In the past two months, we've covered several courses from the good folks over at CreativeLive, an outstanding online educational resource for creatives of all types. First was Larry Jordan's comprehensive FCPX masterclass. Then there was an epic 2-day course on aerial photography. This coming Monday, August 11th to be exact, another course is beginning that should definitely be of interest to independent and low-budget filmmakers. It's called Guerilla Filmmaking, and it's being taught by Ryan Connolly of Film Riot fame. So, if you've got any spare time this coming Monday through Wednesday, tuning into Connolly's course will provide an educational alternative to the cat videos that you would probably be watching otherwise.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with CreativeLive, they produce and sell multiple-day workshops (usually 2-3 days), which cover a wide variety of creative topics, everything from photography/filmmaking and audio production to arts and crafts and business/finance for creatives. What sets CreativeLive apart from the multitude of sites where you can purchase topical seminars is that the CreativeLive streams them live over the internet, and those live broadcasts are completely free to anyone who wants to participate. The online audience can join the chat room for any given live class and interact with the instructor in real-time. And if you don't have time to catch the broadcast live, no worries. It is re-broadcast multiple times during the days that it's playing live, and for a day or two afterwards.


So what all will you learn in Connolly's Guerilla Filmmaking course? Here's the course description to give you an idea.

In this course, you’ll explore the step-by-step process of making a film from start to finish. You’ll learn how to script, storyboard, location scout, and cast films. Ryan will offer insights on how to best work with your crew to make your sets fun, collaborative, and professional places to be. Ryan will demonstrate the process of getting the light you want for the shots you’ll need, whether you’re working with DIY lighting structures, available light, or gels and diffusion. Since lighting and sound are equally essential to professional-level work, you’ll also explore both production and post-production audio skills, including integrating music and sound effects. You’ll build a post-production workflow for editing, adding visual effects, and more to ensure you’re getting the pro look every time.

If you've followed Ryan and his Film Riot crew at all during the past few years, you know that these guys have made quite a few successful short films and mountains of other video content for their show, and they share every tip, trick, and technique that they used to create that content down to the smallest details. Not only that, but they've done all of this both with budgets and withno budgets at all, so Connolly's in a good place to teach you the A-Z of filmmaking regardless of what equipment you have or what kind of budgets you have access to.

The course runs from Monday, August 11th to Wednesday, August 13th from 9am to 4pm Pacific Time. So if you're interested in Connolly's comprehensive 3-day filmmaking workshop, hop on over to CreativeLive and sign up for Guerilla Filmmaking (it is free, after all).

Link: Guerilla Filmmaking with Ryan Connolly -- CreativeLive