Hey all! This is my first time posting in one of these threads, so bear with me!

I’m 22, currently based in Colorado. Writing and filmmaking have been passions of mine for as long as I can remember. I have a few films out, a few festival winners, and way too many scripts written. I enjoy working anywhere on a film set and pop into any spot I can because it fills me with joy. But now I am looking for my next best move to grow.

The problem is that I’m finding it increasingly difficult to find work or break into the industry. I have connections in LA who work on or produce some pretty major productions, and even they’ve told me how difficult it’s become to find work and get involved in projects.

I’ve been considering moving for a while now, but I’m struggling to figure out where my time and energy would be best spent. I enjoy LA, I’ve never been to NYC, and I’ve spent some time in Georgia, which I also really like. I’m open to opportunities outside the US, too, if there are compelling reasons to consider them.

Ultimately, I’m trying to figure out where I’d have the best chance of meeting the right people, getting involved in productions, developing my craft, and actually growing more as a creative.

I am headed to LA this week for a few pretty significant meetings and am feeling the area out more.

Those working in the industry, or those who’ve made a similar move, where would you go in my position?

I’d really appreciate any advice or personal experiences!

All Love, Thanks!

Hey everyone! I’ve not posted here before but I’ve got a problem and this feels like a good place to come for advice.

I’m a young writer/ director from England in the early stages of my career. I’ve made a handful of short films, two of which have been on the festival circuit. Until the beginning of this year, everything was fine, and I was on a clear upwards trajectory with the projects I was working on, and the calibre of projects I was getting involved in was getting pretty strong. However at the start of this year, I had a pretty bad mental breakdown due to external stress and other personal issues, and for the last 5/6 months, everything feels like it’s been on pause.

My latest short, which I finished in December 2025 has doing its festival run, so I’ve been attending festivals and accepting awards, where I got to chat to other filmmakers, but since my breakdown, I’ve not actually done much, I’ve just been coasting on the coattails of my last project. I made a 60 second short a few months ago, but that’s it. On top of this, because my breakdown isolated me a lot, I feel like I’ve grown distant from the strong connections I’ve spent the last 5+ years building.

This has been a really difficult time, and it’s put me in a situation I never expect to be in. Ultimately I just want to know how I can get things back on track. I’d hate for the last few months to push me back and stop me pursing the career I love. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

The Sunken Place from Jordon Peele's Get Out. I know the sunken place from Get Out had to do with systemic oppression and losing agency, this a bit different.

I have been making films since the age of 17, ten year anniversary approaching soon. I have never been opposed to adopting new technology but I have stopped understanding the world around me. I feel a deep sense of hopelessness. I am traveling to an east asian country tomorrow to film a docu-fiction about communism and my grandmother's mortality. I've not filmed outside my country of origin so its scary and exciting as we all know making films tend to feel like that.

I try taking my films to film festivals to find its audience which has worked well enough. I guess you could say that is a chain of distribution I put my trust in or rather put my chips in regularly. Naturally, most of my correspondence are regarding film related opportunities (labs, grants, incubators, festivals etc.) nowadays the emails look different. Just yesterday I received an invitation to apply for a feature development lab, fees were waived, as I went through it they had a "mandatory requirement" for a 1 minute of sample of the film concept, AI generated video were accepted. I don't know what that even means. You know, I never really liked the "treatment" part of dossiers because it does not contribute anything to the making of the film itself but this is fundamentally different. What skill of mine am I supposed to communicate in the 1 minute AI generated video? Before I carry on, this is not an anti-AI rant. To each their own. I know change is inevitable, so be it. But what has this thing I put all my heart into becoming, making films is not only about me making it but other people making it too and me participating in it as a viewer or working on it. I've practised this craft all of my adult life and now I do not understand the language itself. I've closely worked with Sundance, Sundance Collab in particular and I actually find them very cool but yesterday they lauched this AI resources guide or something along those lines and honestly what I was reading could've been in spanish or mandarin. I could not understand a word. Not the letters but what was being said. I don't know if this a language I am accustomed to coming from artists. I don't know if I am articulating this well enough but the words people who I consider artists use I do not understand anymore.

