The Indie Auteur Musings on filmmaking by Stephan Vladimir Bugaj.

Welcome To Indie Auteur

This Blog, Indie Auteur, is intended to allow me to share with you all the film school type knowledge I’ve gained over the years in the same “tidbits of information arriving seemingly at random” manner that I received it.

This will include random musings which I claim are valuable insights into the craft, as well as sharing war stories from the world of low/no budget filmmaking as I go through the process with my friends.

So why would you give a damn what I have to say about filmmaking (and related storytelling arts)?

All I can offer you by way of answering that question is a brief bio. After years in multimedia, artificial intelligence, WWW, and video game R&D (and writing), I decided to enter the film industry (I still do some theoretical AI R&D on the side). I’ve worked on four blockbuster animated features as a technical artist, and quite a number of student and no/low budget short live action films.

The big studio I work for by day also has an in-house film school, which I’ve been regularly attending for seven years (which has led to my being fed-up with theoretical models of screenplay structure, but we’ll get to that over the coming months). Like many good aspiring screenwriters, one of my scripts quarterfinaled in several major competitions (major meaning Austin and Slamdance, not “major” as in the Greater East Brooklyn Society of Cat Owners annual cat-oriented screenplay competition and sewing circle).

Both at work and through the Visual Effects Society, I am a mentor for student VFX artists and interns. I am also a contributing author to the forthcoming VES Handbook, and a member of that organization’s Technical and Standards & Practices committees.

So, in short, I do actually know something about making films. Though my focus is on VFX/animation by day, and writing and directing by night, I’ve also been a DP, grip, gaffer, sound recordist, actor, and all manner of other crew positons on various projects. However, since I’m not an expert on everything, there will also be copious links to other sites written by subject matter experts in all aspects of filmmaking (both the links in the sidebar to the right, and specific links in the text).

My perspective on filmmaking is that a good Producer or Director needs to know enough about every discipline to be able to discuss it intelligently, and preferably to have tried doing it at least once. And that everyone else on the set should know something about what their colleagues are doing as well, including what the Producer and Director are dealing with. Hopefully this blog will help sort all that out in some small way, both for you dear readers, and for me as well.