Uncover the Mysterious Power of the Ladybug Effect with Greg Porper – SYS Podcast Episode 535 Exclusive!
I’m talking with you about this, considering, we met through deadline junkies, which is like the purpose of that screenwriter’s group, which I love. And so, yeah, so anyway, as a working on Avid, I was a story producer for several documentaries and what that is, essentially it’s analyzing footage that’s coming in from the field. And it’s a documentary, whether it’s about people who are suffering from various addictions or I did a project with a bunch of California firefighters, like fighting like really serious fires up and down the state. You can’t control the footage you’re getting because you’re filming something that’s really happening. And so when all that footage comes in, how do you then craft a story, whether it’s a 90-minute documentary or a six-episode hour long series? And so I found that that experience was really great to see how the story also gets shaped in the edit. And so I felt like, all right, now I’ve had these experiences of being working development, production and post. Meanwhile, on the side, I’m writing constantly wanting to make a movie. That’s ultimately like why I came out here. And so I was using these jobs to learn, but also to save up as much money as I could, knowing that in order to make a movie, you need funding and you need money. And one of the best ways to possibly get funding from other people, whether it’s people you know or people you don’t know, is if there’s some sort of funding in place, even if it’s not a lot. And so in my case, I was saving up with the intention that I would be the first dollars in to the movie that I was going to make. And my partner, John, who I worked with on this, we talked about this, how we were both going to be the ones to first put in money. And so we spent like two years writing the script at this time while I was still working these documentary jobs. And eventually there was the point where I had to take the plunge and say like, all right, I need to like be able to work full time on getting this movie off the ground in order to actually make it. And so that’s when, you know, after my last like gig ended on a show, I then went to fundraising full time. And it was kind of a long-winded answer, but I’m kind of just kind of walking through everything.
