We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jim Garrett. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jim below.

Alright, Jim thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

Interesting question. It took me a very long time.

I grew up with a lot of casual exposure to video production and artistic expression; my parents met while working as a news station, so I would see all the cameras, edit bays, and nitty gritty that went into the process.

As I got older, there came the knowledge that the media industry was changing; with the increased accessibility of technology leading to local news production teams downsizing, so that pathway didn’t seem like a viable option. I always liked writing, and had a vague notion that “Communications” was a less pretentious version of majoring in “English”, so I did that.

Thankfully, the major was highly engaging and well suited for my interests. I had this abstract idea that I’d like to be a director, but knew that I would need to develop marketable skills and carve out a niche for myself.

It was when I was helping to plan an on-campus fundraising event that I had the lightning bolt moment of realizing that *this* was what I wanted to do with my life. Rallying and focusing the talents and skills of a team was both highly-invigorating and a plausible career pathway in a variety of non-media fields.

If I hadn’t taken a non-major Film production course as a blow-off class my senior year of college, who knows where I would have ended up. I did take that course, though, and caught the bug, and never shook it.

For the next 8 or so years after graduating, I worked all variety of jobs while continuing to tool away on my personal short films. I was working in nonprofit executive management during the day and submitting to free short film screenings in the Los Angeles area at night. At one of these events, I made a connection who provided an opportunity, and it’s been an incredible, serendipitous journey since.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Jim Garrett, and I’m a project manager with a background in post production, live events, and executive administration. I enjoy self-producing short films (mostly comedy and/or horror), and have spent the last several years producing a variety of screenings and filmmaker networking events in the Los Angeles area.

Among these are “Hot 30 Microshorts” (www.instagram.com/hot30shorts/), a biannual show at El Cid in Silverlake exclusively featuring content 60 seconds or under (a minimum of 5 seconds and a target of 30), with live comedy and musical acts as punctuating intermissions before an evening of social mingling out on the iconic venue patio. Also, I created the show “Halloween Mixtape” (instagram.com/halloween_mixtape/), a horror and horror-comedy screening event in the San Fernando Valley.

The most important part of each show is that they’re always free to submit to, and, free to attend.

When I first moved to the city, I met many great peers and collaborators, but it was very difficult to locate a cohesive community that catered to my specific interests and budget scale. Specifically, I’m talking about finding short film screenings that were both free to submit to and either free or negligibly inexpensive to attend. Even considering spending $60 on a submission fee was outrageous, let alone factoring in the cost of potential attendance.

A key inspiration was my pre-pandemic experiences with Channel 101; I had been aware of the group since the late 00’s thanks to notable alumni (including The Lonely Island), and rediscovering it in the short years immediately prior to 2020 was a pivotal development in terms of shaping my next steps.

That was the first free show I went to that featured people creating with low-to-no budget. It was dynamic, it was fun, and it showed me that I wasn’t alone. I felt validated for the idea that there was a real public demand for the exact things I was personally looking for.

From there, I dedicated myself to identifying other such community resources (including trendy East Hollywood screening events like “Show & Tell” and “Silverlake Shorts”, which currently both recur monthly, and are highly recommend), and was fascinated to see how little overlap there was between all of these groups. Most weren’t aware of the others’ existences! I created a tracking spreadsheet of what I found, so others could benefit without the hassle of researching themselves. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PMT6AWMVRnWc3kdyPHGG6YAYyEpm0Hvm484p9gN4jAA/)

In March 2020, when COVID struck and in-person screenings withered for the foreseeable future, Hot 30 was created by Andy Petruzzo and Kyle Sweeney as an online livestream event. I participated in the first several screenings, and the absolute freedom and flexibility of the concept was extremely exciting.

The short runtime created the opportunity to include more participants than would normally be possible with a similar program duration (normally there are between 90-110 different short films featured at a Hot 30 show), and the lack of imposed stylistic structure empowered a huge variety in the type of content that could be featured.

A narrative short? Sounds good! Abstract experimentation? Great! Standup self tape? Music video? Teaser for a larger project? Live action, animation, anything in-between; it’s all fair game. Whatever a person can think of (that adheres to basic decency standards) can be showcased at Hot 30.

I joined the Hot 30 team in 2022; I had just completed work on a very exciting fundraising screening event (“So Fucked It’s Funny”, created by GG Hawkins, which raised over $15,000 for The National Network of Abortion Access Funds, and went on tour from LA to Austin, Detroit, and Chicago), and wanted to capture that momentum.

Andy and Kyle were incredibly receptive to the idea of transitioning from an online-exclusive event to our current status as a live show, and it’s been an absolute blast to see the community expand from a couple hundred to several thousand in this short amount of time.

“Halloween Mixtape” came about as a response to what I perceived as a saturation of comedy events and a categorical lack of horror. There would be options in October, but what about the rest of the year? We founded in 2023 and have had several incredible events, including commemorating April as “halfway to Halloween”.

The entire process has been an existential delight. I’m proud to be able to be the type of person that I desperately needed a decade ago. I know that I have been able to make a positive impact on the lives of a lot of people, and I’m excited to see where it all leads to next.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Another interesting question. The biggest lesson I’ve had to unlearn would probably be “if you didn’t go to film school, you shouldn’t be making movies”, or, “if you’re not spending $20,000 on your short film, you shouldn’t be making movies”. Basic gatekeeper attitudes while contributed to a real sense of discouragement.

There’s a lot to unpack with statements like that, and I let it grind me to a halt for a while after I first moved to Los Angeles.

Since I wasn’t making content for festivals or awards, what was the point? The answer had always been “for fun”, but that was being directly challenged. Eventually, I recognized that many of these gatekeepers were projecting their own issues and insecurities, and that my goofing around with a camera was not, in and of itself, a disrespectful action towards the film community at large.

Looking back, it was all essential for developing an appropriate sense of perspective and humility, as well as fueling the determination to continue forward.

Around this time, I encountered a quote from David Bowie that goes “Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society.”

This struck a chord, and articulated what I had been trying to sort out for myself with what I was doing. I needed the reminder that this was meant to be fun.

It was all these experiences and breakthroughs which initially motivated me to seek out and eventually produce independent filmmaker screening events. Everyone deserves a place to go where they can feel supported.
It’s certainly better than putting oneself in the corner and wondering “what if”.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

At this point, it’s a question of doing as much as I can for as long as I can.

I’m excited to continue producing filmmaker events, and to see how they can grow and develop as we engage with more of the community. I also have a litany of short concepts that I’d like to produce, if only I can find the time!

A huge incentive for continuing to do what I do is the awareness of what an incredible opportunity it is to do so. I don’t want to take a single iota of it for granted.

First of all, thanks to modern technology, there are literally boundless options available for the enterprising creator. I feel like I grew up at a great time, right as consumer-level digital resources became available (I shudder to consider how expensive this would all be if we still had to buy and process film…). I know people who will write a short, shoot it, and edit it entirely from their cell phones. That is absolutely badass, and goes to show that there’s no excuse to not make something.

If I’m able to continue producing live-action shorts, that would be fantastic; I love the process of working with actors, and the excitement of finding the scene on set. I’ve always been a huge fan of animation, as well, and have been exploring different methods of self-producing 2D and 3D work. The knowledge that I could create the highest-concept adventure from the comfort of my laptop is a very exciting proposition.

The future is bright. Completely opaque, sure, but full of potential.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/hot30shorts
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hot30shorts/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-garrett/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jimgarrett2655
• Other: https://linktr.ee/HalloweenMixtape