878 episodes

The Indie Film Hustle Podcast is your #1 source for how to hack the film business and indie film world! The show is here to help as many indie filmmakers as I could. We wanted to bring the best guests, industry leaders, creative legends, and film business friends to you, the IFH Tribe.

Some of the past guests include 3X Oscar® Winning Writer/Director Oliver Stone, Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black), Alex Proyas (The Crow, I, Robot), James V. Hart (writer Dracula, Hook), John August (Big Fish, Aladdin), Jim Uhls (writer of Fight Club), Oscar® Winner Russell Carpenter (DP of Avatar, Titanic) Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces, The Grey), and David F. Sandberg (Shazam!) to name a few.

We hope this podcast can help you along your journey as an artist, filmtrepreneur, filmmaker, screenwriter, and as a human being.

Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast Indie Film Hustle

    • TV & Film
    • 4.7 • 286 Ratings

The Indie Film Hustle Podcast is your #1 source for how to hack the film business and indie film world! The show is here to help as many indie filmmakers as I could. We wanted to bring the best guests, industry leaders, creative legends, and film business friends to you, the IFH Tribe.

Some of the past guests include 3X Oscar® Winning Writer/Director Oliver Stone, Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black), Alex Proyas (The Crow, I, Robot), James V. Hart (writer Dracula, Hook), John August (Big Fish, Aladdin), Jim Uhls (writer of Fight Club), Oscar® Winner Russell Carpenter (DP of Avatar, Titanic) Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces, The Grey), and David F. Sandberg (Shazam!) to name a few.

We hope this podcast can help you along your journey as an artist, filmtrepreneur, filmmaker, screenwriter, and as a human being.

    IFH 741: How to Break into Television Writing with Steven Vitolo

    IFH 741: How to Break into Television Writing with Steven Vitolo

    Have you ever wondered what it takes to break into a network television writer's room? Then this episode is for you. Today's guest is Steven Vitolo and he did just that. His latest written episode is on the hit ABC show Black-ish. Steven has over 10 years of experience working in writer's rooms, most recently as a script coordinator on the TV series Black-ish, where he co-wrote the episode "Dream Home".

    Steven Vitolo also is the CEO and founder of Scriptation, the script reading and annotating app for film, television, and video production. Steven developed Scriptation after seeing first-hand the staggering amount of paper that gets consumed onset and is dedicated to promoting sustainable practices that inspire productions to go paperless.

    Enjoy my conversation with Steven Vitolo.

    • 56 min
    IFH 740: Screenwriting Rules You Need to Learn Then Break with Julian Hoxter

    IFH 740: Screenwriting Rules You Need to Learn Then Break with Julian Hoxter

    You should all know this by now. I love bringing on different perspectives on the craft because you never know what might click for someone. At the end of the day, we are all trying to tell a and compelling story. I invited to the show this week Julian Hoxter to talk about his book, The Creative Screenwriter: 12 Rules to Follow and Break to Unlock Your Screenwriting Potential. Julian is a published writer, lecturer, and screenwriting story consultant with extensive experience in scholarly writing.After film school at UCLA, Hoxter returned to his homeland, England, where he served as a senior lecturer at Solent University for some years before starting up at San Francisco State University, where he currently is an associate professor of cinema.Hoxter’s latest textbook, The Creative Screenwriter: 12 Rules to Follow―and Break―to Unlock Your Screenwriting Potential, distills the craft of screenwriting into 12 key elements, from developing your story to revising and rewriting, plus plenty of inspiration to create your screenplay with confidence.

    It encourages readers to look behind the scenes at iconic films using a classic screenwriting structure, along with experimental films from innovative writers that have transcended the rules and paved their way to the silver screen. Apart from academia, Hoxter has been producing his independent features, documentaries and doing rewrites collaborations with other filmmakers. One of his most known productions is the award-winning documentary feature, Imagine a School... Summerhill, produced in 2009. Other must-read textbooks or scholarly papers written by Hoxter include, Off The Page: Screenwriting in the Era of Media Convergence, The Pleasures of Structure: Learning Screenwriting Through Case Studies, and Theorizing Stupid Media: De-Naturalizing Story Structures in the Cinematic, Televisual, and Video Games. Keep an eye out for Hoxter’s sci-fi novels that will be out soon, The Ballad of Coopy Meakes.I collected a lot of knowledge bombs from chatting with Julian.

    Enjoy this conversation with Julian Hoxter.

    • 1 hr 19 min
    IFH 739: Horror Screenwriting - The Nature of Fear with Devin Watson

    IFH 739: Horror Screenwriting - The Nature of Fear with Devin Watson

    I was glad to take a deep dive into the deep end of horror screenwriting with writer and producer, Devin Watson, notably known for writing and producing The Cursed (2010) which was the first draft he wrote in only two days. He’s also written several books, the latest of which is Horror Screenwriting: The Nature of Fear. Horror has, among all of the genres in film and written works, one of the longest, most distinguished, and often misunderstood bloodlines in history.

    It is often overlooked by critics who don't see anything more than blood and guts on the screen or a collection of cheap scares. But what is missed is the hard-hitting commentary on society and life contained in those works.Devin got his start working with the website, 'moviepartners.com' in the late 90s which was one of the first websites out there that really had any kind of information on independent filmmaking.

    Eventually, he decided to try out writing some scripts. But reading what every he could find to prepare him for scriptwriting. He was influenced in a big way by Lew Hunter's book, Screenwriting 434. Here, Lew Hunter shares the secrets of his course on the screenwriting process by actually writing an original script, step by step in Screenwriting 434.When he felt ready, Devin wrote his first five scripts, all of which turned out not very good. Not until November 2006 that he wrote a script in 2 days for his friend, Phil Melfi. That was when he felt confident in his work. That script became his debut production and writing, The Cursed, which is still a sci-fi channel Halloween rotation regular.

