“All your horses are a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you might not like what you see there.” -Buck On Friday night I saw the premiere of Buck, the 2011 Sundance Documentary Audience Award winner at the Landmark. This has been a good year for movies, but none has stood out so signifi[...]
Author Archive
June 8th, 2011 - 5:43 pm § in Screenwriting
How To Rewrite
I finished two scripts this quarter and will be moving into some major rewriting this summer. My excellent screenwriting teacher gave us a lecture on it in our final screenwriting class that I found very valuable. I’ve found rewriting difficult because I often started by going through page one[...]
June 3rd, 2011 - 10:20 am § in Film School
Inner Maturity
Making films that move an audience is a very difficult thing to do. It involves a lot of hard work, craft and luck, and often doesn’t turn out the way we hoped. Making and screening a film, something I and my classmates will do next week, is one of the most humbling things a person can [...][...]
May 27th, 2011 - 11:44 am § in Filmmaking
Time Transitions
It’s postproduction season here at UCLA film school and right now I’m wrapping up the picture edit on two short films. During the spring we graduate film students sit in editing classes refining our cuts and figuring out what stories we can tell with the footage we have. Good short films[...]
May 4th, 2011 - 7:31 pm § in Screenwriting
Practicing Your Writing Scales
Right now I’m in the middle of writing one screenplay and rewriting another. One is a dark comedy and the other is a World War 2 drama. They’re very different in tone and scope as you can imagine. I’ve been reading Twyla Tharpe’s excellent book “The Creative Habit”[...]
April 8th, 2011 - 12:05 pm § in Off Topic
An Interview With Francesco Agresti
Francesco Agresti is an abstract painter, teacher of fine arts and a generous donor to my Kickstarter campaign in the fall. I recently sat down with him to discuss his work and his life. Filmmakers can learn from the experience of artists in other fields. We all go through the same difficulties and [...]
April 2nd, 2011 - 8:20 pm § in News
April Cinema 2011
From Richard Parkin, fellow UCLA Directing Candidate. Needed to take March off. April looks really good. Excited about the Made in Austin screenings at the Cinefamily and the Tindersticks/Claire Denis Concert. LACMA’s schedule looked a little incomplete. Check back in with them throughout the [...]
April 1st, 2011 - 12:38 pm § in Opportunities for Filmmakers
Opportunities for Filmmakers: DAAD Artist Study Scholarships
The DAAD is the premiere German Institution offering scholarships to live and study in Germany. For filmmakers they offer one year study scholarships to study at a German university/film school under the following terms: Study scholarships are granted for one academic year (10 months) with the possi[...]
March 6th, 2011 - 10:30 am § in Contemporary Short Films, Filmmaking
UCLA @ SXSW
This year we have two very talented filmmakers from UCLA showing their shorts at SXSW. One is a drama, the other a comedy, one is 10 minutes long, the other is 48 seconds long. It’s a great reminder of the diversity of films that some festivals show. I conducted an interview with the two filmm[...]