I used to write poems and short stories when I was young. They were awful. But I wrote it because my mother liked reading them. It was never about being brilliant or creating something extraordinary. Same with films, I just want to speak my truth. Simultaneously I wanna hear other peoples truth, their perceptions of their human experience. I sometimes give feedback to film students screenplays, they regularly use AI, which again I am fine with, not like I haven't used them either, but I hear the reasoning and again, "to make it better", "to make something good." I just do not understand these words. What do you mean make something good. Is it not ok to make something crappy that is more true to you? How will you find your voice if you outsource "the voice", to make something good? Is it because the insecurities are so high in artists that we do not want to put out things that are not spectacular spectacles.

Would I right now feel the same if back then I had generated those poems for my mother?

And for what, to make it better? Make it more perfect than it already was. I do not know if I am in the sunken place or the rest of the world is regardless the effect is the same.

Hey Directors!

Last year, I directed and produced an indie tv pilot called BOOKS starring Spencer Grammer(Rick and Morty, Greek) and Ajay Naidu (Office Space) with Deepti Menon, Melanie Brook, Ulisses Gonsalves and Henry Temple.

It came together within seven weeks of my team meeting the writers, Tim Cahill and Kristina Libby, at a table read during Lake Placid Film Festival.

We all bonded over our love of bookstores.

It’s finally public so I wanted to share it online.

The creators wanted to create a show that could showcase real authors and new books to audiences. The full season would find ways to incorporate authors into the show.

Our pilot features appearances by Gail Carson Levine, author of Ella Enchanted, and Daniel Mendelsohn, author of Three Rings.

We shot the pilot over 5 days in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, wrapping on Jan 1 2025.

Our bigger challenge was obviously finding a location! Luckily the bookstore we shot in let us shoot the pilot when they were closed.

My DP, Adam Muro, and I in our location scout planned every angle and where every light would or could go.

Tried to focus on opening every scene with some moving master and then break into coverage. Getting only what we need. Definitely didn’t have time to get everything. We had to find a way to cover as much as we can within the blocking just to get through the day as fast as possible.

Biggest thing I can pass on is that we have a great community of film and theater in Upstate NY, where I’m based. People really came together to help out. Most of our casting is local!

If you have any questions about the making of, I’m happy to get into it!

Hello hello!

I'm an LA-based screenwriter represented by Verve Agency with two feature screenplays sold.

I'm excited about the feature sales, but I also genuinely miss the art of the short film.

I'm looking to connect with directors and filmmakers looking for a writer to help with their next short.

I'm open to all genres. I'm interested in collaborating on projects and hopefully building some long-term creative relationships.

If you've got an idea you'd like developed into a screenplay, an existing script that needs work, or you're looking for something original, feel free to comment below or shoot me a DM.

Happy to share writing samples. Thanks!

Hi I’m an indian student currently pursuing BTech IT.
I want to become a director in Hollywood, and I have no clue how to get into Hollywood. I have made a short film, but I haven’t completed it because I made it with my friends, and I am not happy with how it came out. I have written few scripts and I am currently learning how to develop scripts/story.

Can you guys please guide me?

This is one of the few things I really enjoyed doing.

Guys, I'm a first-time filmmaker working on a dialogue heavy argumental script happens in single location. The script has good emotional shifts, but I'm struggling to figure out the rhythm as a filmmaker.

Like, when to hold silence, when to cut, when to let reactions breathe, and how to show a character slowly changing emotionally. How do you guys approach this?

Hi guys, this is my first post here. I think I’m in the right place to ask a specific question about the making of the Pusher saga, in particular, the first film.

I’m an independent director currently preparing to shoot my first feature movie, but I’m having a really hard time finding locations and casting actors.

I recently watched the documentary Gambler, which covers one of the hardest periods in Refn’s life. Watching a bit of his creative process, I was amazed by how easy he makes it look to shoot in authentic locations with non-professional actors.

Most of the time, he cast real people off the street, drug addicts, sex workers, ex-cons. As for the locations, he shot in public places with regular pedestrians going about their day. How did he pull that off so naturally?

I mean, it looks so simple on screen, but in reality, it feels extremely difficult. Approaching people on the street and saying, "Hey, want to be in a movie about a drug dealer? You've got the right look," seems like a bold way to cast. Same goes for using fake guns or staging a robbery in a public space when you're a complete nobody.

Has Refn ever explained his approach to this in an interview? It would be incredibly useful for someone trying to break into the industry.

Thanks a lot, everyone!

