Renewing the energy!
and getting stoked for a year of making art! YEAH!
First up, thank you to ✨PHOEBE✨ for becoming a paid subscriber to Hortonioni and supporting this illustrious publication!! Your support means the world, thank you thank you! You too dear reader can become a paid subscriber to Hortonioni, it will give you such joy and a real pep to your step, I swear.
Last week I put it all on the page (and in your inboxes) with a Ted Hope Takeover post as well as a FilmStack Daily Inspiration post (#145 of as many consecutive posts in the Filmstack community, awesome! Go team!). Hope you enjoyed them!
And FilmStack keeps giving: Tuesday’s NonDē Financing Webinar with Ted Hope & Keith Ochwat from Show & Tell was extremely inspiring and informative. So exciting that Filmstack is openly sharing information & ideas about how we can have sustainable careers and take control of our distribution. They talked about making sure your film is part of the larger community, it’s not just this one film product — it’s a contribution to a bigger movement, a vital conversation, a new way of doing things. That really struck a chord with me because I really believe that!
So to start off this year’s movie-making push, here’s where things stand on some projects:
Gestures
The lead role is cast! I am so excited to be working with this actress, she is my dream for this role, an absolute genius and a dedicated artist.
The aforementioned webinar renewed my energy in the Gestures Impact Campaign. There is so much we can do pairing the film with education on the ills of Private Equity: how to protect yourself from these companies, what they even are and how they function in our economy. We could partner with economic justice groups, housing advocacy, and/or politicians who are working on PE legislation, authors & journalists who cover PE and finance. Tons of potential here! And of course, please reach out if you have interest or ideas in people/orgs/groups who are working to battle PE.
We are sending the project out to a handful of companies — some for financing, some as production companies who could help us find financing. Please
keep your fingers crossedperform a sacred ritual for us (incl. crystals, goat, blood, etc). Thank you in advance.
Heartfart
I am writing the next draft of this NonDē project. Buzzin’ about the experimentation and creative freedom in this script that revolves around the health insurance industry. Screenwriting remains a humbling process in which you face your deficiencies as an artist every time you look at the page. 🤓
I’m going to break the story up on note cards so I feel free to rearrange order and beats. When writing in Highland I can become apprehensive to move things around — I get lost in the amount of words and pages and can’t keep track of what I’m working on. 😵💫
I like this title, but I recently remembered what I consider to be a faux pas: Titles that claim a large swath of ownership (Heartfart is a take on Hartford) or claim to speak for a place/group, i.e. Girls, In the Heights, Men. I think they set themselves up to dissapoint. “That’s not how girls are! This isn’t what Washington Heights is like! Not all men!” I am not an expert on life in Hartford so I don’t want to claim that this film will be (it won’t)! Titles set expectations.
Ryan’s movie currently titled Face The World With No Regrets:
Ryan is shooting his NonDē project this summer and I will be there!
I’ll (at least) be directing the BTS content and spearheading the marketing and distro campaigns (dynamic! slow! bespoke!). I’m really excited to take new ideas I’ve learned on FilmStack and start to apply them to this film. Time to NERD OUT!
You can follow along his journey at Chef Boi NonDē (what a name) and read step-by-step how he’s putting the project together:
Thank you for reading!
See you next week!
Besos! 💋
xo Abby