My New Speaker Series Presents Brooks Elms
Through much of last year, as we in the film business struggled to find work (side hustles and the like) or reinvent ourselves, I started exploring online teaching. I expanded a lecture I'd been doing at universities into first a 2 hour class and then expanded it more into a 12 hour master class; Tom Provost and I took his popular Cinema Language class and converted it to Zoom; and I introduced a new series called No Budget Confidential (which was really just a Zoom version of something I'd been doing for 16 years in my in-person 2-day class). Earlier this month I relaunched my in-person screening series No Budget Film Club.
Something I wanted to do, but couldn't get to last year was what I'm now calling my Guest Expert Speaker Series. I spoke to a bunch of friends last year with expertise in a number of areas--marketing, visual effects, legal, etc--who were just sitting around because of COVID and we explored creating presentations they could do for you, my No Budget Film School people. The idea was to take what they knew and apply it to no-budget filmmaking. Lawyers usually cost a lot of money and so do their services, but how could we create a presentation or even a longer class that was specifically geared to filmmakers who couldn't afford expensive legal help? That was the idea.
I'm finally launching this series Tuesday, April 6th with my friend Brooks Elms. Brooks is an independent filmmaker and an established Hollywood screenwriter. He's also a screenwriting instructor (I've been a guest speaker in his classes in the past) and writing coach. We were catching up on the phone and the conversation led to all these workshops and classes I wanted to do, and Brooks immediately had ideas about how to apply the Hollywood approach to screenwriting to no-budget filmmaking. As someone who has worked in both worlds, he's been teaching these ideas for years. And just like that, the Guest Expert Series was finally born. |
