Director's Prep

Great directors know what they want, but how do they get there? Learn a practical process for investigating your story and turning your interpretation into confident choices. We’ll cover defining your story’s spine, breaking down characters and scenes, staging and blocking, developing your film’s look, and casting. This course is built around giving novice and aspiring directors the tools to define a clear vision for their film that is the result of thorough preparation.

  • Experience Level: Aspiring and early-stage filmmakers.

  • Monday | November 30 | 6pm-9pm

  • NOVAC: New Orleans | 4422 S. Carrollton Ave.

Instructor

Daniel Lafrentz

A Director known for his passion, work ethic, and warmth, Daniel Lafrentz is an award-winning bi-coastal filmmaker with a potent blend of the art and craft he learned in Los Angeles, seasoned with the flavor he found making his home in New Orleans. Getting involved with his community and exploring the countryside is how he developed a gift for creating authentic, lived-in worlds, and the working-class underdogs usually at the center of his work. The proof-of-concept for Daniel’s New Orleans-set dad-tective pilot, Saint City, premiered at the Austin Film Festival and Dances With Films. Daniel’s debut feature, a bayou-noir called The Long Shadow, won a Jury Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival where it was acquired by Gravitas Ventures and then released on Showtime. Before that, his UCLA MFA thesis, the genre-bending Horror/Western Bleeding, Kansas, won the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award. Daniel also produced the feature documentary titled Time II Unfinished Business directed by Fox Rich, the indomitable matriarch of the Oscar-nominated TIME (2020), which premiered on Amazon Prime on Juneteenth, 2026. In this poignant sequel to their own personal saga, Fox and Rob Rich return to the battleground of Louisiana’s carceral state to fight for the release of their nephew and co-defendant from the clutches of a merciless system and ultimately discover that the purpose of freedom is to free others. When he’s not practicing and performing with his all-men’s dance team and service club, the 610 Stompers, Daniel tells stories about gentle people fighting to survive in an indifferent, sometimes cruel world, which makes his work a lot like him: a little dark, a little funny, and full of heart.

Purchase Workshop Here

Individual courses are $30 for General Admission and $25 for NOVAC Members. $15 for NOVAC Community Cohort Alumni.

This workshop is funded by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council, as administered by Arts New Orleans.