Michael Morgenstern

Ello isn't going to work: Six things it doesn't address.

Cross-posted with The Huffington Post. Why are people excited about Ello? Because they can’t wait to leave Facebook. Why do so many people want off Facebook? That’s the problem: everybody has a different reason. Ello is a new social network that has caught fire with a manifesto telling

Five easy ways not to waste other peoples' time

1. Make sure you’ve said everything you want to say in an email. I use Gmail’s Undo Send, which gives me a whole 30 seconds to rethink what I’ve said in case I want to add anything. 2. Keep a list of things you want to talk

Lily in the Grinder released!

WHOO!! Folks, I am so so happy to announce that today is the day we release Lily in the Grinder. That means you can watch the short film that's a Project Greenlight finalist TODAY. Just go to http://lilyinthegrinder.com: Please please share it with your friends and

Lily in the Grinder is out!

More later. For now:

The 400 Blows Photo Project

Apologies to my millions of followers for never updating this blog 🙂 I’ve been working in Paris with Ted Walch, who teaches drama at Harvard-Westlake (you can see this amazing tribute the school paid to him last month here) and Philippe Thimel, who has an encyclopedic understanding of Paris, to

A counterpoint to ideology

Cross-posted with The Huffington Post I watched the fireworks after watching monster trucks and motocross racing in Pomona, surrounded by many people who think differently than I do. In this time, I had occasion to think about ideology. While it is easy to disdain blind nationalism and patriotism, I think

Nametag Day NYC is back June 7. And it's spreading. Join us!

Last June we handed out over 10,000 nametags in an effort to make NYC a friendlier place for a day. It was an incredible day of joy as thousands of new connections were made and a whole swath of the city thought about their neighbors in a slightly different

Shabbat Dinner

Happy Shabbat Dinner review

Wow wow. I try not to live and die by audience approval, but it really hits home when there's a review like this. "Only one of the five [movies in Green Briefs] manages to transcend its narrow issue to touch people in ANY kind of situation ANYWHERE.

Lily in the Grinder screening on April 1st!

Cast crew & you screening April 1 // 7pm Anthology Film Archives Quick, RSVP now! Hiya! If you’ve followed its journey on Facebook, you know that though Lily in the Grinder is a short film, it’s taken the work of over 50 people and the better part of a

The rise of the feature article

I  spent the better part of a week completing The Dark Power of Fraternities written by Caitlin Flanagan, which was on the cover of  The Atlantic this month. Weighing in at over 15,000 words, the behemoth of an article was consumed on my computer and on the subway with

Ten things I did to distribute Shabbat Dinner

In the space of four weeks, life can change dramatically. It’s hard to believe that it’s been so little time, but looking at my calendar I am forced to conclude that it has. Yo, watch Shabbat Dinner if you haven’t already! (Did I say that yet?) Yo,

Shabbat Dinner comes out!

Two years ago, in a friend’s apartment and with almost no money, a small ragtag group of people shot a film I had written eight weeks earlier. Our small kickstarter campaign finished one day before the shooting began. It was only meant as a little dramatic piece for an

Interview with Brandon Shire: Getting Shabbat Dinner out to LGBT Youth

(Originally posted on May 7, 2013) Check out my interview with author Brandon Shire about my attempts to get Shabbat Dinner out to LGBT youth and its launch as a Pay-What-You-Want model. You can watch the movie at shabbatdinnerfilm.com. Article cross-posted from Brandon’s blog: Welcome Michael Morgenstern, Writer

Lots of hats

I’m writing this in between High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) intervals on the treadmill. It’s been a day of to-do items and meetings, interspersed with half-hour breaks I’ve spent working on a trailer. I woke up at 11am but I’ll be working until three. Five months

Different Shot Sizes for Different Screens: Film in the Modern Age

Cross-posted from Huffington Post: One of the great casualties of modern viewing is the Wide Shot. Because many filmmakers expect viewers to be watching work on their laptops or (even… god forbid) cell phones, shooting stunning wide landscapes or shots that contain many people is avoided. Cinema has become tighter

Gravity review: In space, nobody can hear your one-liners

Cross-posted with Huffington Post Entertainment   I don’t usually post movie reviews, but this film was so spectacular and at the same time disturbing that I felt compelled to. tl;dr: You must see Gravity in IMAX 3D, but the script has flaws. (Warning: this post contains spoilers AND criticism.

Good self-distribution: Nobody controls the gates but you

Alexis Whitham, Director of Educational Programming & Acquisitions at the Frameline Film Festival, asked for 50-100 words about my process in creating a distribution portal for Shabbat Dinner, where you can pay what you want, and once I started I couldn’t stop until I had about 1,000. I

On connecting with audiences and free films

Like many who got into the self-distribution game, I was at first hoping to score a more traditional distribution model. It had been so much work to finish the film, and it was very compelling that I could sell it, make some money, and have experts working to get it

Shabbat Dinner screening at NewFest September 9!

Hello friends, It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two years since we filmed Shabbat Dinner, especially because that small film that we shot for two days in November 2011 remains so present in my world. It has been shown in over 55 festivals and screening venues

A Singularity Home Companion

Pale robot, choose your course, That I may slay you better. For a true warrior knows his enemy’s weakness. And yours, I fear, is chocolate cake. Wispy frosting, marmalade filling Sweet sin made sweeter by your lack of mouth Your insulin circuits are pretending to react I cheat you,

Why software as a service will kill accountability

I just downloaded the trial for Adobe Premiere Pro 7.0, which is available only as part of their Creative Cloud system. As explained by Wired, Creative Cloud isn’t really a cloud; it’s a fancy way of repackaging subscription-based software. A four-year subscription now costs new users about

Making up words (and looking for another)

When I can’t find a word I’m looking for, I like to make one up. It’s kind of like turning a stick into a simple tool. If a new word is truly needed, it allows for greater ease of thought and communication. If it’s a truly

Duh

So it turns out the NSA has been spying on everything we do. Some people seem to be shocked by this. Perhaps it makes me an untrusting person, but I think that when there is a means to do something, and enough entities that have a motivation to do it,

Nametag Day Is Coming on June 1

Cross-posted from Huffington Post and the Nametag Day blog: It’s coming on June 1, and I can’t wait. We’ve been talking for the past month to everybody who will listen about Nametag Day (and it’s been onCBS New York, Channel 12 News, and Gothamist.) Every time

Nametag Day website launches with crowdfunding campaign! Awesome foundation sponsors Nametag Day!

And we’re live! We decided to put out the site right away without the capability to register, but you can sign up with your email list and when we get the registration stuff rolled out (within the week, I hope) we’ll send everyone an email letting them know.