Phillip Bladh winning Oscar

LAFS Alum and Production Sound Mixer Phillip Bladh Talks Sound of Metal, A24, and Oscar Night

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Few people understand the emotional power of sound in film better than Phillip Bladh. Sound of Metal, directed by Darius Marder (The Place Beyond the Pines) and starring Riz Ahmed (Nightcrawler, Jason Bourne, Rogue One) and Olivia Cooke (House of the Dragon, Bates Motel), relied heavily on the expertise of its sound professionals to tell the touching, poignant, and at times sonically imposing story of a heavy-metal drummer going through the life-altering experience of losing his hearing.
Joaquin Phoenix on the set of c'mon c'mon

How Does a Film Get Recognized Into the Criterion Collection?

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Today, we are celebrating the induction of select films from director Mike Mills’ body of work into the Criterion Collection as a collection titled I’ll Remind You of Everything, which compiles the director's deeply personal, semi-autobiographical trilogy of films mapping out parent-child relationships, including Beginners, 20th Century Women, and C’mon, C’mon.
Phillip Bladh

Let There Be Sound: An Interview with A-List Sound Mixer Phillip Bladh

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For Oscar-winning sound mixer Phillip Bladh, sound has never just been technical — it’s an emotional audio journey for audiences that can make or break a film. Long before winning a Best Sound Academy Award for his groundbreaking work on Sound of Metal, the Los Angeles Film School alumnus was a musician obsessed with microphones, recording equipment, and the invisible ways sound shapes human experience.
Filmmaker Magazine 2026

Filmmaker Magazine Names The Los Angeles Film School to 2026 Film School Guide

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The Los Angeles Film School is featured in FILMMAKER Magazine's 2026 Film School Guide, marking its fourth straight year among the nation's top film education programs. The recognition runs in the magazine's Summer 2026 issue (No. 135), on newsstands now.
Character

Why Character Is the Engine of Every Great Script

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You can build the most intricate plot in the world. Elaborate twists, high-concept stakes, jaw-dropping set pieces. You'll still lose your audience by page 20 if there's no character they care about. Character isn't decoration on top of your story. Character is the story. Every great screenplay, from Get Out to Parasite to Spirited Away, works because a specific person with specific desires and contradictions makes choices we can't look away from.
S'yrai Smith

Alumni Spotlight: Sy’Rai Smith Turns Family Legacy Into Her Own Sound

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Sy'Rai Smith didn't come to The Los Angeles Film School to follow in anyone's footsteps — but her grandmother made sure she got here anyway. "The reason why I went to school to begin with is because of my grandmother," Sy'Rai says in our new video interview. Sonja Norwood, a veteran talent manager who has taught in LAFS's Entertainment Business program since 2018, kept coming home raving about the school. "She always came back and was like, 'It's so great, I think you should go there.'" Sy'Rai enrolled - and stayed. She's now a double LAFS alumni, graduating summa cum laude with degrees in Entertainment Business.
Bedroom Producer

From Bedroom Beats to Professional Tracks: How Music Production Has Changed

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There was a time when making a record meant booking studio time, hiring engineers, and spending money you might not have on equipment you'd never own. That time is over. Today, some of the most compelling music in the world gets made in spare bedrooms, apartment closets, and converted garages — by independent artists with laptops, studio monitors, and a vision. If you're serious about building a career in music production, understanding that shift is your foundation.
What Streaming Has Changed About Writing for Film and TV- photo of monitor

What Streaming Has Changed About Writing for Film and TV

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The rulebook for screenwriters didn't get thrown out when streaming arrived. It got rewritten — faster, looser, and with a lot more pages. If you're studying writing for film and TV right now, you're entering an industry that looks radically different from the one that produced Breaking Bad, let alone Seinfeld. The shift touches what audiences expect, what formats are viable, and what skills separate a working writer from a great one. Understanding how streaming changed the game isn't optional background knowledge. It's the foundation of your craft.
Visual Storytelling- film crew on a set

The Film Student’s Guide to Visual Storytelling

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Every film is a visual argument. Before a single line of dialogue lands, the audience is already reading the frame - the lighting in a room, where the camera sits, how a character moves through space. Visual storytelling is what turns footage into meaning. It's also the skill set that separates filmmakers who understand the medium from those still pointing a camera at things and hoping. This guide covers the core tools - lighting, composition, camera movement, color, framing, and editing - and how to start using them on purpose.