5 Reasons To Check Out This Weekend's Film Independent Forum In LA

Opening Night Screening: TRUMBO

There are probably few better ways to open up a weekend about moviemaking than with a big screen take on one of the medium's most legendary figures.

Bryan Cranston looks marvelous as our titular screenwriter, the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, while there's a pretty stacked supporting cast, including John Goodman, Helen Mirren, Diane Lane, Elle Fanning and Louis C.K. Director Jay Roach (yep, of Austin Powers fame) will be on hand after the screening for a conversation.

A Look Inside Blumhouse with Jason Blum and company

"Executive Conversation: The Key to the Haunted House of Blum" features Jason Blum, the founder and CEO of low-budget wunderkind production company Blumhouse. Starting with the incredibly lucrative Paranormal Activity series and more recently moving onto fare like the Oscar winning Whiplash and this year's The Gift, the Blumhouse panel is sure to be a highlight for any filmmaker out there looking to do genre on a budget, but without losing artistic vision and integrity in the process.

*Photo: John Salangsang/Associated Press

Production Case Studies: MANOS SUCIAS and THE STANDFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

The filmmakers behind the Tribeca and Sundance selected films open up about the patience and persistence needed for making their narrative features.

These case studies are perhaps the most candid you can get in a public forum, so be sure to check out the No Más Bebés and Sunshine Superman on the documentary end of things.

Because We Also Love TV...

Get a peek inside the writer's rooms behind some of television's most successful and groundbreaking shows with "Television: The Writer's Room" panel. Do you want to know how creators and their staff of writers come to work together for the greater vision of their show? Or maybe you'd like to know how one can break into a writer's room... Panelists include storytellers behind such shows as Transparent, Mad Men, Empire, and Doll And Em.

Viable Films: Your Budget vs. The Market

How can you make the movie you want to make and also find a market that will accept it? Financiers and producers behind such films as The Diary Of A Teenage Girl, Dope and Fruitvale Station weigh in on the current realities of the marketplace, sustainable models of filmmaking and a whole lot more.

And for those of you that want more on the business and marketing side, don't forget to catch the "Your Film + Your Audience: Marketing & Distribution Clinic", as well as the "Five F#@*ups and How to Fix Them" and "Gatekeepers and Enablers: Documentary Funders" panels.

Walk us through a day at the Film Independent Forum. What can attendees expect?

Attendees can expect a wide array of information, including best practices, cautionary tales, case studies, and inspiration from industry experts and filmmakers who are leading the charge in independent film today.  

The first day starts with a Keynote by Film Independent Fellow Jon Chu, from the 2002 Project Involve class, who returns to our fold to share his accomplishments and incredible journey with the filmmakers attending the Forum. Not only is he one of today's most sought after directors, but a real artist and entrepreneur who has mapped a great career building on his multiple talents.

The Forum closes with a special conversation with Lynn Shelton, who is a great example for filmmakers working today, as she has managed to create a career path that is truly her own, making very unique films like Your Sister’s Sister and Touchy Feely. The conversation will be moderated by the multitalented Illeana Douglas (Easy to Assemble, Ghost World), who has turned the spotlight on female directors in the movie industry with her new TCM series Trailblazing Women.

In between these anchor sessions, we will have two concurrent tracks, one focusing on documentaries and the other on fiction films.  There will be panels, case studies, interactive clinic sessions, short digital platform presentations, exciting new media prototypes from our most recent Hackathon, a sneak peek at new documentaries in progress by our Documentary Lab Fellows, one-on-one IndieLink meetings, networking lunches and receptions every day.

What's new to the Forum this year that you are particularly excited about?

Not exactly new, but the diversity that we strive for every year is particularly strong this year, in every way: the range of content being delivered with new media, web, television, documentaries, fiction films, all being covered; the projects highlighted in our case studies run the gamut from micro and low budget to mid range; the speakers participating, from gatekeepers and trailblazers to filmmakers from very diverse backgrounds and at different levels in their careers. It is a testament to the times we’re living, where a lot of the boundaries between media and barriers to creating content are being challenged and torn down.

Film Independent hosts dozens of other educational events for filmmakers throughout the year. What are some we should be keeping an eye out for? 

My Education Department team, Paul Cowling and Lee Jameson, is always very busy producing ongoing classes, workshops and seminars, many of which are free to our members. We have Producers Toolkit and Directors Toolkit programs comprised of four workshops each, for filmmakers who are preparing to shoot their films soon. My advice: Don’t start shooting without equipping yourself with these toolkits!

We also have quarterly Writers Salons with esteemed screenwriters that offer a very intimate and conversational opportunity for our writer members to interact with the best in their field.

The next large event we’ll start preparing for, right after the Forum, will be the Film Independent Directors Close-Up, a program that runs five weeks from February to March, in which we invite today’s most accomplished directors to discuss their craft and creative process along with key members of their teams. The series has always featured stellar filmmakers, including Ben Affleck, Alfonso Cuaron, Ava DuVernay, David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Alexander Payne, and Jill Soloway.

*Maria Bozzi photo courtesy of WireImage