Welcome to a self-interview with me :p Vanessa Libertad Garcia! I was tagged by the colorful and brilliant author of Triceratops, who is also an incomparable film connoisseur, Marcus Gorman.  We’re participating in a chain of self-interviews, to raise awareness about new authors and upcoming writing projects.

Please check out Marcus Gorman’s unique and impressive roster of articles and projects at his website: http://www.marcusgorman.com.  I highly recommend it!

Here I go…

1. What is the working title of your project?
Bloody Fucking Hell

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
I have a lot of love poetry.  Better said, I’ve written a lot of poetry when I was in love with someone who didn’t fully reciprocate.  There were three separate instances – three separate girls, I mean.  These girls were at one point very dear friends who identified as “straight.”  That being said, our relationships were still blurred by heavy romantic undertones.  Often times mutual, other times one sided.  They were confusing, exhilarating and excruciating relationships that I’d like to reflect upon via a public platform because I’m a masochist? …
These two paragraphs sum up the book best:

Bloody Fucking Hell is a collection of poetry and essays that chronicle the splendor, torture, and confusion I experienced as a lesbian falling in love with various straight women. Since I “came out” at the age of 18, I’ve only fallen in love three times — each time with a self-identified “straight woman.” The poetry contained in each chapter — of which there are only three — pertains to the girl after whom it is named: “Sonia,” “Adelaide,” and “Lucetta.”

Bloody Fucking Hell takes an in-depth look at these intimate, rather distinct, relationships and explores where feminine identity, classifications of love, and roles in friendship blur in soul splitting ways. Although the poetry was written during different periods of my life, I am working to properly compile, edit, and polish the pieces so they may fit the structure of the book in an effortless way. I find myself continuously searching through countless journals, old and new, to properly choose the best pieces for the collection. I will also include some reflective essays and personal drawings in the book, specifically in the “Adelaide” chapter, and possibly a poem Adelaide wrote to me.

3. What genre does your book fall under?
Mixed Genre: Love Poetry & Reflective Essays.  Lesbian.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I would actually love for the real girls to play themselves, but that will NEVER happen, lol.  In substitution, I’d probably pick Genesis Rodriguez to play Sonia, Evan Rachel Wood to play Adelaide (hair dyed dark auburn with shoulder length curls), and Jurnee Smollett-Bell to play Lucetta.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Bloody Fucking Hell is a collection of love poetry and reflective essays that chronicle the splendor, torture, and confusion I experienced as a lesbian falling in love with various straight women.

 6. Will your book be self-published or represented?
Self-Published.  There’s MASSIVE compromise when it comes to filmmaking, which is my primary profession.  When it comes to book writing, I’d like to continue doing my own thing the way I want to – whether it’s “marketable” or not.  Especially because I love mixed genres.  BFH is a compilation of poetry and essays.  I don’t want to have to choose between ONLY publishing poetry or ONLY publishing essays.  There’s a lot of pigeonholing in the publishing world … much like the film world.  Except that my books are purely passion projects and therefore I’d rather not deal with that.

7. How long did it take you to finish your manuscript?
This is still a work in progress. The essays have yet to be written, but the poetry was written between 2001 – 2011.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I think writing the book will inspire (aka “force” ;p) me to delve deep into topics that have dictated my life, but that I’ve brushed aside because they HURT.  The book is a study of “the gray” I’ve lived in my whole life.  It examines the blurry boundaries between gender identity and sexual identity, friendships and romantic relationships, loving and being in love.

10. What else about your book might pique readers’ interests?
Humor.  It’s ain’t all serious.  It’ll be a spirited ride! There tends to be dark comedic undertones in all of my creative works.  I just can’t seem to help me’self!  It’s inherent in my nature to laugh at myself, you and US together.  Sorry to all the hynas in my life!  To read 2 poems featured in the book, please visit:
http://vanessalibertadgarcia.com/portfolio-item/bloody-fucking-hell-book-in-development/

A special thank you to my dear colleague and friend Marcus Gorman for asking me to continue The Next Big Thing!  I’m honored that you thought of me.  The author I’ve invited to keep the self-interview series rolling is the talented, warm and wonderful Thelma T. Reyna who authored the acclaimed book The Heavens Weep for Us and other stories.  Check out her spectacular past, present and future work at her official website: www.thelmareyna.com

The artist featured is my dear old friend & long time creative collaborator Brit Lauren Manor:

You can watch the video here:

Hope you enjoy!

