The importance of a collective

This photo perfectly complements the video below. Takeaway: Find your tribe.

"When a group of people get together and decide to do something, strange and mysterious things can happen..."

http://youtu.be/BgfuzhWM5hA

My first film fest: ABFF in NY

These last few weeks have been a whirlwind! Daniel turned 6 months old, Stevie graduated from kindergarten, the boys are out of school for summer vacation and I visited New York for almost a week to attend the American Black Film Festival where MUTED had its' world premiere.

MUTED was one of five films selected for the HBO Short Film Competition held annually at ABFF (*To be eligible to submit, your project must have a black writer or director and world premiere status) and what an experience it was! 

It was kicked off by car service picking me up at 4am to take me to the airport and then to the hotel once in New York.

I could get used to this!

We stayed at the gorgeous Gansevoort Hotel on Park Ave. Check out the chic chandeliers!

After briefly settling in our room, we got dressed and took a cab to Bar Americain for our welcome dinner where we got to meet and greet the other short filmmakers, HBO executives and founder of ABFF, Jeff Friday.

Didn't think a NY restaurant could pull off a good shrimp & grits (I have spent quite a few years in Houston afterall) but they nailed it!

The next morning we had an opportunity to get to know some of the programming executives a little better as they had a seating chart designed to sit us next to folks we didn't know while we dined at the hotel's restaurant Asellina for breakfast.

Later that day we attended the filmmaker's reception followed by the opening night film "Think Like A Man Too", which had a lively introduction by the film's producer Will Packer, director Tim Story and lead actor Kevin Hart.

The next day was our big night! We arrived at the SVA Theatre a ball of nerves (What if the audio sounds bad? What if it won't play? What if they don't like it?!?) but also excited to finally see our work on the big screen.

We walked the red carpet (which is harder than it looks when there are a bunch of you!) and took our seats in the theatre. 

With Co-Producer Danette Wilson, Producer Tara Tomicevic, Associate Producer Matthew Owyang & Director Rachel Goldberg

Our film was up first (!) and was followed by an incredible line-up of really well-done, beautiful films including Gabrielle Fulton-Ponder's "Ir/Reconcilable" starring Jasmine Guy, Tiffany Littlejohn's "The Perfect Sacrifice" starring Nakia Secrest, Ya'Ke's "Dawn" starring Mikala Gibson, and Terron "Muthafucca Jones" "When It All Falls Down" starring Branden Wellington and MaameYaa Boafo. 

How did it feel to see my film on the big screen for the first time (and to see myself on the big screen for the first time as well)? AMAZING! There were gasps and tears and audible audience reactions and it was simply wonderful. (It's what I miss the most about doing theatre - connecting with the audience.)

After each film the filmmakers took to the stage to talk briefly with our host, the ever-fabulous Bevy Smith, about what went into the making of the films and to give a little insight into each filmmaker's process.

As I walked down the stage after our mini Q & A, the one and only Alfre Woodard mouthed "Good job!" to me. (ARE YOU FREAKIN KIDDING ME?!?) I could've passed out with glee right then!

After a glorious screening experience, the rest of the weekend was just gravy. 

Chillin in the lounge

With Rick Moore of NYLA Elise Clothing

True Blood party complete with signature drinks, custom pillows & fake vampire bite tattoos. Nice touch! As a former Special Events Planner you know I LOVED this!

At the "Get On Up" exhibit promoting the new James Brown biopic

We sipped margaritas at Dos Caminos, enjoyed the VIP lounge, attended a panel with actors from Boardwalk Empire, Getting On and True Blood (hello Joe Manganiello!), visited Chandra's dear sweet agent to thank him for all his help, cracked up at the Comedy Wings competition (shout out to Hadiyah Robinson who absolutely killed it and Amberia Allen whose brand of intelligent, witty humor could easily land her on a sitcom very soon), partied hard at the True Blood #LastCall party and finally found ourselves at the Awards Ceremony where they presented the Best Short Film Award to (drumroll please).....

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.....

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MUTED!!! Yaaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!!!! :-) :-) :-)

Talk about an overwhelming moment! We said our thank-you's:

  

 and had permanent smiles on our faces for the rest of the night.

With producing partner Tara Tomicevic

With co-producer Danette Wilson & actor Omari Hardwick 

With actor Charles S. Dutton

Afterward we had one final meal with our HBO hosts at the ridiculously divine Buddakan...

I loved the decor in their private room! Made us feel like we were in a golden library.

and then made our way back to the hotel lobby where we chilled with the other filmmakers until around 3am. 

