First, I got interest in my show by doing exactly what everyone says can never be done. I simply looked up the name of the programming director for the network, called her office, left her a message and said I wanted to send over a DVD of my pilots.

When I didn’t hear anything back for a week? I called again. I repeated this process until I got a call back. Once I got the call, I talked extremely briefly about the show’s concept and offered to send a DVD right away. She agreed. I sent the DVD immediately.

Comic-Con is fast approaching, and as the largest consumer convention in the United States you can’t afford to miss it. This is the one place where you will find die-hard fans coupled with industry executives. You can simultaneously pitch your project while seeding future groupies.

Yet more lessons learned from my latest endeavor!

Know the Flow!

By this, I mean, walk through your entire process and take note of every piece of equipment, and the people operating it, and how you'll get from shooting to output of your project.

For example, we had a really BIG hiccup in our production. I'll readily admit that I can do pre-production and post production quite well, but fall short on the technical aspects of production day itself. I'm not well versed in the equipment/techy side of things. I've got to study...

Without divulging too much confidential information, I’d like to share some growing pains from my creative endeavor. Currently? Things are going well. I’ve got a network on the line who wants to sign a deal for a season of a show I developed. Rad! Right? Well, yes, just as soon as I take care of some issues that I should have taken care of from the beginning. So, learn from me folks, and wrap it up tight before the big deal is dangling.

1.    Controlling Interest

Last week we opened up the comments section to you, our readers, to ask Dylan Leiner of Sony Pictures Classics, all your burning indie filmmaker questions.  Here are the questions and responses! 

Hollywood and the entertainment industry has always been on the forefront of issues like the environment, long touting that we reduce, reuse, recycle. But when push comes to shove, some of us out there don’t practice what we preach when it comes to our own productions. It’s time that we took a carbonfoot-step back and made all of our productions a bit GREENER! Here are some tips.

I recently got invited to a bar mixer/fundraiser that two of my filmmaking friends, Sonya Goddy and Laurence Vannicelli, were throwing to fund their upcoming projects. Through the invite I learned they had come up with some pretty smart ideas for getting their TWO films "Blood Magic" and "Open Air" produced, and funded. It's priceless information, if you ask me. Below is the wisdom of Sonya, answering my questions! 

Tell me about your decision to shoot two films at once. What drove you to this madness?!

We all know our idols in the industry, whom we want to model our careers to match, whom we look to for creative inspiration, guidance and ideas. However, it's important to take a step back and remind ourselves (before we get ridiculously famous and successful in Hollywood) who we DON'T want to become. It's all too easy to become "that" guy (or gal) and FiveSprockets is gonna try and help you avoid it.