What drives me? What drives you? Why do we have these deep seated needs that often others cannot connect with, or they just plain think we are crazy? The need to create and share? The need to write that film? Scribe that novel? Paint that painting? Act? Make that movie? What is it? I have […]
Archive | Inspiration
Waiting for the phone to ring? How one screenwriter took action and their film has just been released.
By Mark MacNicol DREADED LIGHT is now available on Amazon UK & US more info HERE I’ve been a member of the Chris Jones/LSF tribe for several years and I’m grateful to all of the networking and peer support opportunities. I wanted to do a post that might add some insight. I’ve struggled a bit […]
And it was all going so well… Or was it? Filmmakers, Screenwriters, Creatives… Are you operating in a Red Sea or a Blue Sea?
The last three years have been brutal for me. As I know they have for so many others too. I am not unique in this regard. While smarter people may have chosen to allow their companies to go under during the pandemic, I chose to fight through bankruptcy and have emerged from the other side. […]
Stephen King and George RR Martin in conversation… Seriously!
Stop what you are doing. Switch off Facebook and Twitter. Turn off your phone. And play… We also this video converted into a podcast below for those on the move. Onwards and upwards! Chris Jones My movies www.LivingSpiritGroup.com My Facebook www.Facebook.com/ChrisJonesFilmmaker My Twitter @LivingSpiritPix Sign up to my mailing list for updates on events, books […]
How Filmmakers Consistently Climb Mount Impossible… Four strategies to get you on set
Every time I have embarked upon a major project, bee it a book, web initiative, festival or feature film, I choose not to engage with the enormity of the project until I am almost there. You see, if I think about it too much, I will conclude that it’s quite simply impossible. And in many […]
Ken Loach, top 13 quotes for filmmakers and screenwriters
Ken Loach is one of our most prolific and uncompromising filmmakers here in the UK. With decades of ground-breaking work under his belt and an astonishing track record, we are delighted to host an ‘In conversation’ with him at the London Screenwriters’ Festival tomorrow night. You can get your pass HERE. And here are his […]
‘Only the valiant should create, only the daring should make films’
‘Five Came Back’ is a three part Netflix documentary about five Hollywood directors who ended up shooting and making documentaries for the US government about the Second World War, often from the battlefront and in genuine peril. My parents lived through WW2 and my dad was a conscript in the years after the war, stationed […]
So we got another email from Oscars.org…
Last month we shared that we were quarter finalists in the 2016 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. We were delighted as there were 6,915 scripts entered. This morning we received this email… ‘Congratulations! You have advanced into the Semifinal Round of the 2016 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Your script is one of only 149 […]
Top tips for directing when you’re the only beginner on set by Kat Wood
Earlier this year I directed my first short film. I had always thought that making my first film would be similar to most other people’s first short film experience – it’d be small scale, probably filmed in or around my own house with just a few people to help out. More like a ‘practice and […]
How to Turn Your Followers into Doers… How I did it in my Fantasy Epic by Kate Madison
In today’s connected, online world, filmmakers have to build and nurture their fan bases so that they always have a ready-made audience for their next film or crowdfunding campaign. But have you considered involving your followers directly in the making of your film? If not, you could be overlooking a valuable asset. In 2009 I […]
Catherine Hardwicke Genesis: How she wrote and directed her first film that led to ‘Twilight’
The interview was taken from the USA Guerilla Filmmakers Handbook and was done BEFORE the Twilight phenomena. So it’s a real insight into a moment when a female writer and director got traction in her career by doing work that was groundbreaking. The festival is running at the end of October and you can get […]
Six Lessons I Learned Making My First Feature
Guest post by Ewan Thomas, Writer / Director I started working in the film industry 10 years ago, in post-production. But I’d always wanted to shoot my own film, so I moved to London wanting to “make it” as a film director. Shoot my first feature film. This means facing challenges and obstacles – so […]
Why Star Wars endures so powerfully… It’s nothing to do with fan boys and EVERYTHING to do with values, courage and humanity
