I have neglected the blog (I have been neglecting a lot of things) and there are various reasons for it. One, I am preparing a little adventure I hope to soon share with you. Two, ideas for blog posts usually come from my daily activities. With a lot changing around me I have not been working on anything that I thought would be interesting to share, nor have I been asked questions which can be answered in a post. Three, and most importantly, there is already a large amount of valuable informations online, and I do not see the point of re-writing something that has been written before, or offer my expertise in an area that I do understand but that I am not currently involved in.

If you have been following my twitter feed (@wanderinggio) or have subscribed to our Facebook page (w(a/o)ndering filmmaking) you might have noticed that I tend to share a lot of articles, posts and tutorials dealing with filmmaking and the film industry. I rely on a cup of coffee, a good news reader, some free time and large amount of curiosity. I like to know what’s going on next door. Call me nosey.

Below you will find some of my favourite sources. I picked 13 of them, because ‘why not’, (and I can add one of those ‘click me’ titles that I have grown to dislike, like ’13 Filmmaking Blogs You Might Want to Follow’, Because ‘Why Not’). I hope they will be of use to you. If you have any questions/idea, do not hesitate to contact me, I like questions.

I have had countless people ask me questions starting with ‘how much’, ‘how many’, ‘how old’, ‘what types’ and so on. I always found those questions to be frustrating, mainly because I do not know the answer to them. Stephen Follows answers those questions on a weekly basis. “How old are Hollywood film producers?” What percentage of a film crew is female?” “How much do Hollywood campaigns for an Oscar cost?” “Full costs and income of a £1m independent feature film” are some of the questions answered here.

There are a lot of great Video Essays online these days. Sometime I wonder why I still bother to type (then I sit through a video tutorial and I remember why). Video Essays probably deserve a post of their own but for now you can start by checking FilmScalpel. The site states that it “tinkers with images and sounds, in the hope of fashioning an audiovisual argumentation.” They provide their own video essays and collections of essays from other sources. Be inspired by the people who dissect other people’s work.

This is a good place to start for screenwriters. Scott Myers provides a lot of free information on the blog (on top of advertising for some pretty interesting workshops.) What is great about Go Into the Story is that not only it teaches you about the art and the work of scriptwriting through informative posts and analysis, it also challenges you. On the 1st of November they embark on a Write a Script in a Month challenge. Will you join them?

Reading Bob’s blog is a bit like listening to your uncle’s advices. It’s not about how it should be. It’s about how it is. It offers a fair share of tough love. It is encouraging and realistic. Bob is not shy about his own mistakes and the madness he has witnessed over time. If you feel a bit sorry about yourself, if you are anxious about your screenwriting career and feel misunderstood. Head over to Bob’s blog for a healthy dose of reality.

Cinematography is an area of filmmaking for which I have a lot of love and respect for but little professional experience (you might notice that I always hide behind other sources when discussing it). CinematographyDB offers a wealth of articles, breakdowns, interviews and reviews for the world of Cinematography. If a DP is what you aspire to be and you do not know where to start. Cinematography DB is for you.

The DP might get the ‘visual glory’ but he would not be able to pull his tricks without his crew. The Black and Blue offers a variety of tips and advice on working Behind the Lens, Camera Assisting and Getting Work and as well as a fair share of Production Stories. If you are serious about learning how to make your way through the camera department this is the place for you.

The name says it all. Natalie is a story fabricator and storyteller at heart. She created mentorless.com in 2011 to share content she thought useful to craft and nurture her storytelling and creative skills. Mentorless provides you with a variety of info on Acting and Actors, Cinematography and Cinematographers, Directing and Directors, Documentaries and Documentarians, Editing and Editors, Film Scoring and Composers and Screenwriting and Screenwriters. The site aggregates a variety of ‘mentors’ for you to learn from.

At ShoHawk they believe this is a new era for filmmakers, and they’re here to usher you into it. The aim is to share years of lessons on building a filmmaking career, and making the art you want to create, on your own terms. They offer advice from their personal experiences. Some is practical, some is inspirational.

Vashi Nedomansky is mainly an editor, but his passion for filmmaking does not stop there. On his blog he delivers a lot of information and analysis on Cinematography, Color Grading, Editing, Lighting and Low Budget Filmmaking.

When Jonny Elwyn is curious about something, faces a dilemma or simply wants to buy something, he writes a post. Do you want to be DIT? Here is all the valuable information Jonny could find online on the subject. Do you want to learn a new software? Here you can find many of the tutorials available online. It is a gateway to information organised by subjects. What an aggregator should be.

The banner says it all. The Art of the Guillotine is not technically a blog, but a great source of information nonetheless. Users can submit articles under one of the following categories, Editing, VFX, Color, Sound and Animation. They can then vote the articles up and down. If post production is what you are into, this is a great place to go to discover new sources and learn along the way.

My favourite thing about Raindance is the ‘do it’ attitude. This is Filmmaking 2.0 and the blog aims at empowering aspiring filmmaker and pointing to the traps and dangers ahead, but at the same time helping us overcoming our fears and finding ways to just ‘do it’.

Filmsourcing likes to fight for the little guy. Their goal is to help filmmakers find truly useful resources in the face of information overload. Original content, hand-picked curation, no advertising. Again, not technically a blog. But it offers a wealth of resources, forms, and curated articles and videos. I know they have a lot more planned for the site and I can’t wait to see it.

We could add more and more blogs to this list. It is amazing to see the amount of passionate writers that can be found online. It makes us feel small yet connected. The information is out there, absorb some of it, then go out and shoot, then repeat. You don’t even have to rinse.