There’s an anecdote about getting hired to work in film. It goes something like this: Hiring person says to the candidate, “You want to be on my crew? Tell me about a time where you really messed up on set. How’d you handle it?” Candidate response, “Well, I’ve never messed up.” “Well then, you’re fired,” says the hiring manager. “You have no place on my crew if you’ve never messed
Last weekend, I was on a panel about women film at the 2018 Longleaf Film Festival. Our Women in Film panelists shared some powerful ideas, lifted each other up, and sparked great conversations. Thank you each for participating. pic.twitter.com/KbHZccRhJa — LongleafFilmFestival (@LongleafFF) May 12, 2018 During the panel we got into some really great conversations, one of which was about failure. It’s a common conversation among filmmakers and creatives because
I’ve listened to this audio so many times. When David Shiyang Liu put out the typographic video of Ira Glass talking about storytelling, I got a little obsessed. I wasn’t the only one; it got shared and shared repeatedly a few years ago. Today I rediscovered it, and wanted to share again with y’all. Because the message is still really relevant and the video is (to me) timeless in its
I wear a necklace with a triangle on it. Since some people have been asking about the triangle and what it means, I thought you might be curious, too. I bought the necklace in 2016 to celebrate milestones in running the TriFilm Society. It’s important, IMHO, to celebrate your accomplishments because life itself – never mind chasing your dreams – is incredibly challenging. The TriFilm Society is something I started
Making AK taught me so much. Some of these lessons are new, some are repeat reminders. I’m thankful for all of them. 1. Go make a movie. You learn more by doing than overthinking. I highly recommend to anyone interested in filmmaking to simply start making movies. Use what you’ve got, even if it’s the smartphone in your back pocket. (One of my movies is an iPhone documentary, which I
Last year, you heard me talk about a short film AK. If you’re curious what’s happened with it since, this blog post is for you. Wanna skip to the end? The long and short of it is this: we’re working on a means to screen the finished piece locally sometime soon. I’ll share more details about that when things are more finalized. What’s AK? AK is the shortened title of the
Why do I take questions? I get requests from fellow filmmakers pretty frequently. People invite me to lunch, drinks, or coffee often to “pick my brain” about what I’ve learned in the 10 years of making movies. But … it’s tough to accommodate everyone. It’s even more impossible to distill all that I’ve learned into one short meeting. That’s why I blog and it’s why I formed the TriFilm Society. (Read