56 - Breaking Into Tribeca (& the Festival Circuit) with Sofia Snyder

Today independent producer and union production coordinator Sofia Snyder gets into the specific resources she utilized to help land her short films at festivals, including Tribeca; what a psychic told her that prevented her from quitting her job on Rebel Moon; and how she took what she learned from working on movies like Licorice Pizza and Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar and applied it to the films she’s produced.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN:

2:00 - Playing at Tribeca without a premiere

4:00 - How to strategize with film festivals to optimize odds of getting in - Festival Formula (HollyShorts, Poppy Jasper, Kino Presents the People’ Film Festival London, Montclair Film Festival)

12:30 - Getting into Tribeca after rejections from SXSW (and other random festivals)

14:08 - How runtime impacts your festival odds

17:30 - Making a short for $10,000

19:30 - Funding models for shorts - self-funding vs. crowd funding

20:30 - 6 years is an overnight success

22:30 - Sofia’s early journey as a producer: a doc about the ghost of a dead cat

25:20 - Developing projects on nights & weekends after 60-80 hours a week in a production office

28:15 - Why she didn’t quit her job on Rebel Moon to focus on producing

33:20 - Why Sofia wouldn’t recommend production office gigs for aspiring writers

35:55 - Sofia’s other shorts (In Old Ranchos directed by Matt Lucas, We Meet Again directed by Matt Lucas, One of These Days concept directed by Joe Blank, Don’t Leave Me Now directed by Monisha Dadlani)

37:20 - Shooting with UNREAL technology

35:50 - Shooting in phases before raising the entire budget

42:20 - Cranberry Heaven in 1997

44:30 - Things take time!

45:40 - Being a union production coordinator on $30million+ projects (Licorice Pizza, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar)

51:50 - Attending American University + moving to LA post-college with $10,000

1:02:30 - Development assistant vs. freelance/production office pipeline

1:05:30 - Pay for union coordinators + insider information about how coordinators discuss rates with each other

1:10:05 - TIME CAPSULE

KEEP UP WITH SOFIA:

IG: @sofiasny

KEEP UP WITH THE SHOW:

All Platforms: @NoSetPathShow

www.NoSetPathShow.com

bio.site/NoSetPath