How to move your film, film career, and life forward through an unsettled future
by Carole Dean
This is a special moment in all our lives. Nearly all of us are hunkered down at home during a pandemic. How do we continue with our lives and keep funding our films with daily cancellations of events and the fear of being close to people and of even going out?
Now more than ever, we need to focus on our future. We need to have goals and the confidence we can reach these goals after we emerge safe and secure from this crisis.
Film shoot on hold? Film festivals canceled? Use your shelter-in time to set goals.
I asked Breianne Pryse to join me on The Art of Film Funding Podcast to give us suggestions on creating and implementing goals. Brianne Pryse is a natural born intuitive impasse, healer, coach, speaker, and writer.
She is also a regular on our Film Funding Guidance Classes advising filmmakers how to continue to progress on their projects. As a lifelong student, she’s been trained in many different modalities. Since 2002, she’s been a full time healer and coach.
Here is her advice from this interview.
Setting Little, Medium, Big and Almost Impossible Goals
One of the things that I really recommend is to set goals. But you also must revisit them because sometimes we write them down on a piece of paper and never look at our goals. I believe you must look at them every day or at least every week and you need to be able to connect with them.
I also recommend you have four types of goals. You have the very small ones that you can check off almost daily, so it shows you that you’re getting things done. Then you have the medium goals that have a little bit of work, where you can still check these off easy too.
Then you have the bigger goals where you’re doing a film and working on funding. Getting your film funded may be a big goal. It’s important that you ask for money and give specifics, like you want to say the dollar amount of your funding goal. Getting your crew, that’s a whole different big goal too. So, you write these down.
Now, the fourth one that I feel is very, very important. It is that you ask for a goal that is just beyond what you think is possible. For example, is your goal beyond impossible possible? And maybe something like, I get an award-winning editor on my film, or I raise $50,000 for my fee. Something just beyond what you think you can do. Because what that does is expand your energy and it helps you connect to the quantum field in a different way.
Examples of Goal Setting
Well, a little goal is, ‘I get up at six o’clock in the morning and write for an hour before work.’ ‘I spend a day without going on Facebook and wasting time.’ Goals like this are good because it tells the universe that we’re in, that we are serious about our goals and we’re making changes.
And it’s all about change. Right now, we are in a very, very high energy year. So that means we need to keep on top of things, or we will get swept away in the negativity and in the craziness, which we do not want to do.
So, these are examples of small productive goals. And then medium goals may be that you write a certain number of pages that day or that week. Because as a filmmaker, most of the time you’re writing your script or you’re writing your promotional material or emails or grants, etc. And put down actions too. Ones like I contact three people today for funding, this is also a medium to large goal.
Why “The Secret” Did Not Work for Many People
I attend a lot of classes where we are told, ‘Oh, you just sit in the chair and you say you’re a millionaire and millions come to you.’ And we know that’s not true, but it is absolutely true that we can create anything we want. We just need to get out of our own way.
It’s feeling into the energy and talking about it to the universe. And just looking at the numbers like, let’s say I need $100,000 for myself. Okay, I’m going to choose to go for this. All right? And then you create that goal and then you start asking questions of the universe.
What energy can I be today, universe, that would create this? Where can I go to find this funding? What can I do today in this moment to really, really get progress on this goal?
Because what also happens with goals is, as we set expectations. We all do it regardless of whether we admit to it. Sometimes we get disappointed because our expectations are not met in the timeframe that we would like. So, the more we can just be in the energy, talking to the goals, allowing energy to move and showing us and asking the universe to show us what’s stopping us is a really, really big thing.
One of the big exercises that you can do is, get a journal, and draw a line down the middle. On the right you write what is happening. And on the left you write what you would like to happen.
An example is, I write on the right I have more bills than income. And on the left I write I would like to create money to pay off all my bills.
Now you start asking, okay, so what am I doing wrong? What is going on that is creating the opposite? And just see what happens and what you hear because the universe is happy to tell you the problems, but we need to be open to hearing it.
Sometimes the universe makes you aware of where you’re overspending, where you’re emotionally spending, where you’re not allowing other people to contribute to you. Now you can write these down under what you don’t want and then you start looking at the behaviors that you can change to solve the problem.
Setting Boundaries for Yourself
One of the biggest things I ever learned was setting boundaries. Here’s what I recommend people do.
Before you get out of bed in the morning you take a deep breath. Say, ‘I hear by now and forever on all levels of my being set 100% healthy boundaries on people, negative energy and negative self talk.’ Then, take a deep breath and blow it out.
This pushes people’s energy out of your field. Now you add anything and everything to that. If you’re fighting with an ex, you put boundaries on that person, on their energies. If you’re doing negative self-talk, if you’ve got a specific thing, like your relationship like with your mother. You can put boundaries on your relationship with your negative self talk relationship with your mother. And if you start doing that, that will help you get clear thinking. You can focus more on your goals and be present in the now.
The more you can set the boundaries, the more you can think clearly. And it was life changing when I figured that out about 15 years ago. Now it also helps when you are feeling great and then you’ll talk to somebody and you feel like you were hit by a bus. That’s a boundary violation. So, you walk away, you say I set 100% healthy boundaries on that person and all their energies and then inhale and exhale and remove it.
Carole, I love your filmmakers and I believe that film is one of the few forms of freedom of speech we have left. Through films people are more willing to look at important issues. I think it’s awesome and I love and I support the work you do at From the Heart Productions.
Carole Dean is president and founder of From the Heart Productions; a 501(c)3 non-
profit that offers the Roy W. Dean Film Grants and fiscal sponsorship for independent filmmakers. She hosts the weekly podcast, The Art of Film Funding, interviewing those involved in all aspects of indie film production. She is also the author of The Art of Film Funding, 2nd Edition: Alternative Financing Concepts. See IMDB for producing credits