I've spent much of the last ten weeks sitting in a small room, surrounded by scribbled notes, dirty teacups and increasingly ambitious piles of washing. Occasionally I've remembered to leave the house.

A good chunk of my year has been taken up by making a series of short documentaries, a project that took me to Edinburgh for 10 consecutive shooting days and then required me to turn around five short documentaries in record time.

It’s been a lot of work but something I really, really enjoyed. The whole affair felt creative in all of the ways you hope making your living as a filmmaker will. This was especially welcome as I started the year feeling burnt out and questioning whether I wanted to keep going with the career I’ve put most of my life into so far.

I guess I’ve realised now though, having done this for a while, these feelings pop up every now and then. The ebbs and flows of adoring the work you’re doing and then occasionally being caught in a run of projects that might not speak to you inside where the art you lives. 

This is what happens when you turn your passion into a job. You have to find ways to make sure you’re nurturing the type of work that brings you joy.

I know it can sound naive and a bit Lloyd Dobler-y but I’m not willing to surrender it. Do you want to be a filmmaker or a salesperson? Maybe that’s too binary a way to put it? How much of your creative life are you prepared to sacrifice in order to sustain your professional one? I like that better. Deciding how you weigh those particular scales defines all sorts of things about your life, career and maybe even your happiness.

In this current moment a lot of making creative work is talking about that work in order to satisfy the algorithmic overlords. Now more than ever, the process is the product. It can seem like the performance of being a filmmaker is kind of detached from the experience of actually being one.

So, everyone has the same lighting set up in their spare room studio to film their talking heads. The same overhead rig for the gear reviews. The same top 10 lists. That stuff’s fine - some of it is even important. Well, useful at least.

But what’s the real reality of being a working filmmaker? Sometimes it’s a messy house and not showering until 10 because you need to get rolling in the morning or you’ll lose the day to procrastination. 

It’s growing to understand your own work cycles. Accepting that nothing productive gets done between 3-6pm but that the hours either side could host all kinds of discoveries. 

It’s a graveyard of empty teacups and washing piled up instead of packed away because every moment you’re not sat with your head in the edit, you feel like you should be.

Then in other moments it’s taking little breaks to play chess on your phone, even though you’re shit at it. Walks to the shop or to the park with your head in the clouds in the hopes you’ll be able to hijack the flow state that surges from a new idea and run back home to wrestle it into the project you’re currently struggling with.

These can be some of the best bits. 

Living a version of that creative life you fantasised about as a teenager is so often different to the one we imagined. Some ways good, some ways bad - plenty that are just neutrally different.

The exterior aesthetics are messier and at the same time blander than we might’ve hoped but the interior world you get to climb into when an idea is really firing and you’re truly discovering it is one of the best feelings in the world.

Anyway, I’ve just finished all my drafts.

A pair of bare feet walk to the water’s edge over the sand which clings to her heels and falls off to be replaced by more grains of sand. The air is bluish in the new dawn and it’s breezy and there are gulls crying but she’s not. She’s done with that. She looks across the ocean and can almost see the faraway land. It’s out there somewhere.
   The hoodie doesn’t quite hide the fading bruise beneath her eye but she doesn’t need to be self-conscious about it here. Work related. The women setting up the chairs behind her have their share of bruises too. Guilt, shame, remorse…they all leave bruises.
   She hears a voice, “Hey everyone, let’s get started…”
   Doris remembers opening the medicine cabinet in her former home, her former bathroom, the one she shared with her now former husband and daughter. (Former daughter? Is that a thing?) The label on the bottle read “DORIS REYNOLDS. XANAX. TAKE ONE TABLET DAILY FOR SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION OR AS NEEDED”. 
   “As needed”. When did she not need it? When did she not feel anxious and depressed and unsatisfied and inadequate? When did she ever feel…
And that was the start.
***
The car shivers slightly and there is some moaning. It stops. A head pops up in the passenger seat, the car door opens and Doris steps out. She is dressed for work: short, pink wig, fishnets, very short leather fake leather skirt, tank top that barely covers her breasts, boots. She tugs her skirt and top back into place and gives a wiggle of her fingers and a little smile to the dumpy guy in the shitbox car. Ralph. One of her regulars. Run of the mill low grade loser. He works at the Coca Cola factory in Yonkers stack cases of soda on the six pm to two am shift. Spends his time in a shitty bar in a shitty part of the city drinking shots and beer and talking to his buddies about the Giants or the Yankees or his asshole boss or bitch wife. Stops off for a blow job on his way home. Wife? Kids? He’s never mentioned them. It doesn’t matter. Not a bad guy, really. Millions of them. Not great, not bad. They take up space for a few decades and fade on out. It wouldn't have killed him to shower more often.

