The Texas Round-Up

The third month-ahead festival ledger. Every submission deadline in December 2026, every festival running in it, and the eight December deadlines that are not on the festival’s own website.

How Robert Rodriguez turned a $7,000 debut into Troublemaker Studios, Texas crews, DIY film lessons and new Austin productions in 2026.

Texas first: AFF winners, Lone Star at 20, a documentary at No. 1, new deals, filmmaker lessons, and this weekend’s festivals and deadlines.

Former UT film students made it near Round Rock in the summer of 1973 for about $140,000, on 16mm stock rated ISO 25 and a very small lighting package.

Blank Check is set in Indiana and was shot in central Texas: an Austin castle, a San Antonio bank hall and theme park, and a Dallas fountain.

The second month-ahead festival ledger. Every submission deadline falling in November 2026, every festival running in it, and a Berlinale correction with six days left on it.

Rodriguez took eight credits on one studio picture and made it at his own stages in a decommissioned Austin airport. The locations and the cost model.

Shot in Texas: the 50 ranks every feature with more than half its principal photography in Texas by worldwide gross, counting down from 50 to 1 through August 2027.

Fifty-one acres and seventy structures near Dripping Springs, a January to June 2003 shoot, and what the record actually says about why the picture did not find its audience.

Planet Terror and Death Proof were shot back to back at Troublemaker Studios in 2006. The locations, the dates, and the one sequence that had to leave Texas.

Twelve rooms between Waco and Kerrville that will program or rent to a filmmaker, four more to call first, with the path in, the format they take, and what changed this year.

Every other source says world-class crew base. Here is which departments actually are, which are adequate, which are thin, and the one you should import, from my own shows. With the method, so you can argue.

Every city owns the how-to-apply page. Nobody says how long it takes. Here are the published lead times for eight Texas jurisdictions, side by side, from their own pages, and the one clock that isn't the city's.

The first month-ahead festival ledger. Every submission deadline falling in October 2026, every festival running in it, and six corrections to the report it is built on.

Man of the House shot on the University of Texas campus in late 2003, using the actual UT name, stadium, band and cheerleaders. The locations, the access it took, and what a live game day costs a schedule.

We read the actual regulations at roughly a hundred film festivals in one week. More than a quarter were showing a dead deadline on their own website, and that was not the strangest thing we found.

Fifteen short-film grants from 225 applications, a feature cycle worth up to $20,000, and a March gala at Troublemaker Studios. How Austin funds its own.

The Paramount goes dark for a $65 million restoration while AFS Cinema adds a third screen. What that says about who's betting on theatrical here.

The festival cut two days, lost its convention center, and still premiered ninety world premieres. What we took home from March.

I directed and produced Odie in Austin this spring. Three things I'd budget differently, one thing Texas gave me that no other state would have, and no company-level claims.