What makes a blog good?

That’s a question that’s been on my mind a lot since setting up this very blog. You’ve gotta have a nice format, plenty of pictures, decent color choices… not to mention the actual content!

I spent some time today just looking through different blogs online, and while I’m certainly no expert, I can definitively say one thing:

A lot of blogs really suck!!! They look bad. They’re unreadable. All their links are either just endless, horrible lists, or they’re arranged in crowds of blocks with the tiniest, lowest-resolution images on Earth. And I hate them.

So, when I finally found some blogs that actually look pretty nice, it was such a relief. And then I found a blog that looks nice AND is actually relevant to my interests, and I began weeping over my desk, because it really shouldn’t be so hard to find good blogs in a world where, when you search “___ blog,” all the Google results are top 20 lists declaring all the best blogs you should feel bad for not already reading.

…Okay, I’m exaggerating, I didn’t actually cry, but I did feel like I’d finally been thrown a life preserver in a sea of art blog countdowns.

So, without further ado, let me present:

Lights Film School’s Indie Filmmaking Blog.

This blog hosts a TON of different articles about every aspect of creating an indie film. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can actually find a little directory guiding you to different subjects, like directing, editing, and sound design. If you just want to see their most current work, each page of the blog itself contains links to up to six articles, each with its own header image, title, and succinct description of the lesson within.

I’m a huge fan of how easy it is to navigate this site! It’s hard for me to focus on big blocks of text without visuals to guide my eyes around, so their choice to have large images attached to each post is genuinely helpful.

Another thing I’m really excited about is, of course: the content! I’ve been interested in the movie making process for a while now, so being able to just click through pages upon pages upon pages of materials on filmmaking advice is very cool.

I’ve only been able to skim a handful of their articles before writing this post (they’re all really in-depth and pretty long!), but I’m looking forward to sitting down with a cup of coffee and a notepad and thoroughly reading their lesson on the prewriting process. It discusses different methods of prewriting and the benefits to using each one, which is something I want to learn more about, especially considering I’m working on prewriting a personal project of my own.

Seriously: LFS makes a good blog. We could all at least learn a thing or two from their excellent design skills, if not their nigh-endless moviemaking knowledge. But don’t take my word for it: if you missed the link above, go ahead and click here to check them out.

-Amanda