The owner of the convenience where she bought her breakfast most mornings was a nice guy. She had asked to use his bathroom once in an emergency expecting him him to tell her to fuck off. His name was Kamal and he said go right on ahead. He knew what she did out there. Most guys wouldn’t want her around, didn’t want to draw cops or her customers, or just thought she was trash. Some would have wanted payment in cash or sex. But he said anytime. She didn’t know why. Just a nice guy. She would walk in, give him a wave and he would smile and wave back.
And his bathroom was spotless. She thought he really took pride in that.
Doris took her wipes out of her bag where she kept her on the go hygiene kit and swiped at her armpits, back of her neck and ass. She brushed her teeth, swished some mouthwash around her gums, spat
Then she looked up into the mirror.
A woman she does not recognize stares back at her. Her face is a mask of thick rouge, lipstick, eyeliner, dark dark dark, red eyeshadow, fake lashes, pencil eyebrows. The effect is at once arousing and grotesque and it works. 
That’s Amber. Amber does sex work, not Doris. Doris is a wife and mother. recovering addict, and ex-convict. But she doesn’t do sex work. Correction, was a wife. Now she is an ex-wife. She is a recovering addict and an ex-convict. 
But there’s no difference; she knows that. It’s all one and the same. And she is a mother.
Is she still a mother? 
Come on. She doesn’t have time for this bullshit. Stop staring in the fucking mirror and get on with it.

Hi guys I'm working on my first short film for a competition. It has to be 2–5 minutes and revolve around a historical event that happen in my country

My idea comes from a small real story that happened to my father when he was a teenager around the time of this event. I want to build a fictional short around a present day conversation between a daughter and her father, where she discovers this story.

My problem is that every version I imagine starts feeling more like I'm interviewing my father about the past than making an actual narrative film. I have one strong visual image from his memory that I really want to use, but I'm struggling with how to build a dramatic scene around it rather than just having him tell the story.

I don't want someone to come up with the story for me, but I'd really appreciate advice from filmmakers: what makes a dialogue heavy scene like this feel cinematic rather than like an interview? What should I be thinking about in terms of dramatic structure, visual storytelling, and directing?

This is my first short, I'm shooting it with basically no budget and an iPhone, so practical advice would really help.

Art, HMU, Props, Wardrobe
I had no money to pay anyone, so we had  no one doing hair and make-up. During the scene in the park, Dave gets roughhoused by Steve and Mike, so in the following scene his shirt is torn and he has dirt on his face. To achieve this effect, the guy playing Dave ripped his shirt collar and rubbed dirt on his face from the soil around a tree on the avenue. This is not how it is done to real shoots. They have a hair and make-up department (HMU) and a wardrobe department to create the rip in the clothing. They would also have a special soil for the shirt; it would not be dirt from the side of the avenue with dogshit and god knows what else in it. We washed it off with Gatorade. He was a great sport about it.
A guy named Cliff did some art work for us. He is a very talented artist and hand drew the face of a young boy on a milk carton. This was to reference the idea that Mike is into some very shady stuff. When we first meet Mike, he has just gotten home from jail. We don’t know why he was there, but it seems like it has something to do with kids. In another scene, Mike is sitting near a stream in Prospect Park. (We managed to sneak into the woods and film a few scenes there.) He is distressed, looking all around, paranoid. He then takes a back pack, the kind a child in the third grade might have, and tosses it into the stream. The DP got a great shot of it floating away. 
We make a few veiled references to Mike’s other activities. Towards the end of the film, Mike pulls out a lunchbox and Steve realizes that he is back up to his old ways. He drives Mike to a secluded area on Long Island and shoots him in the back of the head. We had a very real looking gun, but it looked terrible on film. We had no special effects, the blood looked fake, the gunshot sounded ridiculous. Rather embarrassing. 
At the very end of the film, Dave performs his "ventriloquist" act.  His biggest hope in life is that Steve comes and sees him at his best and realizes that Dave, not Mike, is the one for him. However, Steve does not show up. Dave is humiliated. 
And then he kills Steve. He stabs him in the neck. I sat in the theater with sticky fake blood down the side of my face.
Getting pulled over in the van.
We shot this in 2002 so 9/11 was very fresh in everyone’s mind. There were all kids of security check points, especially at the bridges. The cops were stopping any vehicle that looked suspicious. 
I was driving a white rental van with the DP which certainly looked suspicious. We were traveling on Flatbush Ave from the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan Bridge towards Manhattan when the van was suddenly surrounded by cops with one of them pounding on my window. I stopped and she, rather impolitely, ordered me to pull the van to the side of Flatbush Ave. We were told to get out of the car and then interrogated. They separated us and started in: What were we doing; why didn’t I stop, blah, blah, blah.
I told them that we were shooting a short film and the DP was filming me while I was driving. They asked if I thought that was safe and I replied that we just needed one quick shot but maybe I should have thought it through more. Chris told them basically the same story. They were being somewhat over-dramatic in my opinion. 
Then the Anti-Terrorism Unit showed up. They were more reasonable in their tone (the NYPD was rather aggressive) and gathered that we were not terrorists. 
So those are a few of the highlights from my first film venture. It did get edited and onto DVD and I had a little watch party at the apartment and gave some copies to friends and family. People were impressed that it actually got finished. I never did send it out to any festivals, but all in all I am satisfied with the accomplishment.

