You'll Never Take My Sanity!

Hi. I'm one of the scores of thirty-something-year-olds who have struggled with the transition from being a young adult into be just a regular ol' adult. I'm assuming if you're reading this, you're another one. I'm hoping that these blogs will be helpful to us all in some way. I want to talk about some of my experiences and what has worked for me and what really has not been working for me. Maybe my stories will come in handy for some people--and maybe some of you readers might have some insights that could help me out too. So, let's get started.

The beginning, I guess...

When I was seven-years-old, I knew what I wanted to do with my life– I wanted to be an actor. If that didn't work out, I knew that I at least wanted to work in the film industry in some manner. So, I began studying everything I could get my hands on in order to make that happen--which wasn't a whole lot since this was pre-internet in Newfoundland. I was able to get involved with some community theatre projects by the time I was 11, and I continued to do that every year until some television projects came to town (finally, since at that time there was very little film and television happening locally). Some of my theatre contacts moved over into film and television and by the time I turned 26, I was working in film and television as a production assistant.

Sounds like a happy ending right? Well, in some ways it is– I have my dream job (more or less)...but it's not that simple.

See, the film industry in my province isn't the most regular. It's a seasonal industry that typically does one project at a time, unlike in larger centres like Toronto and B.C. where it's a year-round industry with multiple projects happening at the same time. Which means my job lifestyle is essentially feast or famine. For me, a lot of the time it's famine, because, during my developmental years of trying to enter the film industry, I made some choices that were, on paper, very brilliant moves--but in practice, bit me in the butt like it was the juiciest steak on the planet.In an attempt to make contacts in the broader film industry, while at the same time trying to make something of a name for myself, I created a film festival that focused on Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror films called Granite Planet International Film Festival.

Granite Planet

So, the Granite Planet International Film Festival was a concept I came up with in 2015 after hosting a mini film festival at a local science fiction convention for the four years prior– which always had a decent turnout. There appeared to be a very interested audience for the content we were marketing, so I thought we should make it bigger, and thus– GPIFF!

Everything went better than I could have imagined– filmmakers from all over the world were sending me their projects and talking with me on a regular basis. I was getting interviews and media coverage both locally and internationally from people who wanted to see this festival succeed–one outlet said that we sounded like we could become the "Sundance of Horror". Nothing could have been better.

Except funding. That was the one problem.

I'd tried to get a bunch of sponsors and no one was biting, which was problematic to me because we have two other major film festivals in our province who receive a lot of funding so I figured we could have received even some of it...but unfortunately, we got a total of $500 in sponsorships.

So, I put it all on my credit card. By my calculations, if we sold half the auditorium for each screening, I'd make my money back AND a small profit. If we sold out at all, it'd be higher than that, and because of the demand at the other festivals I'd done before, there was no way we wouldn't sell out halfway.

Except, no one showed up.

We put together an amazing event, with a mini trade show and Hollywood-quality films from all over the world...and no one came.

The costs of running that event, with no return on the investment, financially hobbled me. It's been three years and I haven't been able to crawl out of it yet. People keep telling me I should try a crowdfunding initiative to see if anyone will help but...I have a hard time feeling like that's the right thing to do. However, this blog can generate some revenue for me, and it might help others out as well. I plan to post regularly about what I deal with and what I work on and hopefully if anyone reads this we can create a bit of a community here who can help each other grow instead of making ladders for ourselves out of each other's corpses.