In the summer of 2014, the air was fresh and sweet in NYC, and Alex Spieth was let go by her acting agency. She very quickly picked herself up by turning her attention to writing and began working on a web series. It's brought her love, success, and not one ounce of stress. Alex and her web series lived happily ever after.
 
Or. Actually.
 
In the summer of 2014, it smelled bad as usual in NYC, and Alex Spieth was dropped by her acting agency. She almost cried in meetings with potential new agents (obviously, they didn't sign her), she went back to Pittsburgh to try to find herself (she only got rained on), and she began working on a web series. The series was a lot of work and turned out to the best thing in Alex's life for a long time. She can never sleep on nights before a shoot, and she loves it more than anything.
 
Hello, I'm Alex Spieth, and I'm the writer/creator of [Blank] My Life. Thanks to the good graces of the world and Kyna (creator of this website), I'm getting the opportunity to blog each month for Her Film Project. This month, I'm going to give background and the most basic film rules I'm currently following. The number one rule being:
 
Make that Obstacle a Choice: If you cannot get a car, make the choice that there never was a car. If you cannot get the restaurant full with extras, make it a choice to have gone to a lame bar. If you don't have a change of clothes, make it a choice that your character doesn't seem to advance.
 
If you are let down by your career, make it a choice to be a creator.
 
[Blank] began as a series of small sketches which my two friends and I acted and filmed in. It was fairly rudimentary and small-scale. When we released the first 5 sketches (on the now deceased site www.ihaveablanknamedmylife.com), I felt slightly humiliated that this was the first time I had put something out, and I didn't know how to do it in a more polished way. The website featured a background picture of me getting my haircut.
 
1. It's hard to do anything good: Do the first sample, the first stab, the first attempt as quickly as you can. So start as soon as you can.
2. You will get better rapidly: It's like 100% not easy to put out a first stab. However, if you watch the mythology of [Blank], we advanced really quickly. Quality will improve faster than you think.
3. People will be impressed by anything: A shocking amount of Facebook friends wrote to me about the first 5 episodes. Despite the fact that there was only 10 minutes cumulative of content and that they looked the equivalent of an iPhone vid. Just because it was SOMETHING. Do not forget this when you begin to create. No matter what the product looks like at the end, someone or (likely) MANY someones will be smiling at you.
 
By the summer of 2015, we had 9 small scenes on line which fleshed out the "Pre-Season" of [Blank]. In 2015-2016, my team and I created 11 episodes on "no budget" (which in actuality means $2,500 that I and members of my team donated). It was only able to happen through the generosity and skill of my team.
 
This year [this article was written in December 2016] I felt it necessary to crowdfund because you can only ask people to you favors for so long. Also, Sound. Costs. Money. There. Is. A Way. I'm. Sure. To. Avoid. This. But. I. Haven't. Found. It. So. Sound. Costs. Money. We decided to go full throttle and Kickstarted $13,000 at the same time we started filming. Would DEFINITELY advise doing one or the other for next time.
 
1. Don’t worry too much about doing things early: If you only have a minute, it only takes a minute (it's true). You can get anything done quicker than you think you can, and delay is often unhelpful in learning about your process/creation/taste. Nine times out of 10, I would say to jump in and get going.
 
2. Try to do things early: However, things are significantly less stressful if you DO plan ahead. Especially things requiring red tape: insurance, SAG-AFTRA, etc. Give yourself a four-week lead to make sure you are ready to go. Set up the Kickstarter account so you're ready to deliver the funds.
 
3. Crowdfunding will open doors: The urgency of a Kickstarter/Indiegogo will all of a sudden give people an incentive to feature you NOW. Hit up sites again that didn't feature you. Hit up people again that didn't talk to you. Hit up the whole town.
 
4. Get as many people to be inspired promoters as possible: Crowdfunding can feel like a long, lonely "give me money" game. The way to combat this is to get as many members of your team to be inspired about sharing, creating, and bringing the community on board. This will also be good training for when the project goes live.
 
Luckily, we raised the money, and it's now safely in my account.
 
Creating is addictive. The hardest part of the web series is the sporadic nature of filming and creating. I'm so stoked and excited and addicted to making it that I hate having to wait three weeks to do it again. It's the most exciting and collets. It made me into a mom early, so if you just give me a second, I'll open my wallet and show you a few stills. ISN'T MY SERIES EXCEPTIONAL?
 
The web series lets me borrow confidence about my acting career from another source. After I got dropped, it was hard for me to point at myself and say that I was proud of what I was as an actor. However, after doing a season of a show and being in production for another, I'm Super Woman. Being dropped wasn't the portent of things to come, it's like when Michael Jordan didn't get on the high school basketball team! It's like Winston Churchill being bad at school! it's like any of your school day heroes who derked it and then showed you they were actually the best.
 
So, while I have you here, let me show you one more still.
 
Things I have asked for as of December 4, 2016:
 
- Asked a former love interest if I could write about him (Yes)
- Asked a former lover to borrow a coffee maker (Yes)
- Someone to show Issa Rae my series (No)
- If one of the leads of New York City's Shakespeare in the Park would play my love interest in an episode (No answer, doubt he saw my message on Facebook)
- Asked an ex to be in a sketch about his and my relationship (Yes, you can already watch it online)
- Asked if I could film at two restaurants that I quit unexpectedly from (Yes/No)
- Asked a current Broadway star to be in an episode (No answer)
- Asked countless friends to film at their houses at all hours of the day and night (Yes nearly every time)
- If a Fiyero would be my love interest in an episode (Yes)

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(Alex will be back soon to tell you more about making her web series. In the meantime, you can watch season 1 of [Blank] My Life right now.) 