The artist featured is dear kindred spirit & singer Jenna Robino:

You can watch the video here:

Hope you enjoy!

The artist featured is my dear friend & fellow filmmaker Sarah Louise Wilson:

You can watch the video here:

Story Behind The Video:

Sarah Louise & I met about 4 years ago and developed a wonderful friendship through our mutual friend, her business partner, Mercedes Le Anza.  They own the film production company Stella Bella Productions.  We traveled to Sundance together and thankfully survived the pitch dark, snowy freezing drive back to LA.  I chugged dayquil & yelled, “We’re going to die.  We’re probably already dead” while she drove the truck and periodically laughed.  Later on, I was honored to act in her in feature film The Accidental Death of Joey by Sue.  She’s a passionate, brazen and inspiring artist who is constantly creating — whether it be paintings, writing plays, directing movies.  We laugh a lot together.  Life is good.

I shot her video on Mercedes’ iphone the same night I shot Mercedes’ artist profile because the iphone rocks my socks off.

To recap (from Mercedes’ On Blind Faith post):

I’d put together & trekked over a DIY light kit as I’m working to better my on-production lighting skills, but Sarah Louise Wilson had professional lights from another shoot so she was wonderful enough to leave them set up in Mercedes’ room for me (and I set them up in Sarah’s room afterwards).  Yay!  Thanks so much SLW!

Later on that night after all the shooting was complete, we tried to transfer the iphone movie files to a Mac comp and the 4 hour headache began…  We could not for the life of us get either of their 2 MAC computers to copy the movie files.  Thank baby Jesus in da manger that Sarah Louise tried the iphone on her old PC and figured out that we could transfer the files easily to the PC (irony of all ironies since mac & iphone are both apple products!) and then throw them on a mac/pc compatible 16 gig portable hard drive and then plug that hard drive into one of the macs and transfer the files onto my mac compatible (only) 50 gig portable hard drive.  Whew!

The next day when I began editing, the iphone movie files were compatible enough to import into final cut pro unlike the android nexus 3GP movie files, but not compatible enough to edit in the sequences without having to justify every single cut with COUNTLESS rendering.  Try as I might no conversion software, including compressor, would make the movie files and FCP sequence/editing timeline compatible.  So, I repeated what I did with the last artist profile and transferred the movie files into imovie hd, did a basic edit, converted that 2 minute edit into a high quality movie, imported that file into FCP, exported it as a DV-NTSC 48KH quicktime movie file, re-imported that (hi-res & sequence compatible) file into FCP , and walla’ — I cleaned up the edit and added titles.  I didn’t do any color correction on this video because the original on set lighting made it look fine and I was pooped.

Hope you enjoy the piece!

The artist featured is my long time friend & creative collaborator Mercedes Le Anza.

You can watch the video here:

Story Behind The Video:

Mercedes & I have been friends and creative cohorts since our wild college days at Loyola Marymount University.  She was cast as one of the leads in my short fiction film / undergraduate thesis project A Two Woman One Act — an experimental melodramedy.  She played “La Vibora” — a repressed flamenco-dancing Chola grieving the loss of her slain husband Panchito who must face the tormented lust/love she holds for his sister “Le Galliene”on the night of his wake.  We’ve been great buds evah’ since!

Last week, we met at her house on a crisp blue-black Tuesday night, laughed a lot, played with her glorious pug pup “Princess Buttercup” and then got to shooting.  I’d put together & trekked over a DIY light kit as I’m working to better my on-production lighting skills, but her business partner and our mutual friend Sarah Louise Wilson had professional lights from another shoot so she was wonderful enough to leave them set up in Mercedes’ room for me.  Yay!  Thanks so much SLW!

