We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anthony & Kaylah Cantu. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anthony & Kaylah below.
Anthony & Kaylah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
The truth about being a creative, especially in a town like Hollywood, is that everything you do is a risk. From the moment you decide you have the talent and passion to get paid to create stories you’re taking a risk that someone, somewhere out there will agree with your talent and passion and want to pay you to utilize it. It probably goes without saying but this is much easier dreamed then realized, and the amount of time and effort it takes to perfect your craft to the point of financial viability means that you’re passing up on a lot of other opportunities to make a regular comfortable living.
When we met in college and realized we both had the same dream and calling to be screenwriters, we knew we were going to move to Hollywood eventually. Originally we planned on spending a year teaching English in South Korea, however, a friend of ours found Anthony a job opportunity in LA. We decided we had better take the opportunity while we had it. So, we took the risk and passed up an adventure in another country to move to LA and start our Hollywood journey. We didn’t even have a place to live yet and wound up sleeping on our friend’s couch for the first two months, both of us on the same tiny couch.
After a couple of years of working to get established in LA, Kaylah came up with the idea for Writers Spotlight. We mulled around the idea for a few weeks and then took the risk of pitching it to investors. Fortunately, they liked the idea and bought into it. It became quickly apparent that the idea for the website was much bigger and more complicated to create then we had originally imagined, and Kaylah had to take the risk of not working any other job in the industry to focus on building Writers Spotlight full time. That’s how much we believed in the idea. It took us six years from the inception of the idea to launching Writers Spotlight. Kaylah worked on the site full time, while Anthony worked various production jobs and helped while he could, and all the while we were working on honing our own craft as screenwriters.
Every single step of this journey has been filled with risks. Passing up safe comfortable opportunities to keep pursuing our dreams and the career we believe we’re called too. After eight years in this city, the community on Writers Spotlight is growing and we recently got out first paid writing job. Those risks we took are finally starting to pay off, but this is just the beginning. When the dream is big the risk is even bigger. There are very few sure bets In life, but we believe one of them is that if you don’t take a risk on what you really want, you’re just going to end up with regret.
Anthony & Kaylah, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Anthony is a screenwriter, Co-Founder of Writers Spotlight, and connoisseur of 80’s and 90’s action films. The only thing he’s ever really wanted to do in life was make movies. Armed with only curiosity, an encyclopedic knowledge of films he’d seen, and a rag tag group of friends he made his first short film when he was 15 and has been hooked ever since. He attended Biola University where he met his future wife, screenwriting partner, and Writers Spotlight Co-Founder, Kaylah. Whether through comedy, action, thriller, or good honest faith based films Anthony hopes to entertain and inspire people through the magic of storytelling.
Kaylah is a screenwriter and CEO of Writers Spotlight. She graduated from Biola University with a degree in Cinema and Media Arts with an emphasis in Screenwriting. She loves comedy films, small animals, and Sushi. Her biggest inspirations are Jesus and Mel Brooks. Her goal is to see hard working screenwriters succeed which is why she created Writers Spotlight.
Writers Spotlight was born out of a need we had as screenwriters to have a community where we could work with other writers to improve and asses where our scripts were really at. We noticed a lot of the other sites out there just seemed interested in taking screenwriters money and offering them sub par resources with little to no actual help on their writing. So we created Writers Spotlight. It’s the resource we wish we had when we were starting out eight years ago, and it’s still as needed today as is was back then.
It’s an online community for screenwriters to meet other writers, swap scripts, and improve their work. Screenwriters can create or join a writers group, and can use our new in document notes feature to give and receive feedback directly on the script page. Writers always know who has access to their script at all times. You have to agree to a swap or read request before someone else can read your script and it can’t ever be downloaded off of the site by a reader.
When their scripts are ready, they can put it into our pro scripts section. We created a filter system for industry pros to quickly and easily find the type of script or writer they are looking for. We’ve given writers access to a community of other dedicated writers to support them on their journey, and help them honestly identify what is working and not working in their scripts. And for industry professionals we’re cutting down on time wasted reading bad scripts while also reducing the number of cold calls and query letters by giving writers a place to submit their scripts.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Being able to come up with and execute a vision that is entirely unique to you and your voice is very rewarding. We all have experiences that have shaped the way we see the world. Being able to take those experiences and your own personality and create something, or tell a story, in a way that no one else could have is extremely satisfying. We see it in our own writing and we see it in Writers Spotlight as well. We talk a lot in screenwriting about “finding your voice” and “”identifying your own writing style.” What it is about you and the way you tell a story; write the dialogue, craft the story, utilize prose etc that makes you stand out from other writers? It’s a result that can only be achieved from writing A LOT. And in our case, watching A LOT of tv and movies. When you get to that point where you’ve identified your unique voice and are able to write in it consistently, people will eventually start responding to it. Let us tell you, there are very few better feelings than having someone read or look at something you specifically envisioned and brought to life and tell you “it’s great.”
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
We actually have no idea what NFT’s are or how they work! For two people in our early 30’s we’re oddly out of touch with new trends. They’re like a unique digital file that only one person can own right? From what we understand they’re typically images or works of art and the cool thing about them is that only the person who buys it gets to own that image. But that wouldn’t stop us from taking a picture of it on our phones, blowing it up, and putting it on our own wall yeah? Seems like it defeats the purpose of being the only one who owns it a bit ha ha But honestly, we’re all for new innovations in art and creativity. More ways for creatives to use their talents to create art and entertain people is almost always a good thing. And if you people are willing to pay you crazy amounts of money for what you’re created then more power to you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://writersspotlight.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writersspotlight/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writersspotlight
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/6577409/admin/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/WSL_Spotlight
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9D1g5Qu3wHyx-rKFt6DsLw
- Other: Anthony’s Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/cantu_films/?hl=en Kaylah’s Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/kaylahmariecantu/?hl=en