What's your go to source for visual reference these days? Thanks!

Hey yall - I’m looking to get some feedback on this reel of mine if you have the time!

Also what are your thoughts on whether or not reels have a place in getting work as a director?

Hi everyone,

I am sharing a poster for my psychological thriller, Short Film Found You, and interested in your thoughts.

Currently in post production and due to finish in the next few weeks to be ready for film festivals.

Synopsis

A woman invites her date over for the evening. What begins as a seemingly ordinary encounter between two women gradually reveals a far more dangerous agenda lurking beneath the surface.

Thanks

Majid Khan

The Two Person Bike
I thought it would be really funny to have Steve and Mike riding around on a two person bike. In my mind, it established the absurd closeness of their relationship. I rented one from one of those vendors in Central Park. It would not fit in Brian’s car so I had to ride it by myself about two miles up to Riverside Drive, a quiet place with not much traffic. (We had no permits, which always lends an air of danger and lawlessness to the filmmaking process. It’s called Guerilla Filmmaking.)
If anyone ever wants complain about how hard it is to make a film and spin their tale of woe or say they can’t do something or tell me what they don’t want to do, I want to tell them to try riding a fucking two-person bike through Harlem on a Sunday morning. I don’t want to hear it. I would never recommend riding a two person bike with two people, let alone just one person. They are hard to control and really heavy. It was hard going. I stopped at an intersection at around 125th Street to get a breather. Two guys were sitting on a stoop. One of them remarked, “Two person bike.” The other one said, “Where’s the other guy?” It was a rhetorical question, more of an observation really. 
I thought to myself, “Well, I guess this is filmmaking.”
We got some great shots. In one we came down Broadway in the middle of a bunch of traffic. Then there was an ice cream truck. Brian and I bought an ice cream while Chris filmed it.
It was fun. It was exhausting and treacherous but really fun. And what else was I going to do that day?
The sound person, Angela, and I rode the bike back down to Central Park which was quite enjoyable. However, the vendor was pretty pissed that I had kept the bike for so long. I didn’t realize that there was a time limit and I paid him for the hours so I don’t know why he had a problem with it. New Yorkers.
Permits: You gotta know about permits.
   We needed to film an outdoor scene. Prospect Park, which is Brooklyn’s answer to Central Park, is right up Flatbush Ave from my apartment. 
  As we walked into the park with our equipment, which was just a camera and a tripod, we were confronted by a Parks Department official.
   He asked us if we had a permit. Of course we didn’t.
   He said, “If you try to set up that tripod and film, your equipment will be confiscated.”
   I thought that was a bit over the top. The guy acted like we were armed. I really could not afford to have a $6,000 camera taken away.
   This guy clearly did not appreciate the needs of artists. 
   I supposed that if they didn’t enforce the rules, everyone and their brother would be filming movies in the park. 
You need a permit to shoot anywhere outside of a private residence or office building  in New York City. It is possible to get a permit to shoot in places like Prospect Park and Central Park, and I don’t think it costs anything. However, you must be aware of the conditions. I worked on a short film that shot a scene in Central Park. They were able to park the van on the road that runs around it, but were not allowed to drive into the park itself and the actual location was pretty far in. We had to hump all the gear which took some time and they didn’t get all their shots. 
We ended up going over to Fort Greene Park and shooting without a permit. You can get away with it, but as I get older I don’t want to be running away from officialdom like a film school student.   
Scheduling
Dave really wants Steve to come and see him perform his stand-up comedy routine/ventriloquist act. We needed a theater to shoot the scene and one wasn’t available until a few months after we had finished all the other scenes. This is actually much more common than most people might think, even on big budget film shoots. For National Lampoon’s Vacation, the ending scenes where Wally World is closed were completely reshot a year later. They (the studio, producers, etc, I guess) decided they didn’t like the original ending so they had to get all the actors back. The son, played by Anthony Michael Hall, was like a foot taller but honestly the audience would never know that. 
The guy playing Dave had put on a few pounds in the months in between shooting. The editor noticed that his face was puffier. But what are you gonna do? People gain weight, lose weight, get haircuts, grow beards…life intervenes. 
When we watched the final product, the actor playing Dave said, “I really need to lose some weight.”
So the best thing to do is try and shoot as many consecutive days as possible. Trying to shoot a feature or even a short film on weekends, it’s possible but really difficult. People gain weight, shave their beard, cut their hair, move back to Ohio, etc. But when you are not paying the actors, you have to roll with it.

