Highlights:

1) Talking with Ralph Winter, producer of all of the X-Men, Wolverine, and many many others. What he had to say about a practical joke pulled on him during the filming of Fantastic Four made me realize that it's not always business. I also loved the extra stuntmen rehearsal footage from Wolverine. I'm glad I got to meet him.

2) Indie Movie Production 201 workshop with Sean Covel and Chris "Doc" Wyatt, producers of Napoleon Dynamite. In this workshop they focused on pitching a movie deal, and how much each person gets paid, between the producer, writer, director, etc. They talked about the kinds of investors you want, and the kind you DON'T want, like an investor that insists he star in your movie. The best part about this workshop is that Sean and Doc stayed over an hour after the time they were supposed to leave, answering question after question about the film business. It really showed they cared about helping the other filmmakers in the audience.

3) Acting workshop: My buddies Topher and Tiffany do a cold reading of a scene and get critiqued by Bill Cobbs. It was cool to see how Bill would suggest actors replay the scene with some new change he would put in, and they almost always did it better after he got them focused on the right things, like 'feeling' the emotion and not trying to 'show' us the emotion in fake ways.

4) Networking:
Me with local director Richard Stefanik at the film makers party at Cafe Alma. It was good to see so many people come together after such a full day. Richard took part in the Pitchfest portion of the festival, where filmmakers can pitch their movie ideas to movie producers, and he did well. Go Richard!

All of the daily blog posts and photos from Sunscreen Film Festival 2010.

Labels: filmmaking, indie film, sunscreen