Category: Indie Film & Video

Leesa Dean: Adventures of a Web Series Newbie

Chapter 72 – Guerilla Filmmaking
by Leesa Dean

This week I had planned to attend two YouTube workshops and ended up blowing both of them off. Why? Instead, I took a 3 day, 21 hour online course with Ryan Connolly called Guerilla Filmmaking held by Creative Live. It was intense. And GREAT!guerilla

Ryan, for those who don’t know, is the guy behind the wildly successful web show Film Riot. He gives indie filmmakers tips, tools, strategies and opinions. It’s been going on since 2007 and it’s terrific.

The class covered everything from scripts, to coverage, cameras, motion, lighting, direction, SFX, tips, tricks and more. Hands down, it was the best camera/directing class I’ve taken and I bought it after so I could watch it over and over when I finally get my camera. read article

Peer Production: ADVENTURES OF ANGELFIRE

Time to get all googly over this excellently written and show female superhero series which starts off with a neat little ep about a female superhero trying to sell a series about…well, you get the idea. And, in case you don’t:

Directed by: Jeff Kornberg
Written by: Jordan Zakarin
Created by: Jordan Zakarin & Ali Vingiano read article

Peer Production: BELUSHI’S TOILET

Time now for one of the most interesting web series openers we’ve seen in a long time, written and directed by Andrew Wright:

The YouTube description of BELUSHI’S TOILET calls it as a web series about stoners dedicated to creating the perfect party drug in a future where there are no anti-drug laws. But we gotta level with you. We have trouble thinking about this as a mere “show.” We see BELUSHI’S TOILET as an installation, by which we mean it’s the kind of thing we would expect to find in a museum. Or Andy Warhol’s bathroom.

Leesa Dean: Adventures of a Web Series Newbie

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Chapter 71: Four Bad Things
by Leesa Dean

This week has been nuts. Insanely busy writing, planning, setting stuff up. Had three meetings scheduled. Two were cancelled/postponed. And the third was a bust. This summer has been interesting…and challenging.

The third meeting wasn’t for the TOP SECRET big project I’ve been working on this past year. It was with a small level agent who reached out through a friend. We chatted via email and I agreed to meet for drinks. Full disclosure: While I am hoping to connect with an agent, in general, I’ve found that small level ones–meaning ones not connected with a large agency, or formerly from a large agency and starting their own–are normally a waste of time. So why’d I take the meeting? Two reasons: 1) My friend asked me to (this agent is trying to build a cool client roster) and 2) bigger agents aren’t exactly banging down my door right now.

The signs that the meeting was gonna be a bust were all over the place. Here are Four Bad Things that were tip-offs that this was not meant to be: read article

Peer Production: BECOMING RICARDO Episode 4 hits the Interwebs Today!

Watch the new episode here and now!

by the creators of Becoming Ricardo

All of us at BECOMING RICARDO want to share the latest news: Episode 4 of Season One is premiering today, Thursday, August 7 at 10 am on our website.The title of our latest masterwork is “And Then There Was Steven”. In this episode Jesenia finds herself featured in a major tabloid because Ricardo is quickly becoming the hot new Latino lead on “Crime, Law, and Justice.”  All this fame seems to be getting to Jesenia’s head, but she is quickly distracted by a possible new love interest, when she meets Steven Castillo. Thing don’t go as smoothly as they should, though, because someone seems to be stalking Jesenia’s every move – which makes living her double life even harder than it’s been!

For those unfamiliar with BECOMING RICARDO, it’s a web series that gives Latino actors the opportunity to showcase their talent in a way we don’t typically see on TV or film these days. With the release of this NY Daily News article, it becomes overwhelmingly important for Latinos to create their own content complete with the highest quality, solid writing, and the kind of candor that seems hard to find in entertainment outlets that feature us. read article