Director in 2011, Black Swan’s Darren Aronofsky said what? a. “F’in fantastic.” b. “F’in shocking.” c. “F’in cold.” 2. Michelle Williams, in her 2012 thank you speech for the Best Female Lead award called the people in the room a. “heroes and heroines” b. “misfits, outcasts, loners, dreamers, delinquents, drop-outs“ c. “my dawgs” 3. Whose shoes? a. Bryan Cranston’s b. Aaron Paul’s c....

The four-month long Incubator project consists of workshops and one-on-one meetings with industry professionals—including story analysts, casting directors and line producers. The goal is to accelerate the development of eight-10 selected narrative feature film projects that can be produced for $2.5 million or less. The program begins in September and culminates with a pitch session in December 2014, when JuntoBox Film executives will greenlight at least one of the program’s projects to be financed and produced in the spring of 2015....

Tomorrow host Aubrey Plaza will be onstage inside the big Spirit Awards tent on the beach in Santa Monica, waving her @evilhag wand to magically turn approximately one-fifth of our Spirit Award nominees into bona fide Spirit Award winners. And guess what? We’re here today to let you know the best way to keep up with this year’s festivities as they’re happening. You don’t want to miss what Plaza may be cooking up or any of the delightfully awkward banter between our stellar lineup of 2019 Spirit Award presenters—including Taraji P....

In preparation for a film shoot, the director’s tasks are myriad; everything from laboring to draw storyboards to bulk-buying Poland Spring bottles and Nature Valley bars at Costco. It’s strange then that so many filmmakers—veterans and newbies alike—take such a laissez faire attitude toward performance. It’s not enough to simply hire talent. A director’s job is to negotiate their performers’ disparate processes into a total cohesive organism. And like a carpenter whose work belt sags under an arsenal of calipers and clamps, a good director shows up to set with all of their tools in place and ready to go....

This week, tag along as future President Barack Obama and a young lawyer named Michelle go on their first date across Chicago’s South Side in the summer of 1989. THE FILM Type: Dramatic Feature Writer/Director: Richard Tanne Producers: Tika Sumpter, Richard Tanne, Robert Teitel Budget: $1.5 million Financing: Foreign Pre-sales/Private Equity Production: 17 days, July 2015 Shooting Format: ARRI Alexa Screening Format: DCP World Premiere: Sundance 2016 Distributor: Miramax/Roadside Attractions Website: www....

But being nominated is particularly exciting for young, up-and-coming filmmakers not yet inoculated against the pomp and circumstance of awards season. For newer creators, a Spirit Awards nomination can be a key piece of career validation—proof that all those frenzied days and sleepless nights have all been worth it. In fact, the Film Independent Spirit Awards feature multiple categories designed specifically to recognize the achievements of such fresh-faced auteurs—Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay and the John Cassavetes Award, presented to the creative team of a film budgeted at less than $500,000....

Now, we’ve been asked to help review an innovative idea launched by another friend of the United Nations, Chideo, which partnered with the UN on its recent World Humanitarian Day. Chideo is a digital platform created by Todd Wagner (2929 Productions, Magnolia Pictures) designed to raise money for causes that celebrities care about. Here’s how it works: fans make suggestions to celebrities about what exclusive content that they’d like to see....