Oh but our night didn't end there. We got invited to a party in Soho so we threw on some jeans and headed back out and danced the morning away! 

Around 4:30 or so we tried to get a cab to go back to the hotel but none wanted to stop (that's really a thing!) so we walked to a diner and had breakfast instead. 

The French Toast was HUGE!

As the sun came up before our eyes we knew we would regret not going to bed in a few hours, but for the moment we were all still floating on cloud 9.

These were our faces when we made it back to the hotel around 6:30am to go to bed!

A few hours later we had to get up and ready because our awesome, amazing friend Leshelle secured two interviews for us at 30 Rock!

We were prepped in a makeup chair and then whisked away to the set of MSNBC's "The Reid Report" where we got to talk to Joy Reid about our film and plans for the future. 

You can view the Reid Report segment here: 

http://www.msnbc.com/the-reid-report/watch/a-muted-response-when-child-goes-missing-293193795918

Immediately after we went to another floor in the huge building and sat down with Lilly Workneh of TheGrio where we talked more about the inspiration behind the film and what steps people can take should they feel called to act after viewing. 

You can view theGrio segment here:

http://thegrio.com/2014/07/03/muted-powerful-film-explores-being-black-and-missing/

With my voice rapidly deteriorating, we made our way back to the hotel to grab our bags and bid adieu. 

It was such a wonderful, fantastic, memorable experience and I am incredibly grateful to have had it.

Oh baby!

2013 is shaping up to be a whirlwind year.

First of all, if you were one of the people who contributed to our Kickstarter campaign or even shared the link extensively with your network: THANK YOU! We raised over $16k which means Muted is finally happening! We are now in the midst of casting, selecting shoot dates and hiring key crew. It's all very exciting and there's a lot of work to be done but we have a great team already so I know its going to be such an awesome shoot. I'll keep you posted on new developments as they arise.

In my personal life, my little one is going to Kindergarten this year. I can't believe it! Next month he'll join his big brother (who is now going to freakin 4th grade!) at the same school. And if that weren't enough, Stephen & I recently found out that we are pregnant. YAY!!!! Well, it was more like WHAAAATTTTT???? when we first found out but now we're very excited. Hopefully I'll get a girl this time but we have a while until we can find out what the gender is. I guess this means I'll be doing a lot of writing as my stomach gets bigger and I'm forced to slow down in other areas. For now I'm just trying to take as many naps and go to bed as early as possible since my energy level is pretty low during this first trimester.

No other news right now, though I really think that's more than enough. Hope you all are enjoying your summer!

Consumed with Kickstarter

For the last 2 weeks I've been consumed with promoting my Kickstarter campaign for Muted. I knew it would be hard but WOW! This truly is a 24 hour job that requires a lot of reminding people without annoying people (or at least trying not to). We're hoping to raise at least $15,000 (just shy of $7,000 to date) and as with all Kickstarter projects if we don't reach our goal then we get nothing at all. Please take a moment to watch our pitch video and if it resonates with you then please make a pledge. The minimum amount is $1 and believe me when I say we are THRILLED when we see those $1 pledges come in because they add up quickly.

We've been shown some Twitter love from a few women who have retweeted our campaign including actress/director Regina King, actress Megan Good, Black Girls Rock creator Beverly Bond, comedienne Sommore, singer T-Boz of TLC and my "shero" herself Shonda Rhimes! We've also recently been covered by Clutch magazine: http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/06/new-film-explores-the-muted-voices-of-missing-children-of-color-2/.

I have some other things to share with you, including a new blog feature that I'm excited about, but first I've gotta make it to the 30th and see this Kickstarter campaign through to the end.

Muted Kickstarter
Muted Facebook page

Muted Mixer {You're Invited!}

It's happening...



Click the photo above to enlarge and go here to RSVP. Hope to see you there!

1st Quarter

Only one more week left in March and then the first quarter of the year is over. Crazy right?

Well it's been a whirlwind few months for me. In good news I signed with a new commercial agency, Brick Entertainment, and have gone out a handful of times already so yay for that! I was also selected as a mentee for the mentor circles that Women In Film are spearheading this year and recently attended my first mentor meeting. LOVED IT!! The ladies in my group are all intelligent, ambitious, driven and so incredibly diverse that I'm really looking forward to seeing how all of us grow and stretch and accomplish our goals over the next 12 months.

