We were lucky to catch up with Valaniece recently and have shared our conversation below.

Valaniece, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

All my life I planned on moving to LA in pursuit of my dreams as a screenwriter after completing college but China had other plans and so I graduated with the class of Covid and despite coming to terms with my mortality, I thought it’d be a brilliant idea to relocate my entire life in the middle of 2020 anyway. There were inevitably many uncertainties to say the least. I had zero job prospects considering the film industry had shut down, we all feared for our lives, and people were quite literally dying en masse. It was very tragic and everyone globally took part in that collective dread. With that said, it behooves one to factor in a pandemic when making such life changes. Not I.

So I packed up my car and drove cross country from Jersey to The City of Literal Angels AKA The Epicenter of the Pandemic, AKA Bill Gates’ America, AKA Jared Leto’s Comeback Story, AKA Kobe Bryant’s Last Stand. Some would call this decision unwise and considering the circumstances they would not be wrong. People were dying, hospitals were overwhelmed, businesses were closed, the economy was shutdown, helicopters fell out of public favor (unrelated to the pandemic), and LA was grim. Devoid of all its glittery likeness and congested charm. Things weren’t looking good for this eager college graduate just starting out in life. Thankfully what I did have on my side was relentless impulsivity, an expensive English degree that amounted to nothing in the eyes of potential employers, and blind confidence,

When I first arrived, California had been experiencing a population decline and a lot of people were leaving LA. My rationale was that if people were leaving, that would mean eventually when the film industry started up again, there would be a lot of job opportunities available. At that point I had no connections in the LA industry having worked in NYC my entire career so I figured this shutdown might work to my advantage… Hopefully. I was really sweating it there for a minute with the uncertainty of when the industry would open again but deus ex machina in the form of a media conglomerate saved me from both financial ruin and embarrassment at the potential of having to move back home after publicly announcing my “grand departure” from Jersey. I landed my first job in Los Angeles working as an Office PA for the HBO show, “Insecure”.

The End…?

Plot twist. I was straight up depressed at this point. After coming out of social isolation and rejoining the workforce I realized I didn’t like the direction I was heading in my career. So I decided to make my life harder and more complicated by leaving the production department to become a waitress so I had more time to write on the side. I had worked as an Office PA since my freshman year of college and by the time we wrapped “Insecure”, I had five years of experience. Though I was financially secure and could afford cute clothes, I was unhappy with office life and just wanted to be a writer/filmmaker. I didn’t want to climb the department ladder and saw no way of getting over that corporate wall into the creative side of entertainment from where I was. I’m grateful for the time I spent working as an Office PA and all the opportunities I received so early in my career. I worked on really cool productions, a couple Netflix films, some HBO projects, and even Saturday Night Live where Pete Davidson accidentally walked in on me while I was in the bathroom. I learned a lot about filmmaking and met a lot of great people but at this point I was ready to try something else.

After I left I was pretty directionless for a couple of months and just writing to pass the time but deus ex machina had stuck yet again in the form of a friend I went to high school with back in South Jersey. Kaitlyn Scardino hit me up looking for a script to direct, we shot it, and now we own a production company called Sad Girl Cinemas. We’ve since collaborated with several LA musicians and bands such as Elishia Sharie, Julez and the Rollers, and Social Ghosts producing music videos as well as short films.

That’s the abridged version. In reality there were a lot more tears.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a writer, filmmaker, photographer, actor, and roller skater. Unprovoked, I’m generally decent to be around. I also co-own the production company Sad Girl Cinemas with my creative soulmate Kaitlyn Scardino where we produce short films and music videos. We often collaborate with different musicians and bands in LA. We also produced the short film “Playing Pretend” which I wrote and acted in. It’s about two idiosyncratic toxic best friends who lock themselves in the bathroom of the Chinese restaurant they work at waiting for the results of a pregnancy test with the threat of getting fired. The irony is that I didn’t become a server until after I wrote “Playing Pretend”. Currently we are working on our upcoming short film that I wrote and will be acting in called “The Bitch of Venice Beach” which is an adaptation of the Shakespeare play “The Merchant Venice” about a drug dealing roller girl with too many debts to pay.

What sets Sad Girl Cinemas apart from other indie production companies is the collective of artists we’ve fostered through our collaborations and company events. We frequently host networking mixers for local creatives and skaters to come together and have a good time. I believe that in terms of networking, it’s better to make friends first because at the end of the day all of us want to help our friends first and vice versa. I think being friends or at least friendly with the people you work with is important in terms of creative cohesion and productivity. Your relationship to your co-workers can be the difference between a job you look forward to and a job you dread being at. It’s also nice to be apart of an inspiring community of artists with unique talents and skills.

With all that said, our company isn’t just a conduit for making short films and music videos. Sad Girl Cinemas is an extension of how we identify as artists. We try to be honest in the stories we tell, the art we create, and present our take on the feminine experience through a indie sleaze, sad girl, updated Tumblr aesthetic lens.

