About


Leading Edge Research and Improvement of Industry Best Practices

The Motion Picture Industry Institute (MPii) is a nonprofit industry organization founded by working MP/TV industry professionals seeking to exchange career-building and higher-level craft skills with their peers . By coming together year after year, researching, improving and dissemination the best industry practices MPii has also served to help the next generation of emerging Hollywood professionals to more effectively launch and further their careers as well.

The Motion Picture Industry Institute (MPii) exists to strengthen our industry by helping professionals thrive with meaningful, fulfilling, and sustainable careers in the movie and television industry. Our programs are relevant across the spectrum of industry careers, including:

  • writers, directors, producers
  • actors &  and other performers
  • casting directors
  • cinematographers & technical crew
  • editors & post-production professionals
  • studio, network, production company and distribution execs,
  • agents, managers, attorneys, financiers and accountants

MPii believes that a stronger, healthier industry will result if the knowledge it usually takes decades to learn is more generally (and genuinely) shared with people who are just starting their careers, as well as people working to take their careers to the next level.

As a collaborative art form, filmmaking is a team sport, and our teams are built on the strength and professional preparedness of our collaborators. Therefore the work at MPii focuses on developing and sharing better industry standards and practices in all areas of the entertainment field, from story development, through finance and production, to final marketing and distribution, including film theory and criticism.

In order to be sure to continue to offer the “best of the best” industry practices available for career development and the MP/TV creative process, MPii actively conducts deep research, rigorous testing, and then compelling dissemination via workshops and trainings, and other career development programs, often hosted and/or in partnership with studios, networks, industry guilds, unions, trade associations, universities and leading industry organizations around the world.

Our primary areas of focus are researching and helping to improve industry best practices in:

Story Development

Production Management and On-set Safety and Protocols

Diversity, Gender and Inclusion in the Entertainment Industry 

Marketing, Promotion and Distribution of Entertainment

Legal and Financing of Entertainment Projects,

New Technology in Motion Picture Production and Distribution

Talent Management, Representation and Career-Building  Strategies  in Entertainment Industry

The Motion Picture Industry Institute operates as a 501.c.3 nonprofit organization, based in Los Angeles.

OUR HISTORY

The core curriculum for much of the research, trainings, workshops and programs at Motion Picture Industry Institute today is the legacy of the first Roundtables and Story Sessions, which brought together professionals in the story development area of the industry to improve industry best practices in the wake of the 1988 Writers Guild strike. The focus expanded further as Steven Soderbergh and others expressed the need for a place where working professionals could come together to share what they were learning as they struggled to move their projects and careers forward.

The growing collection of meetups, roundtables and peer-to-peer industry skills-building training programs for working professionals officially became Filmmakers Foundation in 1995. With the support and partnership of such industry organizations as The Writer’s Guild (WGA), The Screen Actors Guild (SAG), The Directors Guild (DGA), Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Disney, and many leading industry professionals, Filmmakers Foundation was known for three flagship projects:

  • founding the The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival
  • a nonprofit indie filmmaking collective-style production support services program, to help emerging filmmakers access and share resources,  knowledge, and relationships to get their first features made.
  • the motion picture industry research and improvement of best practices and career-building training programs for working professionals.

By 2000, it was clear that each of these three programs needed their own organizations in order to continue to grow each in their own best way.  The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival was spun off, and evolved away from the focus on the “independent” and is now called The Los Angeles Film Festival.   The indie filmmaking collective group migrated to a sister filmmakers collective which is now known as the Filmmakers Alliance.  The industry research and career-building programs are now the core programs here at MPii.