The Star Wars universe and characters give access to young hearts and minds to powerful truths and beliefs about good and evil. But most importantly for these young hearts and minds, it unlocks and unleashes courage and potential to take a stand for their OWN truths and beliefs. JJ Abrams knows this and there are […]
The four principles every creative needs to use when asking for help for their project: What we can learn from three Mexican schoolkids playing heavy metal
Over the weekend, three girls from Mexico went viral with a cover of classic metal anthem ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica. And these three girls, Daniela, Paulina and Alejandra, simply SLAYED IT! If you haven’t seen it yet, watch above So what can we take away from this success and apply to our own projects and […]
Neil Gaiman Keynote Speech: Embracing Change and Mantra’s for a successful creative life
I came across this keynote from the legendary Neil Gaiman from their Digital Minds conference. So much in this conversation resonates with me. Above all, for creatives, is the notion that we must create and set free our work. We must innovate ideas in both creativity and commerce. We must become prolific. Each individual creative […]
Monica Lewinsky and the price of shame: Why we ALL need to open our hearts to her message
This outstanding TED talk from Monica Lewinsky highlights for me what the biggest problem the internet poses. While many get all worked up about porn, piracy and other easy internet targets, I am more worried about the way in which we exploit other people’s misfortune, either for personal pleasure, or for profit. That we partake […]
How best to be a filmmaker in 2015?
Keep the investment to a minimum and the innovation to a maximum. We are living inside a technological and social evolution / revolution the scale of which the planet has never seen before. Being inside it, it looks slow, but judged in historical timescales, it’s extraordinarily rapid. The rules are changing so much and so […]
Whenever you feel like giving up, remember… Victory is close
More than once I have heard successful creative people complain that it’s too hard for people to break into the business as there is simply too much competition. It’s an easy assertion to make from the top. Made with good intention I am sure. It’s an even easier assertion to make from the bottom too, […]
Top Quotes from spectacle-meister Cecil B. Demille
The first film that impacted on me significantly was ‘The Ten Commandments’ which I believe was the first film I saw in a cinema. It was, for a five year old by in the seventies, a quasi religious experience that has never left me. Whether god truly exists or not, to me, God was present […]
Stop Wasting Your Time And Make Your Damn Art
Guest post by writer and filmmaker Luke Kondor I’m going to get serious with you. The odds are, you’re never going to make it. Not as an artist, a writer, a filmmaker, whatever. You’re going to spend your life ‘trying’ to make it until the day you lose the energy and resign yourself to a […]
Steven Spielberg: Top 15 Quotes for filmmakers and storytellers
As a kid, no director inspired me more than Spielberg. Sure there were others whose work was hugely influential, John Carpenter and Ridley Scott foremost. But Spielberg remained the person I most admired, someone whose films I wanted to model, whose career I wanted to emulate. Perhaps it’s because he started his filmmaking career by […]
LSF’14: Commit now as sitting on the fence will get splinters up you’re ass
Life has really been happening over the last few weeks. I will share in due course, but it’s part of the reason for my absence on the blog. Life accelerates when we commit. In the moment of commitment, instead of being paralysed by indecision, we find ourselves on the rollercoaster… When I am not moving […]
Super Hero Training Day For The LSF Team
Adrian, a new LSF Team recruit looked at me with concern… ‘When you said we will firewalk I thought you were speaking metaphorically…’ The penny dropped as a LARGE crate of shattered glass spilled onto floor. Before we firewalked, we were going to ‘glasswalk’!!! He looked at me in sheer terror – should he stay […]
John Cleese Podcast Lecture on Creativity and Originality: The 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative
‘Creativity is not a talent, it is a way of operating’ John Cleese Following from my post a few days ago on strategies for manifesting creativity, I remembered this excellent seminar from the early nineties with John Cleese on the very same subject. It’s total gold dust from writers and filmmakers and you can listen […]
250 seconds that will re-ignite the passion in any filmmaker or screenwriter
It’s often forgotten that we storytellers are in fact magicians. In all the hullabaloo of egos, opinions, reviews, funding proposals, endless rewrites, never ending shooting days in the rain, bad food, overdrafts, broken relationships… we have all been there and have that T shirt right? But what keeps us going is that we recognise at […]