There was a refreshingly constructive response to the casting call post I wrote a week or so ago. I was going to bang on a bit more about the sort of thing directors and producers should and should not do when writing casting calls but between them Katherine Reilly – http://shootingpeople.org/bulletins.php?mode=read&bulletin=2&issue=3654#msg_355411 – and Guy Evans – http://shootingpeople.org/bulletins.php?mode=read&bulletin=2&issue=3655#msg_355550 have pretty much said all that needs to be said. If you’re about to put up a job and you want to make…

Unnecessary apologises for my silence over the past few days, which was caused in part by a trip to Gillingham to talk to some students about filmmaking. A few years back a corporate job for St.Pancras Station turned me into a bit of a train geek so I was childishly excited to have a reason to travel on the new high speed line that goes from St.Pancras to Ebbsfleet, sadly still one of the least glamorous names ever given to…

Sons of Cuba, directed by Shooter Andrew Lang, opens at the ICA on March 18th. Here is an interview Pamela Cohn did with Andrew last year for Shooting People. Filmmaker, Andrew Lang, one could say, was destined to make his feature debut, Sons of Cuba.  His relationship with the island, and eventual journey to making his gorgeous nonfiction film, developed through a variety of serendipitous events. He was never really interested in film when he was young, he says, until…

Oh huzzah and joy for the internet. I wrote a couple of days ago about what I saw to be a classic example of the bad casting call. I think my post was pretty clear that I did this not out of any desire to blacken the name of the director responsible, but rather to highlight the importance of wording these posts correctly. There has been a lot of anger about the unpaid work that gets advertised on Shooting People…

Regular readers and obsessive bear stalkers will remember that at the end of November last year Chris and I were lucky enough to have our feature script “Hallo Panda” performed and scrutinised as part of the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum. It was a fascinating, enjoyable and really useful night for us and you can, of course, read how it worked out here: http://shootingpeople.org/blog/category/bensblog/2009/12/oh-so-thats-how-it-works/ Better still the doors are now open for your script to go through the same rigorous…

Join us at DCTV on Monday 22nd and learn how to build an audience for your film and your career! Filmmakers today must think about audience engagement from day one. What are the best strategies for building an audience both online and off? What’s a fair offer, and what are some of the myths around distribution? What are possibilities for self-distribution? What’s all this talk about transmedia and participatory audiences? Brian Newman will help you think about a range of…

Subscribers to Shooting People’s Casting Network will probably still remember the nasty taste left in the mouth by the recent volley of bitter recriminations about low and unpaid work. Always keen to take an unpopular route I wheezed on loud and long about the value of such work and why Shooting People should still offer its acting members the chance to make their own minds up about what they turn down or follow up. There are caveats to this of…

Eating chocolates has been slightly ruined for me by everyone who has ever quoted Forrest Gump’s mum at me. I’ve not seen the film because everything about it made me want to kick a window but there was a short time following its release when you couldn’t turn for people quoting Ma Gump’s sage wisdom that “life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get next”. This has stuck in to my brain like…

A short talk on the nature of creativity which manages to be down to earth and uplifting all at once… Come to http://shootingpeople.org/blog/category/bensblog if you can’t see this video…

An old friend of mine recently joined Shooting People and sent me a link to his short film. As those of you reading this blog in its original form will know, my virtual doors are always open to new films and I do my best to watch everything that comes my way (I am quite behind though…) My friend’s film is only two minutes long, and for that I thank him. He also had the good sense to upload to…