We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leah Saint Marie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Leah, appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.
I’m a female filmmaker. As such, I actively seek out fellow female filmmakers to crew up with me. I was on a phone call to film my next feature film in France. The production company asked me what type of producer I want. Among the myriad requests I had, I told them that one of my top priorities is to work with a female producer.
I wrote and directed my award-winning short horror film, Good Girl. It was an entirely female and non-binary cast and crew during production and post-production. I”m very proud of that. It took me forever to find a female VFX artist, because they’re not given the same opportunities in regards to time, education, money, etc. I finally found one and she’s amazing! Ivy Liao. I’ll work with her again. The short went on to win the Paris International Film Festival last year (2022). Also, it was the easiest day on a film set I’ve ever had AND the most communicative.
Leah, 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?
I’m a former investigative journalist. I love telling very human stories. I think that comes from being a journalist and being curious about people. After I got my MA degree I moved to Los Angeles and told myself I would do a year of writing for free. This was to get connections, build my resume, etc. Then, I just went to work on different film sets and learned along the way. Being on a film set is a great experience as a writer because you get to see how the page translates to production. It made me a more efficient writer for sure.
After that year I directed my first film. I’ve always loved horror, so I did an art house horror feature called In the Light of the Moon. It was quite an experience filming it during COVID in the woods of Kern County. I’m hoping to film more horror feature films and make a name for myself filming those types of films as well as magical realism films. My next feature film I’m going to Italy. I have a great and talented actress already attached and an all-star production team. We’re almost fully funded, with just that last leg to get. What’s great is that I”m a forty-year old woman who was afraid to direct anything and now I’ve just found so much love and support in the filmmaking community. That’s what Indie filmmaking is like though, we’re all in it supporting each other and being in each other’s corners.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
I was 39 years old in 2020, when COVID shut everything production down. I decided that I wanted to have directed my first feature film before I turned 40. Needless to say I had a hill to climb. I posted on social media, I emailed and texted everyone I knew. I organized a gofundme page and told people that they didn’t need to buy me a gift that year but to please donate $40 to my gofundme instead. I raised 1/3 of our budget that way. It was the favor I hadn’t asked that I used to make my dreams happen. I cashed in and won. My feature film In the Light of the Moon is almost out of post production and sold already!
How’d you meet your business partner?
I co-produce a podcast called Pitch! Podcast with Angel Daahoud Murphy. We met on a film set back in 2018 for a short film I was producing. He came to set once to bring something for a friend of his. I then kept in touch with him and cast him in my feature film, In the Light of the Moon. On that set he told me about a script he had written that he is going to direct, Red Lighters. I told him to send me the script. I read it and it blew my mind. I told him I’d help him produce it. I’ve since went on to cast Angel in a bunch of my short films, produced another podcast we’ve worked together on where he’s the host, called, Before the Fade (a precursor to a documentary he’s doing that I”m producing and that we’ve already found distribution for). It was just one of those happy accident meetings that then blossomed into a good creative partnership.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.leahsaintmarie.com
- Instagram: @leah.st.marie
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-saint-marie-258bb593/
- Twitter: @leahwelch19
- Other: IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5511952/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_0_nm_1_q_leah%2520saint%2520marie
Image Credits
Fantastic Fest pics credit: Alison Narro