Ever considered trying to launch your film career from LA? Concerned about the outcome of the next British election and considering your options? Alan Denman was a pivotal part of the London indie film community, notably as Chair of the Screenwriter's Workshop and Head of Development for Euroscript until he left to the US in 2004. Tom Fogg interviewed him here, long ago, and indeed when I started working for Shooting People he offered me free desk space. Now, with his wife Ayesha Walker (pictured below), he runs Stinging Bull Films from Hollywood and has already made his first feature. Alan has written for Netribution a fascinating and in-depth account of his experience as a Brit in LA, learning to speak 'American', getting a Visa, writing a sellable script, as well as ten tips for making it in a very different film environment. It's 4,000 words of insider gold-dust, and worth bookmarking and reading fully when you have the time. Six thousand feet up in the San Bernadino Mountains of Southern California. Day One of Principal Photography: a long shot of our young lead actress walking along a deserted forest road. She goes ahead on her own – and suddenly screams. That wasn’t in the script, I think to myself. I look past her to observe a large brown bear crossing the set. Principal photography is suspended as she runs back to join the main party. Fortunately she hasn’t been mauled or eaten. Indeed, the bear seems not even to have noticed her. Nervously we all creep forward to watch the creature happily snuffling around in a neighbour’s garden before moving off. Such are the dangers, thrills and indelible memories of filmmaking.  I was there in California, a British director, shooting my first feature, which I had also written. The crew worked like Trojans, and the young American cast had so much energy it was impossible to persuade them to get to bed at night. Then in the morning they’d be up early to go through their lines with me and help rewrite my very British dialogue. This was my first experience of how different filmmaking in America is.  Though obvious to me now, coming then from the only culture I knew – Britain – it was a big surprise to realize how differently people spoke on the other side of the Pond. You think Americans speak English? Think again – they speak American, and I needed to learn their language. The first read-through of the script was a comedy of confusion. We might as well have been speaking French and Greek, for all we understood each other. In a combination of wisdom and desperation I gave them free rein to improvise. It worked. What resulted was dialogue that was vib .....