Later on that night after all the shooting was complete, we tried to transfer the iphone movie files to a Mac comp and the 4 hour headache began…  We could not for the life of us get either of their 2 MAC computers to copy the movie files.  Thank baby Jesus in da manger that Sarah Louise tried the iphone on her old PC and figured out that we could transfer the files easily to the PC (irony of all ironies since mac & iphone are both apple products!) and then throw them on a mac/pc compatible 16 gig portable hard drive and then plug that hard drive into one of the macs and transfer the files onto my mac compatible (only) 50 gig portable hard drive.  Whew!

The next day when I began editing, the iphone movie files were compatible enough to import into final cut pro unlike the android nexus 3GP movie files, but not compatible enough to edit in the sequences without having to justify every single cut with COUNTLESS rendering.  Try as I might no conversion software, including compressor, would make the movie files and FCP sequence/editing timeline compatible.  So, I repeated what I did with the last artist profile and transferred the movie files into imovie hd, did a basic edit, converted that 2 minute edit into a high quality movie, imported that file into FCP, exported it as a DV-NTSC 48KH quicktime movie file, re-imported that (hi-res & sequence compatible) file into FCP , and walla’ — I cleaned up the edit and added titles.  I didn’t do any color correction on this video because the original on set lighting made it look fine and I was pooped.

Skills to continue practicing with the upcoming artist profiles: 1) Lighting 2) Color Correction…

Hope you enjoy the piece!

The artist to debut On Blind Faith was my dear long time friend Lalin St. Juste.

You can watch the video here:

Story Behind The Video:

We met at her mom’s house on Thanksgiving morning and shot the segment in her old bedroom.  Where we’d once, as teenagers, had sleepovers and watched movies and read each others’ writings.  We shot the piece on her Galaxy Nexus Android Phone.  Total of 8 minutes of footage.

When we tried to upload the 3GP files onto my computer the complications began.  My iBook G4 was too old and incapable of reading her android phone, much less transferring her files.  Her old PC laptop suffered the same fate.  Thank God, we didn’t give up and kept troubleshooting away.  The files were too big to attach to a gmail account & email.  So, we asked her brilliant and kind tech savvy brother Carlo to help us out.  He taught me that you can connect your cell phone and all of its content to an internet server-based FTP site and download the videos onto your comp from there.  We used the program “swiftp”.  All the videos, thank God, downloaded except for 1 — the one with the interview.  Yikes!  So, we downloaded the “sendspace” application (a large file sharing program) into her cell phone and since the movie file was under 300 mb, we were able to email it to me.  Whew!  Disaster averted.  The only problem with emailing the interview file was that it arrived out of synch.  Dayum!  Oh well, I’d deal with that in post production.

Finally, the videos are onto my computer waiting to be edited, but DUN DUN DUN they’re 3 GP files, which are not compatible with my final cut pro 5 movie editing software.  So, I did some online research and found that they have to be transferred to .mov quicktime files and THEN imported.  The necessary transfer software either wouldn’t work on my old computer or you had to purchase it and I’m working with a budget of $0.  Thank God, the editing software iMovie HD read and imported the 3GP files just fine.  It would take far too many hours, however, to convert all the 3GP files into quicktime files to then transfer them into final cut pro for editing so I decided to read the iMovie HD manual and learn how to use it.  In comparison to FCP it’s limited in major ways, but I was at least able to do a basic edit of the film INCLUDING sound correction, which was great.  I then transferred the edited film to a “full quality” quicktime file by going to the “share” tab and hitting “quicktime > full quality”.  It produced a .dv file which I was able to import into final cut pro, but FCP wanted me to keep rendering that scheisse in the timeline sequence, which makes it impossible to edit so I took that .dv file and through FCP compressor I exported it into a hi-res quicktime .mov file and THEN imported it back into FCP.

From there on out, all was gravy.  I was able to edit some glitches in video and add titles and mess around with color correction.  15 hours of editing later (including time spent in iMovie HD & FCP), I was finished.

Repeat Lesson of My Life: Whatever you don’t know — read the manual and watch the tutorials on youtube by reelclever aka learn.  Everything that is worth knowing can be learned!  Yay!  I’m using these 1 – 2 minute pieces to practice all aspects of filmmaking, including, and especially, the facets I’m weakest in, which in my estimation are cinematography and color correction.

My strategy is to practice, troubleshoot and practice until … I die? or less dramatically, need a break!