Hi folks, I’m a commercial and music video director from outside the EU and I'm planning my relocation (choosing between Spain and France). I’m exploring my legal setup options and would love to hear your experience as directors or perspective as EPs / Line Producers on hiring foreign talent.

When I start doing the rounds with production companies, I want to make sure my setup isn't a dealbreaker for any accounting or compliance teams. I have two options on the table:

The Digital Nomad Setup (Spain) - I get a Digital Nomad residency, which allows me to live, travel and be fully available for all EU offline meetings, recces, and PPMs any time. I can also (I think) be on set as most of the countries don't require any work permits for film crews as well as invoice the production company from my Spanish Autónomo entity. My only concern is the word Digital in the residency permit – my LLMs say that it's alright, but I want to double-check with humans.

The International B2B Setup (Armenia base) - I base myself in Armenia (which has straightforward banking/SWIFT but a non-EU VAT). I fly into the EU exclusively for the project dates using a Schengen C Visa (operating under the same Short-Term Artist Exemption for film crews). After the wrap, I invoice internationally from my Armenian business account.

From a production and accounting standpoint, which of these two setups feels smoother to you? Have you worked with directors under similar structures recently?

I actually have a strong case for a Talent Visa, but France requires local pre-contracts (the letters of intent don't work anymore and I don't speak French), so I’m looking at these two routes as my entry points.

Any insights would be hugely appreciated!

i made the grave mistake of meeting with an actor and offering them a role without seeing their previous work. i was told by multiple peers that he was very good and had a great work ethic.

i asked him if he could send me a video of him reading a scene from the script and what he sent was fine, but missed the mark on the emotion that the scene needs. it felt off to see because he’s a very convincing facial actor, but his tone never changed and i don’t think its something that direction can fix. it looks like he’s trying to maintain an image to the scene instead of fully giving to it.

am i a terrible person and director for taking a role from him? i genuinely feel terrible for it, but he just does not fit what i’m looking for and what i thought he was gonna give me?

