All posts by David Albert Pierce, Esq.
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Indie Law: Our Entertainment Law Expert Pulls Your Legal Questions From The MM Mailbag
For this edition of Indie Law, we asked readers to send us their burning legal questions to be answered by our long-time favorite independent film...
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Indie Law: How to Secure and Hold the Rights to Your Project
In the documentary on legendary producer Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Evans explains early and often that the key to success in Hollywood is to strive to...
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Indie Law: Make Your Feature’s Development Less Dicey With Loyal Legal Counsel and Financing Foresight
Development is the time when your indie’s budget needs to be put to the test. It’s also the time when you may need to properly...
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Indie Law: Learn Why These Three Types of Attorneys Will Give Your Production a Boost, and How To Pick Them
Selecting an attorney, or attorneys, to work with throughout the moviemaking process is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Likewise, investing in the right attorney can ultimately net great dividends and actual...
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Indie Law: Put the Green in Greenlight With This Guide to the Most Effective Film Financing Tactics
You went to film school, not business school—yet all the sudden you’re confronted by a bevy of fancy financial terms as you attempt to assemble...
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Swindler’s List: Seven Tips for Avoiding the Scam in Hollywood
Doyle Lonnegan: Your boss is quite a card player, Mr. Kelly; how does he do it? Johnny Hooker: He cheats. – The Sting Over the...
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Ethical Exploitation: How Moviemakers Can Treat Their Unpaid Interns and Volunteers Better
“Can’t get around the old minimum wage, Mortimer.”- Louis Winthorpe, III (Trading Places, 1983) In theory, an internship is a wonderful thing. Students learn from...
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Better Safe Than Sorry: Nine Basics Moviemakers Should Cover For On-Set Safety
The industry is fraught with potential hazards for accidents. A select few on-set tragedies receive attention in the media, but even more are hidden from...
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Cinema Law: How To Tell The Truth Without Paying For It
Adapting a true story for film can be tricky. On the one hand, reality can be extremely powerful—fact is often stranger—and even more entertaining—than fiction....
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Max Incentives: Five Best Practice Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Tax Incentives
So you’ve read our Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker in 2016 lists (Big Cities and Small Cities and Towns), and your...
Summer 2019
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Guide 2019
Summer 2018
Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles are just a handful...
1Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid Antarctic waters as...
Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s cancer diagnosis hidden...