Hope you enjoy On Blind Faith!  Stay tuned for next week’s artist …

xo!

Take, for instance, my film directing.  Writing has come second nature to me since I was a wee tyke.  I’ve written like I’ve breathed — because I had to.  The reality I’ve posed sounds dramatic, but I’m Cuban so yeah, all of my realities are dramatic ;p  Writing has always been the way I connected with myself, the way I’ve reflected and thought aloud, the way I came to resolutions, the way I touched the calming thread that holds together this seemingly incalculable and chaotic existence.  I didn’t grow up thinking, “I’m going to be a writer” because, quite frankly, I always was one.  I have about 50 journals by this point.  Yes, writing was literally like breathing.

What I did grow up hoping for, dreaming about, enamored by was Film Directing.  I imagined myself visually bringing to life my written stories.  Film Directing was my great childhood dream and has continued its reign over heart and psyche ever since.  Yet, unlike writing, film directing has brought with it many great fears.

The “Production” stage of making a film encompasses all of my fears: “What if I don’t use the best camera in the best way and light her face perfectly?  What if the film gets exposed or ruined on its way to the lab?  What if the set isn’t built when I arrive to shoot?  What if my shots are shaky?”  What if? What if! What if?! … for moments and years.

My creative purpose is quite simple: I write so that I can direct and I direct so that I can edit.  My great fears don’t lie in the writing or editing, however, but in the directing.  I believe it’s because in the writing and editing processes I can control the elements.  In writing, my imagination can design anything it dreams about and bring it alive through description.  In editing, I know I can play around with footage that’s already been shot and made available to me.  I can make the most of whatever I’m given through cuts, pacing and sound design.  But Film Directing … depends upon (gulp) many elements — God, Other People, The World, and Me.  From concept to manifestation, film directing depends upon the right mixture of it all.  Our  serendipitous expertise, timing, and overall cohesion…

Additionally, I’ve never been a techie – a tech savvy person.  I learn about film equipment because I’m a film artist and I need to understand the tools at my disposal so that I can bring my films to fruition.  I don’t like to adapt my equipment on the spot to the ever-changing dynamics of production.  In other words, the production process triggers all of my control issues! ;p  That being said, when I feel I’ve got all the elements under control, I LOVE film directing.  I’ve yet to master this rare sense of safety aka blind faith that everything is going to turn out as it should.

Consequently, I haven’t directed a film since 2008.  I’ve written and produced and edited, yes.  I’ve done a lot of those 3 things, but I haven’t directed a film — documentary or fiction.  I keep saying that when I get funding for my feature Dear Dios, I’ll direct, and yes that is true, but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge that I wasn’t directing RIGHT NOW because I’m afraid of failing.  Of failing my vision and proving myself incapable of translating my pages to the (longing sigh) screen.

My perfectionism has convinced me that if I can’t direct a film perfectly then I must wait until I can — until I have the perfect amount of funding to make sure I buy the perfect equipment and pay the perfect lighting designer and perfect cinematographer to do their jobs perfectly so that I can do mine P-E-R-F-E-C-T-L-Y.  When the truth is that production, and interchangeably film directing, are exciting and fulfilling processes because their synchronicity comes about in vibrant ways that only unpredictable circumstances can produce.

I’ve forgotten to do 3 pivotal things with my film directing that I do all the time with my writing:

1) Have Fun!  You’re not a writer or a film director.  You’re a human being who loves to write and direct.  That’s all.

2) Fuck Perfect.  Who cares.  You’re not doing this to prove anything to anyone.  Just do it! Do it a lot all of the time because it’s FUN!

3) Every creative piece is perfect AND imperfect in its own way.  These are the realities which assure they each find their unique place in the world.  Your style will change with time.  Let it unravel and develop.

In the spirit of spitting at fear’s face, I’ve taken on 2 new directing projects.  The 1st one is a music video I’ll be doing for my creative collaborator / dear friend Brit Lauren Manor and her amazing song “A Tragic Disappearance“.

The 2nd project is a web series of 30 – 60 second artist profiles featuring creative friends that I admire, love and respect. I’ll be shooting both undertakings on hi-def cell phone cameras.  I’m teaching myself to play with the available elements and learn to enjoy the tools at my disposal in order to disengage the great fear that I don’t have what I need.

