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Category: FIlmmaking Tips

Hollywood Sign

6 Things That Might Surprise You About Life in Hollywood… As an Artist

5th December 20195th December 2019ELFS JapanFIlmmaking Tips, Movies

by Marei Annis There are so many stories about life in LA that it seems hard to imagine that all of them could be true at the same time. And yet there is so much to see, experience and discover in the “city of stars” that you may find yourself surprised after all to find […]

Text and Subtext in cinema

Four Kinds of Subtext

25th September 201925th September 2019ELFS JapanFIlmmaking Tips, Screenwriting

by Mathew Allen Many people say that the secret to good dialogue is subtext. But many of those same people also struggle to identify exactly how to create these elusive layers of meaning. I’ve attempted here to elucidate and distinguish between what I think are the four kinds of subtext, and identify precisely what makes […]

Braveheart

Six Forms of Empathy and Sympathy

24th August 2019ELFS JapanFIlmmaking Tips, Screenwriting

by Mathew Allen Emotion lies at the heart of the filmic experience, and people always talk about how to make characters relatable or likeable. Below are six techniques each for building empathy and sympathy in your scripts. I believe this to be an exhaustive and refined list—both in that it covers every possible kind of […]

How to Motivate Yourself to Write

25th June 20195th August 2019ELFS JapanFIlmmaking Tips

by Mathew Allen One thing I get asked a lot is how one goes about finding the motivation to actually sit down and write (and complete) feature screenplays. I hesitate to teach this element of screenwriting—as there seem to be as many different ways in terms of what writers call their “process” as there are […]

5 Must-Read Books About Screenwriting… and What I Learned From Them

11th May 20199th July 2019ELFS JapanFIlmmaking Tips

By Mathew Allen There are countless books out there about screenwriting. Each has its good and bad points, but I figured I’d give you a run-down of the best, most useful things I learned from reading many of them. In this case, I’m gonna focus on five (as that’s a catchy number) and try to […]

A marked up script on Making the Short Film

Connecting with Material You’re Not Into

15th June 201815th June 2018Christian BellFIlmmaking Tips

There comes a time in the life of every creative when you’ll have to work with material that you don’t feel any personal connection to. So what do you do? You could just half-ass it and hope a better job comes along next time, as many do in this situation, but why waste the opportunity? […]

ELFS student directing actors

Your First Day on Set

8th June 201811th June 2018Christian BellFIlmmaking Tips

The day is finally here. You’re making your movie. Your stomach aches from too much coffee and you’ve passed a fitful night of disturbed sleep but you made it! Now comes the hard part… Here’s what will go through your head on your first day on set. I’m a Fraud This can be a particular […]

Sundance 1998 Festival Catalogue

Sundance 1998 – Which Star Directors Launched Their Careers That Year?

18th May 201827th June 2018ELFS JapanFilm Festivals, FIlmmaking Tips

Last week, I explored the Japanese directors who screened at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, having found the festival catalogue in a Tokyo second-hand bookshop. Of the three, one was already a superstar director, one was at the beginning of a fairly successful career, and one never made a film again. This week, I will […]

Iscorama Adaptors

How to Shoot Anamorphic on a Budget: Interviewing Lens Expert and Filmmaker Tito Ferradans

4th May 201821st June 2018ELFS JapanFIlmmaking Tips, Interviews

Vintage lens fans and sufferers of gear acquisition syndrome will no doubt be familiar with Tito Ferradans from his YouTube channel and strong presence on Facebook. His channel branding gives him the appearance of a mad professor: his thumbnail shows him in white labcoat and glasses, and regular viewers will be familiar with his wild […]

Filmmakers can learn from Shohei Ohtani

What can filmmakers learn from Shohei Ohtani?

19th April 201821st June 2018ELFS JapanFIlmmaking Tips

Baseball fans will no doubt be following Shohei Ohtani’s career in the Majors very closely. For those out of the Japanese news loop, he is a headline-grabbing baseball player who has just moved from the Japanese league’s Nippon Ham Fighters to the United States’s Los Angeles Angels where he is cementing his status as a […]

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