My big goal for 2024 was to become a sci-fi creator – ideally a published author, but open to anything. One of those “anything” side quests led me to create a short film, “Please Don’t Send Help.” A few months ago, fueled by a spike of optimism (and a bit of boredom – let’s be honest here), I submitted it to a couple of film festivals, and, well… I’ve just found it’s been accepted by the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival!

That film festival has been around for five years, it has 8,000 attendees, and it’s pretty selective when it comes to judging the submissions. This feels so unreal… The festival will take place in mid-October, less than a month from now: every film will be streamed online, but some will also be shown to the live audience in Brooklyn. I’m waiting for that update: if my film (all 2 minutes and 29 seconds of it) gets a live showing, I will be there – rubbing elbows, making friends, watching the audience watch my film, trying not to grin like an absolute maniac.

I’ve been riding the dopamine high from this announcement for quite a while now. My little film had cost me just $15 to make ($10 for the amazing voice actress + a 50% tip), though I did spend several weeks tinkering with it. And to have it accepted, and recognized – something I made with no film school experience of any kind – wow. Just… wow.

I played way too many video games growing up. (Some say I still play way too many video games.) Because of that, my overly competitive brain tends to view each and every hobby as a level progression, from 0 to 100. Everyone starts out at an absolute 0 in every skill, every hobby when they’re born, and eventually, through practice and hard work and luck, they level up. (A friend of mine is an amazing artist: she told me her parents encouraged her to draw since she was six months old, and she never stopped.)

When you apply that philosophy to filmmaking, level 100 would mean getting an Oscar. Level 1 would be pressing “record” on a camera and making a video of literally anything. I feel like this new development has propelled me somewhere around level 40, as far as this particular skill goes. There’s a lot more ground to cover, and I’m quite sure I’ll never reach level 100, but now I’m genuinely curious just how much farther I can take this, and how the world will view the rest of my ideas and my films.

Once I hear back from all the other festivals, I’ll post “Please Don’t Send Help” online for all y’all to enjoy as well – but it’ll be a few months. And now, I’m off to watch tutorials on making (and animating!) fun 3D objects in Houdini Apprentice for a particularly ambitious cut scene of my next short film. That should be interesting…