I’ll post both projects on Bloggimia within the next month so stay tuned!

Essay I wrote for the Tiki Tiki Blog …

“Being Cuban, One Afternoon at a Time”

Being Cuban. Being Woman. Being Lesbian. These are all concrete identifiable experiences for me that melt into a puddle of vagueness whenever I try to grab them and hand them over to someone else for understanding.

But, I think the best way to explain the Being Cuban part to someone not Cuban entails describing one afternoon of my life.

I was born Cuban-American a.k.a. a Cuban in the United States. Therefore, I’ve always lived at the point where two distinct worlds briefly brush against each other while on a rush to separate destinations. This dot in the space-time continuum is an unusual locale where two opposing atmospheres converge to form a rare hybrid of people: Los Cubanos-Americanos. I like to think of this planetary meeting place as my grandmother’s house.

Every Thursday from 1 p.m. – 6 p.m. for the last three years, I’ve hung out with my grandmother “Mamaita” at her home in a suburban outskirt of Los Angeles. She lives in a primarily middle-class/lower-middle class Mexican-American neighborhood. I live in a similar barrio five minutes away.

Her well-kept, peach-coated, wide 4-bedroom property faces a groomed yard adorned in pastel flowers, Aloe Vera plants, and heavy concrete ducks. During her 25 years there, she’s used the Aloe Vera to cure everyone’s everything — from derrieres wounded by poodle bites to minor burns to acne breakouts. If you really want to clear the acne for good, however, she highly recommends using Azufre three times daily.

As soon as you walk into her living room, you find yourself standing on a light-yellow shag carpet surrounded by shelves of books, family portraits, certificates of achievement, and aged trinkets from my childhood.

Her books are medical, psychological, and nutritional in nature and all in English. Although she mostly writes, speaks, and listens to the radio in Spanish, she prefers reading in English as a means of practicing the language. Her comprehension of the English language is impressively vast especially since she still struggles from time to time to wrap her mouth around the English translation of her Cuban phrases. Barack Obama becomes Arak Oama, in other words.

Our family portraits change weekly, but include us all – at one point or another – standing or sitting next to each other while looking pensively or forlornly off into the distance. Including the babies. Framed above us all, my great-grandmother, her mother, stands between two Alice In Wonderland Characters Tweedledee & Tweedledum at Disneyland, taken years back when she flew over from Cuba for a visit.

Mamaita’s certificates of achievement range from the University of Havana to college in Cali to an award she won for poetry in 1989, the Golden Poet award. A killer poet and bona fide book addict she can usually be found humming behind gold-rimmed glasses while writing with her left hand or holding a book she’s reading with her right.

When I arrive, the radio tends to blare ballads by Olga Guillot, Benny More, Celia Cruz, and Joan Baez from the “It’s a Cuban Chreeesmas” music mix I made her. Mamaita also enjoys ’60s American Folk songs and various genres of American music. One time I found her listening to Nirvana on the radio. She told me that hard stuff often helps her get the inner knots of AAH! out.

We then walk into the kitchen where she’s cooked the most delicious food I ever will eat. Hers are healthy versions of classic Cuban meals: platanitos fritos, ropa vieja, yucca, arroz prieto, y ensalada Cubana.  And from behind a plastic child-protective gate, my grandmother’s heart-melting mildly obese dog “Angelita,” resemblant of a chubby little lamb, barks for me to pet her.

After petting Angelita, my grandmother and I sit down at her round 1970s dinner table. Sitting relaxed on her walker seat across from me, she cups her glamorous 1940s crop, lifts her classic gold-rimmed glasses from the tip of her nose up to her eyes, and begins gently twirling her Sagittarius necklace with her right pointer finger. Instantly, her left fist opens up and begins expressing all the ideas, memories, and feelings she’s started telling me about.

We speak about poverty in 1930s Cuba and surviving El Barrio de Jesus Maria, the positive effects vitamins and good nutrition have on the body’s different organs, and how my aunt Mamadina prayed as a little girl for La Cigüeña to bring her a little sister, and then my mom was born.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a large Cuban coffee maker on the stove and know that after lunch we’ll drink her incomparable Cafésito Cubano con Leche de Cabra. After which she’ll recite a poem she wrote for me when I was very little and emphasize the line, “mi nietesita de ojos color caramelo.”

