The 1950s was a decade of b horror flicks- cheaply made movies meant to be shown at the drive-in, giving teenagers the creeps while they necked in the front seat of their cars. Among some of the most popular b horror flicks of the time were ones featuring ginormous, monster insects, usually the mutated results of atomic testing, natural mutations, or (in some cases,) alien intervention. Not only is the...

Where do you sit on the digital copyright vs. free content and open source debate? 2011-2012 has seen a lot of landmark developments and influential business decisions across various entertainment industries. What is DRM? Digital Rights Management is a lock placed upon a piece of content such as music or film in order to prevent the content being copied or played outside a certain system or platform....

Suddenly it appears everyone is producing fairytale shows. There’s Once Upon A Time on ABC, Mirror Mirror the feature starring Julia Roberts, Snow White and the Huntsman, Grimm (now into Season 2) and I’m personally loving the moment, lapping it up while it lasts. I asked Keith, a Producer of 12 feature films to explain about the robust interest in fairytale’s we’re now witnessing. His diverse...

Finding distribution and pre-sales deals was once a feasible task, but not so much any more. Over the years the promise of financing and production for indie films has dramatically faded, and filmmakers are struggling to stay afloat. Bottom line is that survival of the fittest relies upon mindsets that change with the state of the industry. Understand The Reality The industry changed as a result of digital...

My 12 Feature Filmography Despite my long filmography in the genre, having produced many horror films, it doesn’t automatically imply that I always enjoy them, or for that matter that they are that easy to produce.  So when my wife suggested I watch the ‘Walking Dead’ and cleverly sold it to me with the synopsis ‘Some officer wakes from a coma to see dead people around him’, I didn’t think she...

The ability to write a highly polished and professional script doesn’t come easy to anybody. It takes years, decades in fact, to master the craft. Indeed, mastery of that craft requires the mastery of a number of different skills. Screenwriting is not one single, defined skill; it is a set of skills that combine to create the wherewithal to produce the scripts that are transformed into the new films...

They are the film characters everyone loves to hate. They terrify us, leave us scared witless and have us perched on the edge of our seats in the cinema or in our living rooms, yet we also find movie villains fascinating to observe. Here are five of the scariest bad guys to have ever graced the big screen. Darth Vader Looks menacing decked out in all black, sounds menacing and acts menacing as well,...

The Gulf Film Festival (website) has been growing steadily since its inception in 2008, and this year is no exception with the best film-making talent in the region showcasing their work. The fifth Gulf Film Festival is under way, a non-profit event celebrating and promoting films and film-making in the Gulf region. Over the course of the festival which runs until 16th April 2012, 155 films from 40 ...

We’ve all seen the movies: Dead Poets Society, Rudy, Legally Blonde. Hollywood has painted college experience for us so that we can preview our next four years in a couple of hours. We know exactly what to expect. We are going to have a lousy roommate, who will turn out to either have super powers, or be the downfall of humanity. Our professors are either going to be crazy, super hot, or boring....

Sitting in the movie theater, it suddenly dawns on you: I can write a film! Can’t be that hard right? Wrong! Writing a screenplay is one of the hardest mediums. It’s incredibly precise and it’s a blend of what to say and what to show. There’s dozens of screenwriting books out there. Below is a summary of some of the best tips to writing a script that I found extremely helpful...