Just Keep Swimming
COVID-19 is the unfortunate topic on everyone’s mind. There hasn’t been a single industry left unaffected by the virus, and the film world is no exception. In March of this year, Hollywood ceased production, causing a ripple effect throughout the entire film industry. Crew members working on even large, big budget projects found themselves out of work and millions of filmmakers, both unionized and non-unionized, felt the psychological, physical and financial effects on their livelihood. As if that wasn’t enough, managing their own health and safety quickly became their new payless, tireless full time jobs.
While Kathryn and I have been lucky enough to continue development for With Her Own Hands, we’ve certainly slowed down and given ourselves grace throughout this pandemic. We quickly realized that where we had planned to be this summer (pre-production wise), was significantly ahead of where we currently are. This is especially true for the financing aspect of pre-production. In order to secure things like crew and locations, a film has to ensure costs are covered, but in times like these everything is made 5x more difficult. Meetings come in the form of “shared screen” Zoom video calls, investor outreach becomes more complex, and looking forward often seems like a daunting task.
In order to practice what we preach, we’ve been taking care of ourselves and adapting to a slower pace, because self-love and care are our number one priorities. Sometimes that means engaging in something small like pausing for a deep breath or pushing back a phone call, and sometimes it’s something bigger like making the decision to hold off on production until January of 2021, rather than our original production date of September 2020. While this was among one of the more unfavorable results of quarantine, we’ve made major head way in other areas of development. Thanks to the extra time due to working from home, we’ve finished our pitch deck, updated our screenplay, researched helpful director-producer exercises, and finally joined the big leagues with a professional budget overhaul (big shout out to Entertainment Partners’ Movie Magic Budgeting Software.)
Staying positive and healthy will always take precedence over our work, because we recognize the realness of “passion-fatigue” (ya know, “compassion fatigues’” lesser known little brother?). With Her Own Hands is a project we love with our whole heart, and in order to shape it into the badass final product we know it can be, we have to do our part in keeping the quality protected from our own overworked and overwhelmed minds.
We hope all of you are well and that you’ve had the opportunity to reflect and reinvigorate throughout this forced downtime. Either way, our thoughts are definitely with you! Also, remember you can keep in touch, and reach out personally to us on our Instagram. Our username is @withherownhandsmovie, but you can also follow the link to our feed by clicking the Instagram icon in the top-right corner of this page!
Below are some photos of us zooming, brainstorming, pitch-decking, and facetiming!
Lots of love <3.