If you're like me and think culture and equality are things that actually matter, you're not only concerned about the fact that merely one-quarter of all film critics in the U.S. are women, you also want to help spread the work of women film critics and respond (whenever cynicism and sexism-exhaustion don't prevent you) to critical pieces by film critics that totally miss the mark and venture into sheer awfulness as they forgo criticism for preaching or waxing voyeuristic about an actress' face or body or simply ignoring obvious sexism in film. (I'm looking at you Gleiberman and Berlatsky.) Those parentheticals could learn something from fellow men David Reed and Marek Larwood who regularly call out sexism in film on their podcast Film Fandango, by the way.

Some examples of this awfulness resulted (in the summer of 2016) in actress Rose McGowan issuing a gutsy and much-needed response in The Hollywood Reporter to Owen Gleiberman's preachy critique about Renee Zellweger's face and her film Bridget Jones's Baby. Her face! What? Wait, no seriously, what? Her face? If you missed it last year, just click here to read McGowan's response. Or you might've also seen Noah Berlatsky's sadistic reveling in the mutilation of female actresses -- not just characters, but actresses -- in the guise of a critique of Blake Lively's recent film The Shallows. ​If you're interested, you can search for it off-site as I won't be linking to either Gleiberman's or Berlatsky's utterly heinous articles from this sacred space.  So, with that said, here are a few female film/TV critics and journalists as well as groups you might like to follow who are based both in and outside of the U.S. If you're on Twitter, you can check my list of women film critics and journalists to see what they're discussing, too. 

​Critics

Meenakshi Shedde
Curator, programmer, and critic based in Mumbai, India. Shedde is also South Asia Consultant to the Berlin and Dubai Film Festivals.
Twitter: @MeenakshiShedde

Manohla Dargis
Film critic for the New York Times and a much-referenced name for some of us who think, talk, and write about women in film. Dargis is the critic who introduced the idea of a "DuVernay Test" similar to the Bechdel Test (which gauges women's roles in film) to measure whether or not racial and ethnic minority characters are fully developed and not there simply to support the story of white characters.
Twitter: ​@ManohlaDargis 

Quatoyiah Murry
Film critic at The Cinephiliac and based in Atlanta, Georgia. Quatoyiah focuses on film across genres while injecting a socially-conscious perspective. She's also Assistant Editorial Manager at Turner Classic Movies. 
Twitter: @toyiahM
​FB: /thecinephiliac

Begoña Piña
Film critic based in Madrid, writes in Spanish. Begoña writes articles and conducts interviews for the Spanish newspaper Diario Público.
Twitter: @begonapina

Ann Lee
Film and music journalist for Metro UK, writing articles and doing interviews.
Twitter: @_ann_lee

Candice Frederick
Blogger and Cinema In Noir podcast co-host, Candice runs the very active Reel Talk Online blog. 
Twitter: @ReelTalker

Monica Castillo 
Film critic for the New York Times' "Watching" and based in New York. 
Twitter: @mcastimovies
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Bitch Flicks
Bitch Flicks provides some of the best criticism and reflective pieces on film from a feminist perspective around and hosts Tuesday chats on Twitter.
​Twitter: @BitchFlicks

Groups to follow

FEMALE CRITICS
This group was created to give voice and exposure to more female film critics. The group hosts a Thursday #femcritcircle chat on Twitter and is generally an excellent place to discuss films, reflect on mainstream film criticism, and network with others. 
Twitter: @FemaleCritics
Hashtags: #womenwatch #ladycritics
Twitter chat on Thursdays: #femcritcircle
Tumblr: Female Film Critics

AFRICAN-AMERICAN FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION
This group is very active on Twitter, like the above group, and shares stories about African Americans in the film industry, popular culture news, information on film history, award winners and much more. The AAFCA was established in 2003.
Twitter: @theaafca
Website: aafca.com


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Bluestocking Film Festival opens submissions today for 2017. This year Bluestocking is also a traveling festival which will be showing in different locations in the U.S. and overseas. Bluestocking's remit is to screen short films that pass the Bechdel Test and feature strong and complex female protagonists, images so often lacking in film these days. 

From the website:

Bluestocking celebrates and promotes talented, established and emerging filmmakers who take the creative risk of placing female protagonists front and center, and serves as a showcase to amplify female voices and stories. Bluestocking was the first all-narrative festival in the world to require films with female protagonist and Bechdel-Wallace Test compliance. The Bechdel-Wallace Test measures representation and dialogue of female characters in film.

Bluestocking Film Series is nothing short of genius — a beacon in the storm of gender inequity in Hollywood. The program truly casts a rare light illuminating a better future when women's voices are no longer censored and silenced in American storytelling. It is just this sort of inspired foresight that could result in the inclusion of women in the voice of our civilization — at last. 
—Maria Giese, film director, founder of Women Directors: Navigating the Hollywood Boys Club

​By bringing independent and industry professionals from the U.S. and around the globe to cultivate ties with creative leaders pushing for cultural change from within Hollywood, Bluestocking’s work boldly empowers audiences and filmmakers alike to be a part of a vibrant and necessary cinema (r)evolution that is bound to influence the future of filmed entertainment.

Filmmakers should submit through Film Freeway. Visit the Bluestocking website to learn more.