For me, Being Cuban means being Cuban-American one afternoon at a time.

The reason I decided not to pursue acting as my creative profession is because my whole heart, I realized by the end of High School, was wrapped up in making films.  Writing, Directing and Editing them.  Later on, I’d also fall in love with publishing my poems, short stories and essays.  Suffice to say that although I’d had an absolute undeniably satiating blast acting in plays as “Bottom” and “The Ghost of Hamlet’s Father”, I’d much rather pour my energies into the path tugging at my core.

Recently, however, the “acting bug” as they call it bit me again.  My friends and fellow independent filmmakers Mercedes LeAnza and Sarah Louise Wilson of Stella Bella Productions asked me to play a supporting role in their romantic dramedy The Accidental Death of Joey by Sue.  I played the “acerbic lesbian” Stacey (as Variety called it ;p).  Suffice to say, I had a thrilling and fulfilling time performing again.  The act of performing with someone else proves to be a rare opportunity for developing an almost instantaneous profound and intimate connection with another human being.  Since then, I’ve been thinking, “Hey, why not try that again?”  Acting …  It would also be a fun way to make a little side money and meet new creative people.

After Actorfest, I’ve decided not to continue following that train of thought.  If someone asks me to act in their flick then great.  If they don’t, I’m not pursuing it.  I’ll explain why…

Actorfest, especially the workshop on commercial acting, proved an extremely eye-opening and clarifying experience.  The difference between acting and say, writing and directing, is not the spirit of the artform, but the heart at the core of its business.

In writing and filmmaking, there’s the mainstream world, but within it and surrounding it lie small to medium sized pockets that exist in their own independent realms.  Ok, instead of going off on a boring metaphorical tangent, I’ll just keep it plain and crude and simple.  In writing and filmmaking, the business world is as darwinistic and challenging as the acting business world, BUT your success is based much more upon the quality of your content and quantity of your submissions.  Quality + Quantity = Opportunity to Succeed.

In the acting world, Fuckability Factor + Quantity = Opportunity to Succeed.  Now, I’m not talking about the theatre world.  I’m talking about the commercial tv/film world.  Businesses where actors come into contact with microscopic visual mediums.  At Actorfest, your “type” was the most important topic at hand: The “Type you Could Play”.  It wasn’t about letting your acting chops prove you were a talented character actress/actor who could play a wide range of roles.  There were no “audition” booths.  There were meet and greet booths and drop boxes for your resumes.  Every opportunity imaginable existed for you to schmooze with someone who could further your career based upon your looks and personality, but not DUN DUN DUN … based upon your acting.

In writing and filmmaking, you submit writing samples and film reels or the films themselves.  People don’t look at you and say “You look like a good writer.  You look like a good filmmaker.”  Now, I’m not saying it’s a heavenly business where only the sincere survive.  Those industries have their own slew of flaws, but there was something especially disconcerting about the acting business’ maladies.

Probably, just the fact that the acting business has nothing to do with acting.  It has to do with how pleasant or unpleasant you are to the eye, for women anyway.  What stereotype you fit.

That goes for both Spanish and English acting businesses.  Although, I dare say that stereotyping aka “type-casting” is comparably far worse in the Spanish TV world.  In that same breath, I say that the Spanish Film World (South-American & Spanish-European) is FAR better and much more revolutionary than the English Speaking Film World at casting creatively; based upon talent and against “type”.

In summary, since I don’t harbor the passion for acting that I do for writing and filmmaking there’s no point in braving its murky waters.  On the other hand, my advice for anyone as passionate about pursuing acting professionally as I am about writing and filmmaking — like my talented fantastic friend Sarah Connine — STICK IT OUT.  The business of any art is its own artform so don’t be discouraged from ACTING just because the business of acting has nothing to do with it!  They’re 2 separate beasts.  Perfect both artforms.  Next year, I highly recommend attending Backstage’s FREE Actorfest and taking at least 1 workshop.  Get there early and bring at least 50 killer headshots with resumes attached.

