We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Pryde Pierce a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Pryde, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I think it’s origin, in me, began in my childhood. Just seeing my parents always working hard and pushing forward no matter the obstacle, or disappointment, that they faced. Those were early lessons that things won’t always go your way but you have the choice on whether to fight on or to give up. I’ve always kept that with me. Whether it was during my time in the Army infantry, or now as I pursue my career in film and video. In this career path there are, literally, no guarantees….so you’d better be resilient.
I can remember speaking with my father one time in my early 20’s and telling him that I was really going through it (for various reasons). Now, my father is a pastor, he can easily preach for hours. In this case, as I told him I was having to fight to survive at that time – all he said was “Well, keep fighting.” At first I was confused. In my head I was like “That’s it?” But as I thought on it, he was right. There were only two options in that instance, either give up or keep fighting. When you distill everything down to the core that is pretty much what life is.
No matter the obstacle I face, I always choose to “keep fighting.”
There was an article I read, that I loved. In it a manager was snarkily asked to tell stories about people who came to Hollywood with big dreams and failed. To their credit, the manager responded that they focus on the positive so, instead, they’d be happy to talk about the one thing that people who have succeeded all had. What they all had in common, the manager said, was “they never gave up.”
This is a career path where, literally, the most common thing you will hear is “no.” You’ll face disappointments, betrayals, and odds that may seem insurmountable. When that happens, remember “Keep fighting.”
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m a freelance filmmaker & actor. The funny thing is I’m not a “My dad gave me a camera when I was 8 and the rest is history” type of person. I never thought about being a filmmaker or actor growing up. Even in my early 20’s, if you had told me I’d be doing what I do (and living in California), I’d have thought you were crazy.
I was always about finding what I was passionate about and then finding ways to make that my career. I didn’t find this path until my early 20’s while I was attending college a few years after leaving the Army infantry. I was working towards doing what I needed to do to go to law school. That included honors classes, straight A’s, tutoring legally blind people, writing for the school newspaper, being an officer in the honor society etc etc.
One day I happened across an audition notice. I had no idea how to audition but I thought “Why not?” I figured it may be another thing to add to a law school application in a couple of years. I knew NOTHING about how to audition so when I auditioned for the lead it wasn’t surprising that I could “feel” that they were not interested. Fortunately, I auditioned for another character and ended up getting cast. That literally turned my world upside down as I became “bit by the bug.” That is the extremely condensed version of how I got on this path.
After months of debating internally, I made the choice that this was the road for me (even knowing I would probably never go to law school now). I accepted that there were no guarantees, and that I would need to put everything I could into it (and accept tons of sacrifices) to even have a chance of success. And that’s what I’ve done ever since, work to get better every day, fight through any and every obstacle, and accept every sacrifice while pushing towards my goals and dreams.
At this point, I’ve won awards, worked with Fortune 500 companies, worked with celebrities, and I can be seen acting in projects on places like Discovery+ and Amazon – but I definitely have much, much, more to do to accomplish my goals. And I work towards them every day.
My latest short film “Patriot” is about a militia member who stormed the capitol on Jan 6th. And now he is dealing with the relationships in his life as his militia plans to kidnap a Senator. We just finished it in February and it’s in it’s first festival in April – where it is nominated for the “Best Drama” award. We also have about a dozen other festivals we are waiting to hear from on Patriot but May 1st is the earliest we will hear back from any of those.
I also am the creator of a YouTube horror reaction channel called “Final Girlz.” We’re at over 13 thousand subscribers currently and growing. The channel revolves around 6 “Final Girlz” who didn’t previously watch horror films (because of being scared of them) now watching horror films together. It always feels really good to see comments from fans of the channel when they mention how watching our channel brought them joy, how it made them remember how they felt when they first watched a horror movie.
Aside from that I do a lot of freelance client work depending on what I’m hired as. Director, cinematographer, writer, actor, editor, drone pilot, sound guy – I’ve been hired as them all.
Currently – I’m cast in a horror film scheduled to shoot within the next few months, I’m finishing up being a returning judge in a regional film festival (Digifest Temecula), And I’m also on the Advisory board for the San Bernardino Valley College Film, Television, & Media program.
I’ve also previously taught Digital Filmmaking at a non-profit and been a board member for the Full Circle Players theater company in Riverside California.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Three qualities I think have been some of the most important for me are:
1. Being passionate (having a hunger to grow/improve).
2. Being a quality person.
3. Being resilient.
You really have to have a passion for this to have a shot (other than getting lucky). I work to get better at this every day whether I’m getting paid to or not. I can talk all day and night about it (and probably not realize where the time went lol). You need that type of passion. It will not only help you improve, it will also help carry you during hard times or tough moments.
My primary producing partner and I have a phrase “no bad people.” The odds are tough enough already, the last thing you want is to bring someone on that is a problem. Whether you are being hired or building a team where you are hiring – generally people want to be around people that they like being around. That goes double when you are spending tons of time with them on a project. But beyond that you should generally want to be a good person. And I’ve been in situations where someone lost work because of not being a good person (and rightly so).
We’ve talked about being resilient already, so I won’t really go into it again here but in any situation always remember that this is your life. When things get difficult you decide whether you give up or keep fighting.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Absolutely! Collaboration is the life’s blood of entertainment!
At the top of the list are probably agents, managers, and producers that want to assist in growing my career as a director, or have projects they feel I would be a great fit for as the director.
That said, I’m always open to meeting with people and talking about their projects. I’ve even talked to the husband of a dental assistant about his story idea while I happened to be at a dentist’s office. I love to talk about stories and filmmaking and sometimes a collaboration comes out of that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.imdb.me/prydepierce
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prydepiercefilms/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PrydePierceFilms
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prydepierce/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FinalGirlz
