Film in NoCo

  November is a busy month both within and outside of the indie film spheres. If you're looking for a way to add to your film practice, or else just get away from your visiting family, check out these awesome film events! To see the full list of events as it is updated, be sure to add the Film in NoCo calendar  to your scheduling app of choice. 5 p.m. Nov. 7, Downtown Greeley - Come As You Are Fest Check out this awesome music and arts festival with film screenings, flash tattoos and incredible DJ sets by artists like Collur, HAZELHATESYOU and more. Get tickets here . Noon Nov. 8, Longmont Public Media - Open House Take a tour of Longmont's production facility that's open to anyone. Learn about joining and gaining access to state-of-the-art equipment and studio space for your film needs. 11 a.m. Nov. 9, Yellow Barn Farm - Yellow Barn Farm Film Festival See some incredible films centering environmentalism and agriculture on a scenic working farm. Get tickets here . 6:30 p.m....

Film is the type of industry that is so easy to break into, and yet so hard.  A common refrain is the idea that anyone with a smartphone can make a movie. To an extent, this is true. "Tangerine" was shot entirely using iPhones. It was also director Sean Baker's fifth feature-length film. What separates "insider" and "outsider" art is rarely the cost of materials. Instead, it has more to do with experience and knowledge. The most expensive cameras on the market won't save you from bad shot composition. Thousand-dollar lighting setups still need to be placed carefully. Throwing money at Adobe Inc. is not an effective use of Premiere Pro or After Effects. So who keeps the gate? Do we privilege those who went to film school, who took the time and maybe even the loans to get more comfortable with their skills as artists? What about those with on-set experience, which up until recently has been hard to come by in Northern Colorado? Filmmaking isn't j...

We are entering the season of the 48-hour film festival! There's just something about summer that spurs people into going out and actually making stuff.  I'm one of the crazy people who can't work without crazy constraints. If you don't give me a tight deadline and a word count to reach, the project is just going to sit rotting in my drafts, forever. From the proliferation of 48-hour film festivals, I can assume that others feel the same way. During undergrad, I actually tried to organize my own 48-hour film festival with my university's film club. I advertised it as a "film jam," thinking more people would be familiar with games jams and hackathons. Bad move, because the target audience was students at a famously liberal arts-focused college. The results can be found on YouTube here ( 1 ) ( 2 ). One pitfall? It can be hard to round up a group of friends willing to commit to 48 whole hours focused just on filmmaking. One solution that did work out was recr...

Northern Colorado's film scene keeps growing. Talented people keep moving here, while the region's vocational programs and four-year colleges regularly turn out skilled young people. How can everyone interested in film stay informed and up-to-date? Social media is a landscape of walled gardens. The Facebook groups and Instagram pages can catch some people, while others congregate on Meetups and LinkedIn, while still more seek out creators on YouTube and Vimeo. In order to see what each individual group has to say, you could need to make upwards of five accounts, and be ready to promote your professional self across all of them. Blogs don't necessarily have those same restrictions. You don't need to make an account to view our calendar. You can search us up on your favorite engine, or subscribe with your email address, or pull us into an RSS reader. This blog is, first and foremost, a resource. You can get the details on in-person events where you could watch your new fa...