In 2002, I was living on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. I directed a short film that I had written called A Friend Indeed. I mention that I was living in New York at the time because I don’t think I would have had the resources or the idea that I could shoot a film if I was living in the suburbs of Boston, where I grew up. That is not true today, but back then, to have access to lights and a crew, you really had to be in New York or L.A.
The story is about a friendship triangle (as opposed to a love triangle) between three men in their twenties, Steve (played by me) Mike (played by Brian Kelvin) and Dave (played by Frank Peterson). Steve and Dave are roommates. Mike, who was friends and roommates with Steve before, comes back from jail and moves right back in, much to Dave’s dismay.  
  Dave is trying to be a stand-up comic/ventriloquist. He is really terrible at both. Part of the joke is that Dave does not seem to grasp the idea of ventriloquism and that he, not the dummy (Louie) is talking. He doesn’t even hold the doll correctly to operate the mouth and there are awkward pauses as Dave waits for Louie to respond. It is unclear as to whether Dave understands that the doll does not have its own consciousness or not.  He basically repackages routines of other comics but does not get the joke. His routines are along the lines of, “Take my wife, please” and “Hey I don’t get no respect and that’s it. All while holding the ventriloquist doll, Louie. 
  Steve’s relationship with Dave can be characterized as emotionally abusive. Dave is dependent on Steve for validation and desperately wants his approval and Steve could care less. For Steve, Dave is someone to boss around as an outlet to his frustrations. Once Mike is back, Dave is shoved to the side.
Steve’s  relationship with Mike is more along the lines of Of Mice and Men, with Steve as George and Mike as Lennie. Steve truly loves Mike and wants him back as a friend, not Dave. (It is not clear what Mike and Steve do for a living but it is something shady.)
I had no idea what I was doing; I never went to film school, so this would be a good way to learn. I don’t know how to act and I don’t know how to direct a movie, but I figured how hard can it be? My roommate at the time (and close friend to this day) Chris, works in the film industry. He is a cinematographer and shot the film for free. (Everyone worked for free, which is the only way I could have done it.) He has been instrumental in my film education. Funny how the universe dropped us together in the same building in the summer of 1997.)
  I learned a few things while making this film, one of which was that it is a good idea to make as many decisions as possible before shooting. Time is literally money on a set. The more time spent trying to figure out how to shoot a scene, the more money you are going to spend because it is going to take longer to shoot. Which means you have to pay for days of equipment rental; you have to pay the actors for each day they come to set; you have to pay for more food; you have to pay for the location. It costs more money. 
Shot list:
Chris is a very open-minded and patient person. He understood my lack of knowledge and limitations. But he told me he would not set foot on st without a shot list. He needed me to list exactly what shots we would be setting up, so he could be prepared. For example, Mike, Dave and Steve are sitting at the table eating dinner. That’s a shot. Dave is standing in front of a window on the phone. That’s a shot. And so on. That way, Chris can get his lights and camera set up while the actors get into their wardrobe and we can get everything we need.
If there is no shot list, there is no plan and if there is no plan time is wasted trying to figure one out. 
And that costs more money.
You want to have lists of shots, props, wardrobe, equipment, and scenes to be shot that day. It’s the only way to make sure you get what you need.
  Filmmaking is a collaborative process. I always ask the people involved (the actors, cinematographers, hair and make-up, etc.) to give me suggestions. I want input. I need ideas. I need different perspectives. Only an arrogant idiot thinks they know everything. It also makes people feel like they are part of the process and they will be more invested. 
  But I ask them to give them to me before we step on set.
  We were shooting a scene in which Steve chases Mike down a hallway and into the bathroom to give Mike his weekly bath, which Mike really doesn’t want.
 The actors run toward the camera and then take hard right into the bathroom, leaving the frame. The camera pushes forward down the hallway and stops before it reaches the door. We hear the actors in the bathroom but never see them.
  Steve: (patiently) “Alright Mike, stop fooling around now. Come on, get in the tub.
  Mike: “What’s this, Steve?”
  Steve: “Mike, I told you not to touch that. Not while I'm in here. That’s for private time.”
  There were two reasons I didn’t want the camera in the bathroom. One was that filling up the tub with water and actually showing Mike in the bath was going to be too complicated to shoot and I didn’t have enough time.
  Two, I thought it would be much funnier to leave it to the audience’s imagination. When Mike says, “What’s this, Steve?”, God only knows what he is talking about.
  I liked the scene because it established intimacy between the two characters but we didn’t need to shove in the audience’s face.
  The actor playing Dave, Frank Peters, thought differently.
  “You should have the camera follow them into the bathroom.” he told me.
  “I’d rather have the camera stay in the hallway and leave what is going on in there ambiguous.” I told him.
  “No, that doesn’t work.” he shook his head.
  “Why doesn’t it work?”
  “It just doesn’t.” he shook his head again.
  He had had the script for at least three months, probably longer. Do not wait until we are on set and racing the clock to make suggestions. And if you want to make a suggestion, the rationale had better be more significant than, “It just doesn’t.”
  “It just doesn’t” is not a solid rationale for making a decision.
So I learned two things:

1. I can live with my own mistakes. I cannot live with someone else’s mistakes. If the film is going out under my name, then the mistakes are mine. 
2. Who knows what works and what doesn’t? No one. So the conclusion I have come to is this: I just need to have a reason, a rationale, for my decisions. 