On the personal tip, I left my day job. Well I didn't completely leave it. I still come in on Monday mornings and do paperwork for about 2 hours but I'm no longer an office manager. This is both gratifying and terrifying. It's wonderful because now all of my mental space & energy that was being consumed by this job over the last 8 months has been released! But it's also terrifying because I have bills to pay. Rent's gotta be paid, kids have to eat, a car NEEDS to be bought and let's not forget the never-ending expenses that come with the pursuit of an acting career. So, to make up for the hit to my bank account, I've signed on to work from home with 3 transcription companies. The work is tedious and confidential (so don't ask me which shows I transcribe) but I get to set my own schedule and, more importantly, telecommute. Such a beautiful thing!

In addition to transcribing, I've also launched my home bakery business - Sugar Swag Bakeshoppe - and I'm having SO MUCH FUN creating custom goodies for friends and family. Don't worry, I'm not gonna turn this into a food blog, but you can expect to see pics of any sweet treats I create that are entertainment industry related so you've been warned. :-)

What else? I'm sure there's more to share but that's enough for one post. Hope you're all well and making most of this (fast) year as it whizzes by.

2012 Wins

For the last 8 months I've been working on a deal that fell apart earlier this week. The short version is that we (Tara & I) reached out to a well-known actress (she's a series regular who also acts in feature films) whom we read was beginning to transition into directing. We sent her manager the script, she loved it, she met with us (which was SO awesome) and all we had to do was figure out the scheduling. Well since our meeting she's gone on to act in a short, act in a feature, direct her first feature and now her TV show has gone back into production (of which she's recently been offered to direct an episode of as well) so despite all our efforts we just couldn't get around scheduling conflicts. *Sigh* We were SO close! This left me kinda bummed and feeling like last year was a bust until I read this awesome post from my friend DaJuan. Here's a snippet:

"I bet that if you look back to January 2012 you’ll see you are in a much different place than January 2013. Sure you may not be on the tv show you want to be on yet or you did not sign with that new agent you wanted to land — but, it’s COMING. You have to believe that... “REMEMBER THE WINS.” Sometimes we just forget how awesome we are doing and need to be reminded. It helps to keep a list of your accomplishments somewhere visible. Yup, write them down. Call it your 2012 WIN LIST if you like... Anything goes here and hey, it’s your list nobody else has to see it. By doing this you will have a tangible visual to help remind you how far you’ve really come. I’ve said this before, sometimes in our business there aren’t a lot of tangible things to show our accomplishments. This helps calm my anxiety and I can say, oh yeah, I forgot — THAT HAPPENED."

So I got together with Tara and my other friend Danette and we came up with our 2012 wins. Here are mine - mostly career but there are a couple personal ones towards the end as well:

1. Wrote a short
2. Wrote a feature (extended said short)
3. Said feature advanced to the final round of consideration for the 2013 Sundance Screenwriters Lab
4. Established a relationship with the CD's and associates at one of the top casting offices in town via a weekly volunteer position.
5. Joined SAG-AFTRA
6. Met with a HUGE manager with multiple A-list clients 
7. Had lunch with said A-list client of whom I've been a fan of for years and she was every bit as nice and down to earth as I'd hoped she'd be! 
8. Learned that anyone in this industry is accessible - we just gotta get over our fear of reaching out (This discovery was huge for me!)
9. Had 7 auditions
10. Booked the webseries Math to the Rescue and the training video ABLE with Group 1 Productions
11. Booked an industrial for Hertz with High Heat Media
12. Attended 27 networking events
13. Had two successful table reads of my short. The first I organized on my own and had a bunch of friends help me out. The second came months later and was part of a weekly workshop put on by We Make Movies where writers can submit their work for actors to read on stage. Both reads were incredibly helpful in terms of shaping the characters and refining the plot and I made some new friends from the WMM read which is always nice.
14. Did 4 cd/agent/manager workshops
15. Started a monthly goal accountability group
16. Had 15 coffee/lunch dates
17. Opened a business account for our pending production
18. Celebrated my 5th wedding anniversary
19. Found a great & affordable facial cleanser (as someone who's struggled with breakouts all my life, this makes me very happy!)
20. Made my first cake pop sale (yeah I'm a budding baker now, a topic for a later post)

Compiling this list helped me feel SO MUCH BETTER about the last 12 months and served as a good reminder that we're usually a lot harder on ourselves (and our PERCEIVED lack of accomplishments) than we should be. Again, Dajuan:

"Finally it also helps to remember that although you don’t see it sometimes you have just laid brilliant seeds for things to come. Which may not look like much, but down the road when everything comes together so wonderfully it will all make sense."

Amen, amen and amen!

What are your 2012 wins - personal, professional or otherwise? You don't have to share them with the world but write them down somewhere to remind yourself.