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DIY Filmmaking and Hollywood Politics: An Exclusive Podcast with Ryan Koo of NoFilmSchool.com

by ScreenCraft - updated on April 10, 2023

In association with our good friends Tom and Ygal at In The Can Podcast, we at ScreenCraft had the pleasure of interviewing independent filmmaker, editor and webisode maven Ryan Koo, who created DIY filmmaking community nofilmschool.com, which currently receives over 2 million page views a month.

This is a wide-ranging podcast that is absolutely worth listening to, particularly if you're an aspiring filmmaker and/or screenwriter, or if you're contemplating starting a website or a business. Ryan has built his career from scratch and is continually dabbling and diversifying. His success is an inspiration to all of us who have passion and are making it up as we go.

Read More: 10 Best Filmmaking Websites for Indie Filmmakers

Listen to the podcast here! 

 

Ryan delves into both the funny and the practical in talking about his career trajectory. He started out as a North Carolina basketball enthusiast and documentary filmmaker, took a couple of underwhelming film school classes and decided to create a forum where newbie filmmakers and storytellers could commune, provide information and lend support. Through this venture Ryan was able to talk himself into a job as a senior designer at MTV in New York...even though at the time he applied he had little to know graphic design knowledge of any kind. He taught himself on the fly, absorbing Photoshop tutorials on the train into work. Anecdotes like that are just some of what you'll hear.

Ryan discusses his ambitious web series The West Side, his short film Amateur, which debuted this year to marked success and serves as the prequel to his upcoming feature Manchild. Both narratives are set in the world of youth basketball and take turns you wouldn't expect. Hear all about the genesis of these projects, the Kickstarter campaigns...overall you get a fascinating and comprehensive window into what goes in getting a project off the ground.

And stay tuned until the end to hear Ryan, Tom and Ygal talk about recent movies, including World War Z, Elysium, and Short Term 12, a wonderful indie drama that was the subject of our recent podcast.

Read More: These Filmmaking Podcasts Will Change the Way You Make Movies

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