One Day to Make a Movie: Indie Filmmaking Without a Budget

The workshop will begin with an overview/review of “classic” Hollywood storytelling structure and introduce participants to both popular and uncommon variations of this structure that could prove a better fit for the stories they want to tell within the limitations they may have. 

The heart of the workshop will focus on the practical considerations and necessities for making a film regardless of the limitations you face. It will cover: 

• Why make a film in one day? (Or weekend.)
• What is the “game structure” of filmmaking?
• How one location is all you need. 
• How much money you don’t have and why that can be your biggest asset.

Participants are encouraged to bring an idea they have for a short or feature film that can be adjusted to fit a limited time or funds they have to make it. (If time allows.) *

For filmmakers of any level. For anyone who has ever talked themselves out of making a film because they thought it was too hard, too expensive, too ambitious for their skill level, or they didn’t have the time. For everyone serious about making something.

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This workshop will be led by Missy Hernandez and Miguel Silveira.

Missy is an award-winning independent filmmaker and screenwriter whose scripts center Latiné experiences in the US and Caribbean. Her work is intersectional, feminist, often political, and unapologetically fantastical. Missy’s original television pilot script, Family Medicine, was a finalist for the 2020 Script Pipeline TV Script Competition. Her feature script, I Don’t Dream in Spanish Anymore, is the winner of the 2024 Nantucket Film Festival's Tony Cox Screenplay Competition and winner of the 2024 Athena List. Her short film script, Lejos de Aquí, was a finalist for the 2025 Shore Scripts Short Film Fund and the 2025 Outstanding Screenplay Shorts Competitions. Missy was a Writer and Co-Producer of American Thief (2020 - Film Movement), the co-writer and producer of The Last Election and Other Love Stories (2021), and the Writer’s Assistant and Associate Producer for season one of the HBO/A24 series Random Acts of Flyness (2018). Missy graduated from Columbia University in New York with a BA in Cinema Studies and an MFA in Screenwriting. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Film and Television at Columbia College Chicago. Her previous projects have received support from the Illinois Arts Council, Cine Qua Non Labs, NALIP Media Market, the Chicago International Film Festival’s CIX: Lab, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Jerome Foundation, Stowe Story Labs, and IFP/The Gotham.

Miguel is an award-winning independent filmmaker, arts educator, and Assistant Professor in the film department at Loyola University Chicago. He holds a BA in film production from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in film directing from Columbia University in New York City. Silveira’s documentary feature, I Am a Visitor in Your World (2013), was an Official Selection of the Woodstock Film Festival, the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, and the Athens Film + Video Festival. American Thief (2020), Silveira’s first feature narrative/documentary hybrid, was a Jerome Foundation Grantee, a participant in the IFP Completion Lab, and is distributed in North America via Film Movement. The Last Election and Other Love Stories (2021), a documentary shot entirely on Election Day 2020, screened at the Warsaw International Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro Film Festival, Urbanworld, and Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. Miguel’s work celebrates topics related to human dignity and development. His projects have received support from the Sloan Foundation, the Directors Guild of America, Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab, the Jerome Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and IFP/The Gotham. He is the writer-producer for Madrina, a short film directed and co-written by Missy Hernandez, and the producer of I Don’t Dream in Spanish Anymore, a narrative feature project in development.

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