    Devin’s book Horror Screenwriting really dives into the craft of horror and screenwriting pretty deeply.

    Enjoy my conversation with Devin Watson.

    • 1 hr 13 min
    IFH 738: Inside Warner Bros Writing Program with Rebecca Windsor

    IFH 738: Inside Warner Bros Writing Program with Rebecca Windsor

    Today on the show is Rebecca Windsor, the Vice-President of the Warner Bros. Television Workshop, the premier writing and directing program for professionals looking to start and/or further their careers in television.As an extension of her role developing new talent, Rebecca was recruited to help launch Warner Bros. new digital content brand Stage13, overseeing the critically acclaimed short-form digital series Snatchers, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and is available on Verizon’s go90 platform.

    Previously, she was the Creative Producing Initiative Manager of Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program, playing a key role in coordinating the Creative Producing Lab and Summit, Screenwriters and Directors Labs, and Episodic Story Lab.Prior to Sundance, Windsor was Manager of Development at Samuel L. Jackson’s television company, UppiTV, and at Mandeville Films. She started her career as an assistant at the Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann Agency and ICM. A San Diego native, she attended Northwestern University, where she received a BS in Theatre.

    Enjoy my conversation with Rebecca Windsor.

    • 1 hr 7 min
    IFH 737: How to Write for and Land a Movie Star for Your Indie Film with Shaye Ogbonna

    IFH 737: How to Write for and Land a Movie Star for Your Indie Film with Shaye Ogbonna

    We have on the show today writer Shaye Ogbonna.When not in pursuit of retro sneakers, Shaye Ogbonna can be found worshiping at the Temple of Story. His most recent feature project is the contemporary western feature GOD’S COUNTRY — starring the incomparable Thandiwe Newton.

    Based on a short story by acclaimed author James Lee Burke, God’s Country is a character-driven thriller set in the snowy wilderness of the American West. Thandiwe Newton plays Sandra Guidry, a Black professor living and working in a rural college town. She’s also grieving her recently-deceased mother, for whom she'd served as primary caretaker. On the day of the burial, Sandra discovers a mysterious red truck parked in her driveway. She soon learns it belongs to a pair of local hunters seeking to enter the forest behind her house. Sandra turns them away politely but firmly – her experience tells her these are not the sort of men to welcome freely into her world. But they won’t take no for an answer, and soon Sandra finds herself drawn into an escalating battle of wills that puts her most deeply-held values to the test.In the television/streaming space, Shaye is currently developing JUMPMEN -- a one-hour drama set in the cutthroat world of the sneaker industry – with Showtime. He is also staffed on Showtime’s THE CHI and JJ Abrams’s DUSTER on HBO. His feature writing debut — 2017’s genre-bending LOWLIFE — opened the 2017 Fantasia Film Festival and became a darling of the genre festival circuit, culminating in its acquisition and worldwide distribution through IFC Midnight.Shaye’s creative mission is to center marginalized voices within genre storytelling.

    Enjoy my conversation with Shaye Ogbonna.

    • 55 min
    IFH 736: How I Got My Screenplay on Disney Plus with Arash Amel

    IFH 736: How I Got My Screenplay on Disney Plus with Arash Amel

    Acclaimed screenwriter and producer Arash Amel is known for writing the critically-lauded motion picture, A PRIVATE WAR (2018), directed by Matthew Heineman and starring Rosamund Pike as celebrated war correspondent, Marie Colvin.

    He recently served as Executive Producer on the Netflix sci-fi action movie, OUTSIDE THE WIRE (2021), starring Anthony Mackie, which was viewed by 66 million households in its first 28 days. In addition to writing RISE (2022) for Disney + and telling the coming-of-age story of NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, Amel wrote Paramount Pictures’ feature film, THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE, a World War II action adventure directed by Guy Ritchie and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer that is slated to start production later this year.He also wrote the screenplay for SNAFU, an upcoming action comedy starring Jackie Chan and John Cena.

    Currently, Amel is in pre-production as producer on the Amazon Studios feature film, FRED & GINGER, which is based on his screenplay, directed by Jonathan Entwistle, and stars Jamie Bell and Margaret Qualley as the icon screen pair, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

    • 1 hr 15 min

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5
286 Ratings

286 Ratings

Mister Britt ,

Unfollowing.

Unfortunately it’s time for me to unfollow. Some of the interviews are still really good, but I’ve heard a handful of repeat uploads and I can’t stand the ads every ten minutes. It takes me right out of the convo. I love you Alex and I really appreciate everything you’ve taught me. Thank you!

Jake Khakis ,

Ad bukkake

Way too many gdmf ads. Every 5 minutes another ad. Murders the flow of conversation every time. Basically unlistenable. Trash podcast, poorly edited, lame host to say the least

Mister Mistofelees ,

Alex Ferrari’s nervous/fake laugh is telling

I don’t believe Alex believes in himself, because he is constantly guffawing when nothing funny was said. It feels like nerves, but it could also be some attempt to make him seem likable.

Alex Ferrari isn’t likeable, and he’s not a good interviewer.

Top Podcasts In TV & Film

Pop Apologists
Big IP
Watch What Crappens
Ben Mandelker & Ronnie Karam | Wondery
Pod Meets World
iHeartPodcasts
Pop Culture Happy Hour
NPR
Give Them Lala
Lala Kent | Cumulus Podcast Network
The Rewatchables
The Ringer

You Might Also Like

The No Film School Podcast
No Film School
The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna
Meg LeFauve & Lorien McKenna
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August and Craig Mazin
The Director's Cut - A DGA Podcast
Directors Guild of America
IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit
Chris O'Falt
Team Deakins
James Ellis Deakins, Roger Deakins