Filmmakers Academy

How to Get Your Film into Festivals. The festival circuit is one of the most misunderstood parts of the filmmaking journey. Most filmmakers do not know which festivals fit their project, how to build a submission strategy that improves their odds, or how to turn a screening into a real career opportunity. So we brought in the people who live inside it.

Tomorrow, Thursday June 11th at 10 AM PT, join us for a Spotlight Group Coaching Call with Brynne Norquist and Tyler Knohl, co-founders of Hiike Independent. They built Hiike to fix what is broken about the modern circuit, simplifying the whole process with festival discovery tools, submission strategies, expert consultations, and a vetted database of more than a thousand real, active, in person festivals across the US.

This session demystifies all of it, from setting your goals and emailing programmers to building buzz, fixing your sound, avoiding scams, and turning festival success into distribution. Whether you are submitting your first short or planning a full feature rollout, this is your chance to ask the people who know the circuit best anything you want, in real time.

🗓 Thursday, June 11 🕘 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET
🎟 Free for FA premium members or $14.99 for non-members.
Click the link in bio to register and submit your questions. Do not miss it.

Comment SHADOW to receive the free breakdown deck straight to your inbox. The Impressionists did not paint what they saw. They painted what light does to what they saw. That distinction is the core of cinematography. This is Part 2 of an ongoing series created in partnership with Shane Hurlbut ASC and Nanlux, breaking down the painters who invented cinematic light and showing you how to recreate their impact with LED.

PART 2 · THE IMPRESSIONIST MASTERS

SISLEY — The Transition Master The twelve minute window when the sky turns cyan and the world holds its breath. Cinematographers call it magic hour. One warm practical against a cyan sky is cinema.

MONET — The Light Obsessive High noon is actually cold. Purple shadows. Yellow skin. Do not just point the camera at the sunset. Reflect it onto your subjects and make them the sunset.

PISSARRO — The Master of Times of Day He painted the same scene at dawn, noon, and dusk because light is never the same light twice. Color temperature becomes your clock.

RENOIR — The Blend Dappled light through leaves is nature’s own gobo. Multiple soft sources wrap the subject and cancel every hard shadow, because joy has no shadows.

LIVE AT CINE GEAR 2026
Shane Hurlbut ASC presents The Quality of Light at the Nanlux booth. 
June 5 + June 6 · 2:00 to 3:30 PM PST
Booth S3011 · Universal Studios LA
A 30 minute Filmmakers Meetup follows each session.
Come meet Shane and the Filmmakers Academy team in person.

Can’t make it? Comment SHADOW and we will send the full deck directly to you.

cinematographer

When you’re on set, communication is everything. The shot only happens when every department moves as one, and the DP is the center of that conversation. For the last five years, Shane Hurlbut, ASC has been redefining how that conversation works. His DP Cart isn’t just a workstation, it’s a command center, and the Hollyland Solidcom system has become the bloodline running through all of it.

This Friday, he’s opening it up at Cine Gear LA Expo! Join Shane for Inside The DP Cart: Wireless Communication, a live look at the workflows and crew coordination strategies that separate top tier sets from the rest.

📍 Hollyland Booth #507, Universal Studios
🗓️ Friday, June 5th @ 4:00 PM PT

Plus a live Q&A, a Fix It In Prep book signing, and an exclusive raffle.

Free to attend. RSVP at the link in bio.

🎬 x x

LosAngeles

Comment SHADOW to receive the free breakdown deck straight to your inbox. The Impressionists did not paint what they saw. They painted what light does to what they saw. That distinction is the core of cinematography. This is Part 2 of an ongoing series created in partnership with Shane Hurlbut ASC and Nanlux, breaking down the painters who invented cinematic light and showing you how to recreate their impact with LED.

PART 2 · THE IMPRESSIONIST MASTERS

PISSARRO — The Master of Times of Day He painted the same scene at dawn, noon, and dusk because light is never the same light twice. Color temperature becomes your clock.

MONET — The Light Obsessive High noon is actually cold. Purple shadows. Yellow skin. Do not just point the camera at the sunset. Reflect it onto your subjects and make them the sunset.

