Creative Principles

Canadian Director Jordan Canning discusses creative guilt, shooting on film versus digital, little achievable bites of work in a day, and getting started on shorts to create a tone on set as a director. In her new film, 'Suck It Up,' she takes on an emotional story with an energized, all-female cast.

In Episode 10, Cary Fukunaga discusses his love for screenwriting from an early age. The director behind 'True Detective' Season 1 talks about his Netflix film, 'Beasts of No Nation,' which stars Idris Elba. Currently, Fukunaga is also working on 'The Alienist' and 'Maniac' for television and he also has a writing credit for the new Stephen King adaptation 'It.'

Director Greg McLean talks about his love for the original 'Star Wars' trilogy, Martin Scorsese's filmmaking techniques, and what led to his film, 'The Belko Experiment.' In his newest film, 'Jungle,' actor Daniel Radcliffe ('Harry Potter') is put to the test mentally and physically in an unbelievable true story.

Bombadil musician James Phillips talks about chipping away at songs, creative influences and collaborations, personnel changes and the future of the band, performing in Durham, North Carolina, and how one of their songs made it into Judd Apatow's movie, 'Trainwreck.' Stay tuned after the interview to hear the single "Amy's Friend" from the film.

Author Jill Chamberlain tells us about her book, 'The Nutshell Technique.' Specifically, she dives into story versus situation, the importance of studying movies, infinite possibilities within restraints, difficult choices in storytelling, the writer's secret, and what's wrong with 99 percent of failed screenplays. The book is available on Amazon and the charts mentioned plus the transcription are available on Creative Screenwriting Magazine's website.

While working in demolition, Bryan Sipe realized that once you tear everything apart, you can see how it's put together. After a few self-proclaimed "failures," Sipe got serious about writing and learned how to become a screenwriter at UNC Wilmington. Similarly, in the film, 'Demolition,' Jake Gyllenhaal suffers loss and discovers who he is along the way. In this interview, Sipe talks non-linear storytelling through letters, the connective tissue of the film, and working with 'Big Little Lies' director Jean-Marc Vallee and his love of music in real-time.

In this episode, Dan DeFilippo tells us about his new film, Dementia 13. This is Dan's first credit as a writer on IMDB, but he's read over 30,000 scripts while working in the business. In this interview, he tells us about the difficulties of writing an 8-act structure, what makes a horror film believable, the importance of working a day job in the business, and how to reimagine a Francis Ford Coppola film, as this movie was based on the 1963 film by the same name.

Author Neal Thompson describes his deep dive into journalism and his discovery to want to tell longer stories. After a few published magazine stories, he then moved on to writing Americana books, that include stories of astronauts, how Georgia moonshine led to NASCAR, a winning football team, and a biography on Robert Ripley from Ripley's Believe it or Not.

Misha Green, the showrunner for WGN's Underground. Green's first script landed on blacklist and led her to several writing gigs on shows like Heroes, Sons of Anarchy, and Helix. As the co-creator of Underground, Green wanted to sink her teeth into a series about runaway slaves and the underground railroad.

Keith Harris talks about acting in a rural area, working on The Walking Dead, Halt and Catch Fire, Matlock, Dawson's Creek, and filming a movie about dirt-track racing on a shoe-string budget.