Category: Opinion

Here’s What Happens When Your Dream Filmmaking Job Ends Up Being a Nightmare

Know that writing/producing gig you’ve been dreaming about since you were kid? That perfect job you still may be dreaming about? Some people really get them. Only to discover they’ve made a deal with the devil in the process:

by Scott Beggs

Max La Bella has the same story that most aspiring filmmakers have. He grew up loving movies and building worlds out of LEGOs before realizing that he could be the one to make cinematic universes for others to play in, eventually cruising off to film school to chase his dream job.

“I was obsessed with anything that let me leave my own world,” he recently told Indiewire. La Bella speaks with the triple espresso shot enthusiasm that belies a dash of nervous energy when confronting the topic at hand. That topic, put bluntly, is the failure of success. read article

The Magic in Creating: Character Creation & Propinquity

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by Mie Presence

I woke in the middle of the night to write this. That’s the funny thing about creativity and inspiration – you could be waiting all day for a tiny glimpse of it. And then suddenly, it strikes you mid-dream and you bet your bottom dollar that if you don’t release it in that moment, you will wake in the morning with the taste of regret in your mouth.

I’ve been deep diving into my characters lately and realised I was missing some key elements. My early attempts didn’t see them come to life as their own people. They were “cleaned up” versions, behaving how I think people should behave in certain situations as opposed to how they actually would. At the time I created them, I guess I was trying to “clean myself up”, “sort my life out” and create an “idealised” version of my self and my life.Well, good thing that’s over.

So I’ve spent weeks teasing out their back stories, their wounds, their dreams, even creating vision boards for them. It’s never as simple as setting out a couple of personality traits and running with it. You will find loose ends, holes and things just simply won’t match up. So yes, I quit my job to make cut-outs of my characters and their lives. read article

Diana Vacc Sees X-Men Apocalypse

by Diana Vaccarelli

I’m a huge fan of the X-Men film series.  I was so excited that another one was coming out.  X-Men Apocalypse introduces the audience to the first ever mutant, coincidentally enough named, Apocalypse.  In this film the X-Men must reunite to defeat his plan to extinct human kind. What do we think, everybody? Will the X’s succeed?

hbt-203x300THE GOOD:

  • The special effects in this film are every bit as good as they need to be for X-Men Apocalypse to qualify as a summer blockbuster.
  • The Acting was good enough but only two cast members are stand-outs. James McAvoy performance as Charles Xaviar aka Professor X was raw and real as he is held captive by our villian and tries to save all of humanity. Oscar Isaac portrays our villain Apocalypse in a way I’ve never seen before. Watching Apocalypse, I absolutely hated him…but at the same time I found myself relating to the character more than any other character on the screen.

THE BAD; read article

Confessions of a Contest Script Reader

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by Kathryn Graham

For a brief time, I was one of those ‘gatekeepers’ who read movie scripts that were submitted to an online contest (no, not for TVwriter’s contest. You’ll have to ask LB about that one).

I was a woefully underpaid ‘script analyst’ who, in order to make a buck, slogged through 120 – 215 page scripts and provided notes for contest hopefuls. If you’re thinking about entering one of these, here’s a few things I gleaned on the ‘other side’. read article

Web Series: NICOLIFE

by Team TVWriter™ Press Service

Nicolife tells the story of Nicolai and Phil, two attention-starved nobodies who desire fame and fortune above anything else. The show is a satirical look at the egocentrism of our YouTube generation, and guess what? Yeppers, that’s correct. Nicolife is really fucking good.

Need more convincing than the Teaser? Here are episodes from the first episode:

read article