By the by, my favorite speakers were casting directors Dorian Frankel and Danielle Eskinazi because of all the unique expertise, humility and empathy they brought to their profession.  Wish everyone in The Acting Biz was like them!  We’d be having a different conversation …

Best Words of Advice I took away:

1) Film Directors direct commercials all the time.  Treat every job as a means and ends in itself.  There is no “small job”.  Do your best always.

2) Every audition you do and job you take is an audition for a future job.

3) Be proactive about your acting career and take workshops from professionals that you admire: actors, agents, & casting directors. It’s one of the best ways to meet people.

4)  Put together one simple webpage which includes 4 of your best headshots, your acting demo reel and your resume. Easy links are key.

5) Follow agents and casting directors you admire on twitter.

6) Be genuine and kind in all of your interactions.  Don’t boast. *I highly recommended for all of your life affairs

Headshot for Actress Sarah Connine:

This is the latest guest post in our series for/by new screenwriters.  Vanessa Libertad Garcia writes about her experience. Enjoy!

I wrote my first feature film screenplay Deity in 2007.  I subsequently followed up the original version with four more revisions, which included a title change to Dear Dios.  The movie follows Cuban-American lesbian Dolores Amorosa Marti, an aspiring photojournalist with a lust for bi-women and malt liquor, as she spirals out of control in the hipster club scene and turns bottom-of-the-barrel temp for an LA celebrity tabloid rag.  I’d made narrative short films and both short & long-form documentaries before, which toured the film fest circuit, one even screened on PBS’ Independent Lens, but I realized very early on that the narrative feature film world was an entirely other realm.

Regardless, my head and heart were set on using Dear Dios to up my filmmaking to a whole new level. I wanted to transition from the young  “get funding as you go / hope for a distribution deal after it’s done” guerilla-style into a more mature and stable filmmaking process.  I planned to use Dear Dios as an opportunity to make a fully funded film with distribution deal in place.  Knowing that this could become a long complicated route with many forks in the road, I sought out help from those who specialized in guiding newcomers like me; grant organizations.  I applied to the Sundance Labs, Tribeca All Access, and the Zeotrope competition among 20 – 30 others.  In fact, I applied to them several times with no success.  I knew then that I’d have to forge my own road since the path most other first-time feature filmmakers were taking wasn’t panning out for me.

Working for years before then in the entertainment industry, I learned that Hollywood was not expert at the art of filmmaking, but of marketing and advertising. A studio could make an amazing film, a mediocre one or an awful one and it ultimately didn’t really matter.  Marketing was what filled seats at the movie theaters and monetary profits were guaranteed when a low cost production was made highly accessible via different mediums to the public.  This was great news for me as I was planning on making an excellent film for a reasonable price, which was readily accessible through many avenues (DVD, VOD, online streaming, mobile phones, etc) and spend the rest of my budget marketing the heck out of it aka letting people know that the movie exists and getting them excited about seeing it.  The first part of this marketing plan would also satiate me creatively.  It entailed creating and self-publishing my debut book The Voting Booth After Dark: Despicable, Embarrassing, Repulsive.  It’s a collection of short stories and poems interwoven into a gripping narrative that follows a group of gay & lesbian Latino club kids during the course of the 2008 presidential elections. As they plunge deep into the agonizing lows of anxiety and addiction, we see how they affect and are affected by the national politics happening around them.  The main protagonists are characters from the script, which I placed in a different scenario because people buy books for different reasons than they watch movies.  I know I do.

I wrote a book I felt passionate about that still managed to introduce people to the characters and lifestyle of the Dear Dios script.  It’s helping build an audience, which establishes a foundation for the soon-to-be-made feature film.  The second part of my marketing plan involved getting the book reviewed, which I spent a year doing.  The third part of my marketing plan entails pitching the book to professors at universities for possible inclusion into their school curriculum, which I’m currently finishing up.  The fourth part of my marketing plan is blogging at my blog Bloggimia about the making of Dear Dios, which I began doing in January of 2011.  It will pick up full steam in November 2011 when I’m finally done with the last part of my book promotion and turn my full attention to making Dear Dios.  I then begin fundraising and shopping for a co-producer.  Subscribe to Bloggimia to keep up to date with Dear Dios’ progress!