SISLEY — The Transition Master The twelve minute window when the sky turns cyan and the world holds its breath. Cinematographers call it magic hour. One warm practical against a cyan sky is cinema.

RENOIR — The Blend Dappled light through leaves is nature’s own gobo. Multiple soft sources wrap the subject and cancel every hard shadow, because joy has no shadows.

LIVE AT CINE GEAR 2026
Shane Hurlbut ASC presents The Quality of Light at the Nanlux booth. 
June 5 + June 6 · 2:00 to 3:30 PM PST
Booth S3011 · Universal Studios LA
A 30 minute Filmmakers Meetup follows each session.
Come meet Shane and the Filmmakers Academy team in person.

Can’t make it? Comment SHADOW and we will send the full deck directly to you.

COMMENT “LENS” to get the full lens comparison test + the Keslow Camera Test Series free. The Angénieux Optimo Primes ($25K), Leitz Cine Thalia ($15K), Xeen Meisters ($5.6K), DZOFilm Arles ($2.5K), and Canon L-Series Mark II Zooms go head to head on the 8K Blackmagic URSA Cine Pro. Optical quality, bokeh anatomy, and flare character across wide, medium, and close-up focal lengths. Same camera. Same lighting. Same subjects. The only variable is the glass.

Keslow Camera Test Series. Produced in collaboration with Keslow Camera, the Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF, Sony Venice 2, RED Raptor XL, ARRI LF, and Alexa 35 are tested across identical interior and exterior lighting scenarios for skin tone fidelity, color rolloff, contrast, noise performance, and digital texture. No creative grading. Just the data.

Stop letting price tags and spec sheets make your decisions. Comment “LENS” and we will send both directly to you.

Your next 90 days as a filmmaker can look completely different. And this Memorial Day, we’re making it even easier to start. Get 50% off your first 90 days of Filmmakers Academy membership, click the link in bio. Whether you’re in a slow period, building toward your next project, or just ready to stop waiting and start training. This is your window.

Here’s what three months of focused, structured training actually looks like:

Month 1: Get clear on your path. Cinematography, directing, camera, G&E, or color grading. Step-by-step career tracks led by working professionals who are actively in the industry.

Month 2: Practice with purpose. Recreate professional setups using lighting schematics, gear checklists, LUTs, and downloadable lesson guides built for real-world application.

Month 3: Share your work, receive feedback from mentors and peers, update your reel and résumé, and build connections through live events like CineGear LA.

Real tools. A real network. Real support so you’re ready when the next opportunity comes.

Tap the link in bio to start your 90-day transformation.

Comment LUT to get a free 17-minute lesson on how to build a LUT from Dave Cole, the colorist behind Project Hail Mary. Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS and colorist David Cole are longtime collaborators. On Project Hail Mary they rebuilt the visual language of science fiction from the ground up.

For two decades the genre defaulted to the same look. Cold blues. Desaturated grays. A clean digital sensor dressed up as the future. Fraser and Cole decided to do something different.

No green screens. The entire spaceship was built as a fully practical set. Every wall, every button, every inch of it physical. Gosling could touch it, operate it, and interact with animatronic stand-ins for Rocky.

No IMAX film cameras. Fraser chose the ARRI Alexa 65 and pushed it as far from clean digital as he could. He squeezed the sensor vertically instead of horizontally, sending lens flares up and down the full height of the IMAX frame. The rainbow flares throughout the film came from a filter he found on Amazon for $15.

Fraser also pulled the IR filter from one of the Alexa 65 units entirely, allowing it to capture infrared light spectrums invisible to the human eye. That footage went directly into the grade, where Cole isolated those infrared channels to create the brilliant pink and magenta of the Petrova line.

In the color suite, Cole and Fraser used the SHIFT process, printing the Alexa 65 footage onto actual analog film stock and scanning it back into the digital realm. Two separate stocks. Earth sequences were graded on a gritty, textured analog stock, warm and imperfect. Space sequences used a large format 70mm IMAX stock, clean and epic in scope but still photochemical in feel.

Dave Cole is our colorist mentor inside Filmmakers Academy. Comment LUT below and we will send you his 17-minute lesson on how to build a LUT from scratch, taken directly from his Color Grading: LUT Theory and Creation course. Free.