How to read a Contract

How to Read a Contract Without a Lawyer (And When to Get One)

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Somewhere between your first paid gig and your first real credit, a contract lands in your inbox. Nobody walks you through it. Maybe you're scoring a short, illustrating a festival poster, editing a podcast, or punching up a pilot. Either way, the moment you sign, your creative work becomes a business deal with rules attached. Learning how to read a contract doesn't require a law degree. It requires knowing what you're looking at, what's negotiable, and when to hand it to a professional. That's what this guide covers.
Billboard Top Music Business Schools 2026

The Los Angeles Recording School Named to Billboard’s 2026 Top Music Business Schools List

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Billboard has published its 2026 Top Music Business Schools list, and The Los Angeles Recording School, a division of The Los Angeles Film School, is on it again. The list runs alphabetically with no rankings. It covers programs that teach the business side of music: A&R, touring, marketing, licensing, and the rest of the machinery that gets a record from the studio to an audience.
man watching tv alone, second screen

Nobody Watches Alone: The Second Screen and How It Rewrote Exposition

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Somewhere right now, a character on a streaming series is announcing exactly what she plans to do next and why. The person watching is answering a text. Those two facts are related, and the relationship is changing how TV shows get written. “Second screen” viewing has reshaped dialogue density, recap strategy, and how often a plot point gets said out loud. For anyone studying screenwriting, the useful question is whether that shift is a compromise or one more adaptation in a medium that has always bent around its audience.
Sound in Horror

The Sound of Fear: How Horror Audio Manipulates Your Brain

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Mute any of the great horror movies and the shark is a mechanical prop, the hallway is a hallway and the masked man is a guy in a mask. Turn the sound back on and your pulse climbs before anything moves. That gap is horror sound design at work, and it's one of the sharpest lessons in film sound.
critique

How to Give a Critique That Actually Helps

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Every crit session has that one moment. Someone says "I just don't like it," the room goes quiet, and nobody (including the person who said it) walks away knowing what to fix. That's not feedback. That's noise. If you plan to work in a creative field, expect to spend a lot of time in critique rooms: dailies, table reads, portfolio reviews, mix sessions, pitch meetings. Learning how to give a critique that's specific, fair, and usable is a craft skill, and it can be learned like any other.
Woman sitting and thinking holding a series pitch bible

The Series Bible: What a TV Writer Actually Brings Into the Pitch Room

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Most TV pitches are told out loud. The document behind them is the series bible, and it has to do in ten to twenty pages what a full season does on screen: prove the world holds up, the characters are worth living with, and the show won't run out of gas by episode six. Most TV writers learn how hard that is the first time a bible comes back with more notes than the pilot. Here's what belongs in the document, and what to know before you sit across from a development executive who has already heard plenty of pitches this month.
genres of animation explained; man setting up stop motion animation

Subgenres of Animation Explained

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Ask ten people what animation looks like and you'll get ten answers: a desk lamp that hops, a Ghibli sky, a clay dog with a nervous owner, a logo that assembles itself before an ad. They're all right. Animation is a medium, and the subgenres of animation are the techniques inside it. Each has its own look, budget, and workflow. Here's what each one is, what it costs, and who does it best.
TIFF the Market

TIFF: The Market Explained: What It Is, How It Works, and Where LAFS Alumni Already Fit In

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Every September, the Toronto International Film Festival fills the city with red carpets and premieres. Starting in 2026, TIFF added something the festival has never had before: an official market. Running September 10 to 16 alongside the festival, TIFF: The Market gave North America its own version of what the Cannes Marché du Film has done since 1959, a dedicated space where films, series, and other screen projects get bought, sold, and financed, separate from the public-facing side of the festival. This year, LAFS had a real stake in that room. Seven alumni worked across eight projects connected to the festival and market, including one who directed a feature.
Algorithm is Distributor

The Algorithm Is a Distributor: What Media Companies Learned From Creators

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Ten years ago, a distribution deal was the finish line. Land one, and your show, your song, or your film found an audience. Now the finish line has moved. An algorithm decides who actually sees your work, and the companies that figured that out first weren't the studios. They were creators working out of bedrooms and garages, and legacy media has spent the last several years catching up.