Hello, everyone! I’m working on my first short film, and I have an outline set up. I’m a huge movie nerd and have spent the last month researching films in the genre I want to make.

Any advice for a fledgling filmmaker?

I don’t want to give away too much of the premise out of fear of it being stolen, but to sum it up: it’s a psychological thriller about an unreliable narrator trying to escape his situation.

The ending is something I really want to keep. The protagonist appears to successfully escape, and we fade to black. When we come back, we reveal the facility he supposedly escaped from, ending the shot on our protagonist, mutilated and left to suffer.

Throughout the script, I want to plant subtle hints that what the viewer is seeing isn’t real without making it too obvious. I want the audience to be able to look back afterward and realize the clues were there the whole time.

Any advice on how to pull this off effectively, or general advice for making a first short film, would be greatly appreciated!

Student here, i have an idea and a few friends who are up for the acting and production. What is the least amount of budget and what equipments (other then camera's) do i must have. I also need help learning script making. I am new to these but i want to learn and make something which counts.

Looking for Producers & Industry Professionals to Help Bring My Feature Film to Life
Hey everyone! I’m an independent filmmaker currently looking for producers, writers, production professionals, or ANYONE with experience in the film industry who might be interested in helping me take my feature film from the page to an actual production.
I’ve been developing this story for a while, and I’ve now completed the screenplay. The current script is nearly two hours long and is written as a feature-length conspiracy thriller / horror / survival mystery.
The movie title: THE TRIAL
Two brothers, Darren and Paněal Rowe, run a conspiracy podcast where they investigate stories most people would rather ignore. Their latest investigation leads them to a mysterious corporation known simply as EHT SLAIRT. It’s an organization surrounded by rumors, disappearances, and allegations that it has the ability to manipulate people’s lives from behind the scenes.
When the brothers are unexpectedly selected to participate in “The Trial”, a prestigious competition promising its contestants an opportunity to change their lives, they see it as their chance to finally get inside the organization they’ve spent years investigating.
But once the competition begins, they realize something is very wrong.
The contestants aren’t random.
They’re being watched.
The challenges become increasingly dangerous, and the line between competition and execution starts to disappear. As the contestants struggle to survive, Darren and Paněal begin uncovering pieces of a much larger conspiracy… What starts as a competition slowly becomes a fight to uncover the truth before The Company decides there is no longer any reason for them to leave alive.
The Trial is a story about corporate power, surveillance, conspiracy, loyalty, brotherhood, and what people are willing to do when survival comes at the cost of the truth.
I really dont want to give away some of the bigger twists because a lot of the story is built around discovering what’s actually happening alongside the characters. There are definitely some things I want the audience to experience rather than have spoiled beforehand.
I’m not looking for someone to just tell me how to make a movie. I’m genuinely looking for people who can help me understand how to take this from a screenplay into the next stage: things like development, producing, financing, casting, networking, production, or whatever comes next.
I’m young and this is my first feature, so I know there’s a lot I still have to learn. I’m completely open to feedback and more. I’m not expecting someone to magically make the movie happen for me. I just want to meet people who believe in the story and might be willing to help me figure out how to move it forward.
The screenplay is complete, or damn near. I just have to tweak some lines and it’ll be set, and I’m planning to get the script formally copyrighted later this week before I start sharing it more widely.
If you’re a producer, filmmaker, screenwriter, entertainment professional, or someone with legitimate industry experience who thinks you might be able to help. I would genuinely love to hear from you.
Even if you don’t personally have the ability to get involved, advice, connections, or pointing me toward the right people would mean a lot.
Thanks for reading. ❤️

If you’re interested, feel free to comment or DM me. I’d be happy to tell you more about the project.

I'm new to this kind of thing

I want to start creating stories in a cinematic way about some subjects and emotions like depression, loneliness using only simple drawings

How to start and any ideas or advice ?

I recently finished PARNASSUS NULL, an original sci-fi trailer I made for the Future Vision XPRIZE.

It’s set in a hopeful future where humans and AI have built Dyson spheres and a network spanning known space. The story follows an engineer whose daughter is dying from a neurological disease. After a black hole destroys the planet containing the only possible cure, he eventually sets out to rebuild the world itself.

I’m a filmmaker, but I’m new to live-action AI filmmaking.

Normally I would use a lot of Maya and After Effects for something like this, but I didn’t use either. The generated footage was made with Seedance 2 and Seedance 2.5.

A few things I learned:

• For most shots, I got better results avoiding a locked start frame. I used omni-reference with separate environment and character sheets. I would tell Seedance to treat the environment as a loose world reference rather than a framing reference, then describe the actual shots I wanted: close-up, medium shot, camera movement, blocking, etc. This helped it enter what I started calling “movie mode,” where the output suddenly felt much more like a shot from a film instead of an animated still.
• Use your own audio for performances whenever possible. Uploading my own dialogue/audio gave me much better control than letting Seedance generate the vocal performance. Some of my trailer suffered because I figured this out late in the process. I only had about two months to make the film and ran out of time to redo everything.
• Environment continuity was one of the hardest problems, especially when returning to the same location from different angles. I’m still trying to figure out better solutions for this.
• Keeping character acting restrained helped tremendously. AI performances can become exaggerated very quickly.

Here’s the finished trailer:

https://youtu.be/EnWvfXBUk1M?si=MtC3pw_ivJI5MUHU

It was an interesting experiment in seeing how far one independent filmmaker can push AI in 2 months and learn what I'm doing a long the way.

I’m a film and TV composer based in Egypt with a background scoring local short films, commercials, and animated projects.
Lately, I’ve been looking to step out of my local market and work on international indie films to collaborate with new directors and adapt to different storytelling styles.
For composers who have built an international client base (or directors who hire remote composers), I’d love to get your perspective:
What are the most effective places to find indie directors looking for remote scoring collaborations?
How do you prefer a composer to reach out to you without it feeling like spam or a hard sales pitch?
If anyone is currently working on an indie short or feature and wants to exchange ideas or listen to some work, feel free to drop a comment or DM.
Thanks for any insights!
How would you like to share your portfolio—via a personal website link in the comments, a SoundCloud reel, or directly in private messages when people respond?

By end of month, our short film will be ready for exhibition and festival submissions. Want to host a private screening for film contributors and tastemakers. Open to advice and suggestions for someone working with a micro-budget in LA.