Faith Liu is a writer/director who has written feature films for Blumhouse, FilmNation, Sony Pictures Animation, and Disney. Her directorial debut short “Sundowning” is available online at CryptTV’s YouTube channel after a successful festival run. She was a member of the CAPE New Writers Fellowship and Christina Hodson and Margot Robbie’s Lucky Exports Pitch Program.

Today we are getting into how Faith landed paid distribution for her short film, how she got connected with opportunities to write features for major studios in traditional Hollywood and what she thinks there is to gain from the film festival circuit.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN:

1:31 START

2:00 - Sundowning, Faith’s horror-with-a-heart proof of concept short now out on CryptTV

4:10 - Getting paid distribution for a short: CryptTV

6:07 - What to gain from film festivals (especially genre festivals)

13:20 - Winning the Wes Craven Award

16:44 - Going from screenwriter to writer-director

19:10 - Crowdfunding $40k for Sundowning

23:20 - Signing with Faith’s longtime manager Max Goldfarb

26:33 - First jobs in support staff on writers rooms of “Warrior” and “Better Call Saul”

29:59 - Caren Dulles?

33:50 - CAPE (Coalition for Asian Pacific in Entertainment) New Writers Program & how to pitch yourself in 3 minutes

42:15 - Getting connected with writing for multiple Hollywood studios & landing Open Writing Assignment pitches

48:10 - Getting into Margot Robbie’s Lucky Chap Pitch Program & women who write action

51:40 - Faith’s advice for screenwriters

54:14 - How living situation has impacted creativity

56:00 - What helped Faith persevere

59:04 - TIME CAPSULE