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Hollywood Visits Film Students At InFocus

InFocus film students are acquiring the skills needed to work on a professional film set. But what happens when a Hollywood production comes to a film school instead? That’s precisely what happened when Warner Bros. was scouting locations for its television program Frequency and decided our brick-wall rooms would serve as an ideal backdrop for an […]

Booms vs. Lavs

Boom Microphones vs. Lavaliers: What’s the Best Recording Mic? Sound is often the most overlooked aspect of production for unseasoned filmmakers. Compared to the excitement that goes hand-in-hand with selecting the camera, sound can be an afterthought: a single line on an already overwrought budget, packed with expenses that are much more immediately compelling than […]

How to Write Better Action Lines

By Robert Chomiak   Screenplays are a means to a finished film. Many industry people consider them blueprints. However, this comparison isn’t completely accurate. A well-written screenplay isn’t a sterile, skeletal, monochromatic set of action lines inserted between the dialogue.   Word choices impact the sight and senses of the reader. In that regard, a screenplay has […]

The Return Of The Mockumentary

  This is Spinal Tap. Waiting for Guffman. A Hard Day’s Night. The second half of the 20th century saw the birth of an entirely new genre of film where fictional events were presented as truth: the mockumentary. From the very beginning it served as a self aware tongue-in-cheek device to critique modern culture, touching […]

InFocus Instructor Profile: Danny Nowak, C.S.C

Award-winning cinematographer Danny Nowak works in unorthodox ways. He is at once a successful independent artist following his dreams, yet is also ready to paint images with his camera for blockbusters like Tristar’s “The Big Hit” or Neil Simon’s “The Goodbye Girl.” As a child Nowak was enthralled with classic horror movies like Frankenstein and at age thirteen […]

7 Vancouver Film Directors That Made It Big

Known worldwide in the film industry as “Hollywood North,” Vancouver has a history of producing some of the finest film directors in the world. Since 2000, over a billion dollars worth of revenue has been attributed towards film productions in Vancouver each year. Today, Vancouver is in an excellent position to carve out an even […]

Independent Filmmakers Seizing Changing Distribution Landscape

A movie landscape once dominated by theatrical releases is now facing competition from an abundance of digital platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Vimeo and YouTube. Netflix and Vimeo have given independent filmmakers more variety when it comes to distribution and one doesn’t necessarily have to release in a theatre. However revenue from these deals still […]