Cohort Film Lab
Cohort Film Lab is a live filmmaking workshop. You join a small randomized cohort on Night 1, draw a genre, and have two weeks to write, shoot, and edit an original short film. On Night 2 the entire community returns to screen what every cohort made.
It runs in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and St. Louis. $55 to join. See upcoming labs →
Members arrive at the venue and are placed into small randomized cohorts of 4–8 people. Each cohort spins the Genre Wheel — 18 possible genres including Rockumentary, Sci-Fi, Romance, Romcom, Horror, Revenge Thriller, Found Footage, Dark Comedy, Action, Comedy, Fantasy, Crime, Mystery, Docufiction, Absurdist, Historical Revisionism, Psychological Thriller, and True Crime — and walks away with their production window kickoff: a private group workspace, a master notes doc, a shared asset vault, a Kanban board, and 14 days to make a short film.
Cohorts use the Cohort platform end-to-end during the production window. Pre-production lives in the Kanban board with task ownership and due dates. Scripts live in the master notes. Locations, equipment, and scheduling are coordinated in the workspace chat. Dailies and rough cuts get uploaded to the asset vault — original files are deduplicated and transcoded into multi-tier video proxies (720p H.264 by default, with HLS streamed on first play) so editors can scrub footage in the browser without downloading 80GB of source. Review comments are threaded directly on the timeline.
Two weeks later the entire community returns for the public screening. Every cohort's finished film plays back-to-back for an audience of members, alumni, and invited guests. Films stream directly from each cohort's workspace and the credits are pre-attached to every contributor's Cohort profile and to the public Cohort Yearbook entry for the lab.
Two screening nights (Night 1 + Night 2), a 14-day production workspace with chat / asset vault / Kanban / master notes, randomized placement into a cohort, the Genre Wheel draw, video proxy generation for every clip your cohort uploads, a public credit on a finished short film, an entry in the Cohort Yearbook, and a permanent member profile with portfolio support. Film Labs are intentionally priced to be accessible — most participants are working filmmakers, students, and career-transitioners who do not have studio budgets to draw on.
A Cohort Film Lab is a 14-day intensive filmmaking sprint. Members are placed into small randomized cohorts on Night 1, given a creative prompt and a genre, then have a two-week production window to write, shoot, and edit an original short film. On Night 2 every cohort screens their finished film for the entire community.
Filmmakers, actors, writers, cinematographers, editors, sound designers, producers, and anyone who wants to make a finished short film with strangers who become collaborators. No experience level is required — past cohorts have included first-time directors alongside working industry professionals.
$55 per member, which covers your seat at both screening nights, the production workspace tools (group chat, asset vault with proxies, master notes, Kanban board), and the screening venue. There is a $1 authorization hold for payment verification that is released automatically within 7 days.
New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and St. Louis. Each city runs on its own cadence — check the events page for the next lab in your city.
A finished short film that you co-own with your cohort, a network of 4–8 working collaborators in your city, your work showcased in the public Cohort Yearbook, and a profile page on Cohort with the credits attached. Past Film Lab films have gone on to festival submissions and follow-on collaborations.
No — cohorts are mixed-discipline by design, so the cinematographers and producers in your group typically bring the gear. The workspace is designed to coordinate equipment, locations, and schedules across the full two weeks.
Night 1 is the cohort reveal — you meet your group, receive your genre prompt (drawn live from the Genre Wheel), and get the production window kickoff. Night 2 is the public screening of every cohort's finished film, two weeks later. Both nights run 7pm–9pm Eastern.
Looking for the music edition? See the Cohort Music Lab. Curious what past cohorts shipped? Browse the Yearbook.