Aside from that, I’m a writer first. Screenwriting, creative essays, short stories, poetry, I do pretty much all of it. I’m not bilingual because my mother never taught me Spanish but I’m like really good at English. I spent all my life writing and graduated with a degree in English. When I was a little girl, I’d fill my marble notebooks with stories about teen girl sleuths and fantasy stories about secret doors to dragon kingdoms. I also self published a weekly newspaper for literally just my family as if they needed a ten year old’s opinion on politics. I have been a featured contributor to the website Thought Catalog for six years as well as Collective World and Slack Jaw where I regularly publish satirical essays and think pieces. I always like to describe my style as sad-hot-funny-girl. My writing was very influenced by Vladimir Nabokov, Woody Allen (I know guys), Shakespeare [Daddy], Diablo Cody, David O’Russell, Lana Del Rey, and Charlie Kaufman to name a few.

I’m also a photographer and I shoot exclusively on film. I’m very passionate about film photography. I see digital photography as a sort’ve fake copy of a moment. Whereas when you take a photo on film, you are capturing physical light from that moment. Therefore that moment becomes this tangible thing in my eyes. Looking at a film photo feels like time travel. Film is more sentimental in a way. My style is very fly on the wall grunge. Stuff that gives you serious FOMO. I like to capture off guard moments of the underground LA art and skate scene as well as gentler candid moments of my own life. I have recently had my work displayed at the Reckless Magazine four year anniversary event where my photo was sold. I also had the opportunity to combine both my passions for photography and roller skating when I was hired to shoot for Pigeon’s Skate Shop, promoting their new products. I currently offer freelance photography services.

And so to answer your question, that’s why I’m so cool.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I discovered that I possess the ability to ugly cry in the bathroom and then pull my shit together before getting back to work like everything is fine.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

The digital age has given us access to more art than ever before yet simultaneously separated us from the appreciation of art and I believe that is to the detriment of society. Art is good for us regardless if you’re the one who creates it or not. It’s healing and cathartic. Art is the soul of society. Art gives us purpose. We romanticize life through it. Art possess an almost invisible energy that we feel yet we can’t quite articulate why or how we feel it. This energy is heightened when we come together collectively to appreciate art. When we go see a movie in a theatre, you’re having a shared emotional experience with the strangers sitting next to you and our commonality is to forget about life and see the hero win. At museums we are captivated by the art and share a common appreciation for the simple honor of standing before what is merely paint upon a canvas. Art is what connects us to the collective unconscious and to the people we love around us. It is ingrained in our humanity and without it, existence is purely absurd and obsolete; devoid of all meaning.

We identify ourselves in art and it influences the way we choose to live our lives. Just as it means something to the artists who poured their heart out and cried blood to create, it means something to us and becomes apart of our own identity. The artists cries and we cry with them. Ask anybody what their favorite movie is and I guarantee you’ll better understand who they are based on why they chose that movie. We pay a lot of attention to absolute nonsense like silly reality shows, and sensational news stories. I’m not saying we should ignore all of it, and transcend with nature or some shit, that’s unrealistic and pretentious. There are certain things about us humans that simply won’t change and it’s not a bad thing, it’s just who we are. I think the best we as a society can do to counter that superficial aspect of the attention economy is to surround ourselves more with art without having to completely give up those brainless guilty pleasures. To balance ourselves and to appreciate art no matter the medium it comes in. Whether it be music, poetry, or paintings.

With social media, while there has been greater exposure to talented artist, simultaneously there is exponentially more exposure to sheer stupidity. I myself am guilty of engaging with stupidity. We all exist under the same hypocrisy let’s be so for real. Regardless, it’s sad to see so many talented artists out in the world getting half the attention of attractive Tik Tok dancers. We should all pay more attention to things that matter such as art and give more exposure to those people who have something to offer the collective. How? Within the context of social media, even a like or a follow goes a long way towards helping artists. Supporting people through social media costs free-ninety-nine. Any small bit of support helps tremendously, whether it be buying their art, or buying a ticket, or simply following their socials. The benefit of this is the more you interact with that content digitally, the more the algorithm presents it to you. Thus less mindless content and more exposure to real artists. There’s always something out there for everybody.

We should also work more towards supporting small artists because it’s those communities of underground scenes that truly create the culture. We are constantly bombarded with advertisements telling us who to buy, social media influencers selling false images, virtue signaling mainstream entertainment, and regurgitated intellectual properties so much so that we forget that is not the only culture that exists within our society. We all create the culture collectively and choose what truly deserves admiration and attention versus what doesn’t. There are so many small artists out there that have a story to tell and even though they don’t exist in the mainstream stratosphere, that does not mean they’re not good enough. We should find a way to connect more with those people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sadgirlcinemas.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valaniece/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sadgirlcinemas
• Other: https://thoughtcatalog.com/valaniece-christina/

Image Credits
All Photos By Me