State of the Fest | Part one: Do festivals matter? - The Circuit
In the pantheon of viable choices for getting your film seen, film festivals continue to thrive (seems there’s a new one born every minute, right?), and that’s because, putting aside economic factors for the moment, film festivals still provide the perfect environment [...]

To continue my tail of un-hiring woes, we must first go back a few months to the first time I drove Geoffrey Gilmore around.
As I said in summation, driving Geoffrey around brought me a lot closer to Paul Cohen, an independent distributor1 who is the business side of show business in one man.
I guess I [...]

I loved this movie. It was by far my favorite film at Full Frame. I’ve noted before how I’m on the fence about going into narratives or docs. This proved you can accomplish both.
Following four high school seniors, American Teen was like watching all the best high school classics - Sixteen Candles, Fast Times, Risky [...]

Remember almost a year ago when I got that job to run the school’s TV station? Well that ended. I got fired (sort of). By 30 people.
For a little recap, I got hired as the General Manager of the on-campus TV station. The station was a mess - no consistent schedule, terrible PSAs played between [...]

HBO Documentaries: Documentary Films Series: The Blacklist: Synopsis
Previously mentioned The Blacklist is now playing on HBO. Schedule here.
Definitely worth a watch once you think of it as a collection of moving portraits (Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, the director, is a portrait photographer).
Coincidentally, I started watching Thinking XXX to discover it’s also directed by Greenfield-Sanders and his [...]

TWiT Live - Live Netcasts from TWiT with Leo Laporte and Friends.
If you’re bored Thursday, I’m interviewing Leo Laporte. But in a documentary first (?), he’s going to be broadcasting the interview online through his TWiT Live show.
So who will be interviewing who? Find out. Tune in at 11a Pacific, 2p Eastern at http://twitlive.tv.

Peter Shankman’s “If I Can Help a Reporter Out”
This is a very cool site for both sides of the story - the writer/documentarian and source. There’s two parts to HARO.
The main part is where anyone can sign up for the mailing list. A few times a day you get an email with a list of [...]

Thesis films are over. And as far as film school films go, we’ve shot our last frame. Hopefully these won’t be the last films we make.
The realization that this was the end hit me when I was walking to the final location on my set. Perhaps that’s why things dragged on and we went into [...]

I know I just finished writing about my adventures with Gilmore, but that happened a few months ago.
Well, Geoffrey is back and I’m driving him around again. I’ve gone up from a Dodge Caravan to a giant Suburban (9 MPG!).
Stay tuned, because more adventures are about to happen.
(And a shout out to all the film [...]

This is the last adventure that involves driving Geoffrey Gilmore (the Director of the Sundance Film Festival) around Tallahassee, Diet Cokes, private jets, The Visitor, tea, a 4 AM flight, and of course, coffee. Part one Part two, Part three, and Part four.
Saturday I got a little taste of the “geography is not a factor” [...]