Barely two weeks into the new year I earned my first rejection letter. I applied to ScreenCraft’s Film Fund Grant Program hoping to be granted $18K for my table read.
EIGHT MF-ING TEEN GRANDSTAND BANDS FOR A TABLE READ?!
LOL, relax. First of all, ScreenCraft is offering up to $30K in development funding. So, you know, shoot for the moon. In actuality, if I pay local actors each $150 for the day, the table read should cost about $2,400. However, if I want some actors with some pull in the industry, I’d have to offer closer to $1,204—SAG’s minimum for low-budget projects.
The $18K would cover flying in my first pick for KELLY from LA and putting them up in a hotel for a week.
Thankfully that was the only funding opportunity that charged an application fee. I applied to 6 grants over the holiday break.
In this Newsletter
- What’s next after rejection
- YouTube Monetization Journey Update
- Tradwives in STEM (video)
- He called me an ape!!! (video)
- Update from Devin
- Vote for Kafi
What’s next?
Wait for the other 5 grants to make their determinations. Hopefully, I get selected.
Work on my pitch deck and cover letter to industry insiders. I’m hoping to have about 30 guests attending the reading.
Take on as many gigs and save up the $2,400 for the reading.
YouTube Monetization Journey
For a YouTube channel to be monetized, I need 500 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. The table below shows a summary of my progress.
| YouTube Monetization Goal | Week 6 of 16 | Week 7 of 16 | Progress |
| 500 Subscribers | 278 | 278 | +0 |
| 4,000 Watch hours | 21.2 | 15.6 | +? |
Yay, I’ve been consistently posting on YouTube. More importantly, y’all have been streaming my ‘Ultimate Onicia’ playlist. THANK YOU <3
This week, I’ve managed to post multiple videos. I’m interpreting the watch hour metric as people watched for 15.6 hours. That’s fewer hours than last week, but they are watching. I think I need to:
- Publish more videos per week.
- Promote my videos more. This has been challenging since I don’t really have a secondary social platform. Twitter is dead to me. Fuck Elon’s musty ass.
- Make my videos longer. Again, I don’t like monopolizing or wasting your time. Still looking for a system that doesn’t feel gross.
Tradwives in STEM
That time I convinced a group of girly girls to compete in the science fair and won! I wish I had a photo of the electric doll house that we made. I played with it for so many weeks after.
He called me an ape!!!
No clickbait. This is a 100% true story. That guy’s rude and racist comment changed the trajectory of my twenties. Am I hurt? Nah. Not now. Not then. I’d gone through years of bullying for being darkskinned. In the end, he turned into a big fan of La Onicia. Still, #NeverForget.
Update from Devin
Hi, everybody! I’m finally able to reveal more about Project: Weird Wild West. The actual, official title of this comic is (drum roll) The Passion of St. Alban of the West. I describe it as “a horror western that combines Christian iconography and American mythology to create something wholly original.” It’s my latest collaboration with my CyberSync team of David Escobar on art and Buddy Beaudoin on letters. READ FULL UPDATE
Vote for Kafi Kareem
Kafi Kareem is the creator of The Caddy Club, an animated feature. Help Kafi Kareem become the Entrepreneur of Impact, appear in Forbes magazine, and win $25,000! At the time of posting, she’s 14th in her group. It’s totally possible to help her win. Note: You need a Facebook account to vote. You can vote every day.
