Letters to Young Filmmakers: Creativity and Getting Your Films Made

Letters to aspiring directors, producers, screenwriters, and other creatives from one of the world’s leading teachers of film. Suber emphasizes that what is required of a professional in the world of film is not just technique, but an understanding and ability to deal with the realities of how films get made.

About the Author

Howard Suber

If anyone can be called the “Yoda” of filming, it’s Howard Suber. For 46 years, Howard Suber has taught generations of screenwriters, directors, producers, and film scholars at UCLA’s celebrated film school, and his former students are today creating films and television programs and teaching film studies throughout the world.

Howard Suber was the founding chair of the Film and Television Producers Program at UCLA, where he has been a faculty member for more than 47 years. He has taught thousands of young filmmakers in more than 65 different courses covering most areas of film and television as both arts and industries. In recent decades, 2/3rds of his students have been screenwriters. He has also taught a several-week workshop for the winners of the Independent Feature Project, West's screenwriting competition. Suber's book, LETTERS TO YOUNG FILMMAKERS/CREATIVITY AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO GET YOUR FILMS MADE produced reactions such as these:

He created and for many years chaired UCLA’s current Film and Television Producers Program, which is focused on the realities of the modern film and television industries. He has team-taught with, or brought into the Producers Program, many of the most important movie studio heads, agents, producers, lawyers, and executives in the industry.