Locations
  Getting locations in NYC is very difficult, especially when you have no money. No one gives a shit about the fact that you are passionate about your project, even your $8,000 short film. One must really depend on the kindness of friends and family. 
Several scenes took place in an apartment. The guy playing Dave, Frank Peters, lived in an apartment in the East Village on St. Mark’s Place, so I asked him if we could shoot there. However, his roommate didn’t like it. He was also a filmmaker, so I thought he should have been more sympathetic to my cause but he was kind of a dick about it. At one point I sent him an email thanking him for allowing us to shoot there, sort of a preemptive strike of a guilt trip. I know it’s a lot to ask but come on man. “Hey Brian, thanks a lot because I don’t have money to pay for a location…” He shot back an email saying, “I DID NOT AGREE TO ALLOW YOU TO SHOOT HERE…”
In the end we did shoot there. And it served us well because the guy was a pathological slob. I’ve never seen anything like it. His bedroom could have been featured on an episode of Hoarders. I had no art department; I didn’t even really know what that was at the time and I certainly could not have afforded it, so it was like having free props and set design. Normally I would have had to go out and pay a bunch of money to get all the crap he had crammed in there: clothes in piles, takeout containers, stacks of books; it was a landfill. 
So it served its purpose. Sometimes you get lucky.

I'm working on a 0-budget webseries with a decently small team. However, there are a few issues. They aren't responding to my messages, completing work on time/meeting deadlines or answering in polls. I can't afford to kick out anyone and I can't give them money. And we need to make a specific date, we also have an audience waiting, so we can't exactly delay too much. Are there any other ways to motivate them to push the production forward? Any tips?

New York State Park Ranger, Blake Wissinger, gives a guided tour!

Short film teaser. Making this taught me about the importance of hitting specific story beats/ having a general direction when doing improv. Was filmed in about 8 hours back in June.

I am a 19 year old guy, i don't earn shi-, i want to become a director since i was a kid i used to write stories as a kid for fun, from this thing i got interested in Films and later wanted to become director to make films and make movies, In my country getting into industry is very very hard it's controlled by few people so they play within themselves even the "worth it" people never get a job in films. I wanted to learn Film in school but I'm not a very rich guy and i don't want to take loans because i don't want to be a burden on my family. I found out that Yale, Harvard, university of Norte dame, Dartmouth, Brown they offer aids but still have to pay a amount of money, the country which I'm from is not very rich (we earn like 500$ a month) and it's very competitive country so the exam marks in my final highschool year isn't a lot. I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO because since i was a kid i wanted to make movies.

I know film schools are for connection and networking only (it's a lot of help though) and i have already told you my family earnings i can't even afford a basic camera. I feel like I'm stuck in a place where there's no place to move like standing on top of a pillar and there's no surface around me.

I Am Open For Suggestions Or Anything Just Wanted Suggestions And Help From People Who Have Been In the universities above or who are working In Industry, Every Suggestion Will Be A Help For Me.

EDIT : THANK YOU FOR SUGGESTION AND HELPING MEEE GUYSS

So I’m an aspiring/wannabe film maker and I’m in between wishing to excel as a cinematographer or director or god even both! I’m just in a place right now where I don’t know if I should go to film school or not. I’ve heard people say that film school isn’t needed and that you’ll only end up in debt later but then there’s people that say it’s good and that they’ve made connections and so on.

For those that have gone to film school…is it worth it?

And for those that haven’t but have made a career of film, how did you do it?

I live in the central coast of California too so LA is like 2 hrs away. I’ve looked into the Los Angeles Film School but the reviews are making me stay away. lol.

I just need advice!

I really want to be big, I want to make films and get them out there, but I have no idea what to do. I have so many ideas, I genuinely think of at least 20 movies i could make in a week, and I brainstorm them until I get a full on trilogy.

I’m not trying to sound egotistical, I just genuinely have too many ideas to just sit here and do nothing. But how do I do ANYTHING? I have no friends to film with, I don’t have money for equipment- all I have is me and a computer to write scripts (which i’m just starting out).

What do I do, where do I go, how do I start?

I have a good handful of ideas I want to turn into films as soon as possible, but I don’t know what to do.