We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Abbey Kincheloe & Scout Smith a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Abbey and Scout, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Before starting Get Your Cat On, we were just best friends who loved to be silly and make silly things. Being able to take our friendship and translate it into filmmaking has meant that there is no end to our creativity! In between films, we take the opportunity to hang with our friends, go on walks around ATL, or binge America’s Next Top Model. This allows us to carry that joy and ease in pitching ideas to one another, working to support other Atlanta filmmakers, and producing films that feel close to our own hearts and friendship.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Get Your Cat On is a women-led indie production company based in Atlanta GA focused on telling stories of absurdity rooted in community. We come from a theatre-based background, so when we moved to Atlanta, and decided to try out film, we were miles behind people we knew who went to film school or had been working consistently on set. Our first film, Baby Better Swallow, was a crash course into indie film-making, and was an immediate catalyst for the discovery of our brand: scrappy, silly, and brave. As theatre-girlies who now make film, we want to continue building a safe, playful, and curiosity-filled indie-film community. We were so lucky to have had so many folks in Atlanta support and inspire us, and now we want to inspire folks to try new things on set, expand skill sets, and get goofy!
We just wrapped production on our latest short-film, Sheet Cake, a sapphic rom-com set in the 80s! We have a few projects in post-production that will hit the festival circuit later this year, along with a couple of music videos coming down the pike. We are always reading new scripts and looking to support new artists in whatever way we can! There may also be a feature on the horizon…guess you’ll just have to stick around and find out…
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Writing and performing sketch comedy in college has reflected back directly onto the work we do now. It was the un-official motto of our program that the best way to grow as an artist was to make your own stuff, learn from it, and then make more. Other than the drive to create our own pathways, we both enjoy the same types of media, which has led to fluency in the same language, and we are pumped about listening and feeding the little girl inside of us who just wants to have fun and make art.
Our biggest advice to any creative is to stop waiting for someone to make something for you and start making it yourself. The best thing you can do is reach out to your community around you, and take the jump to make the thing that you keep saying you want to see.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
We feel overwhelmed all the time. I think we hardly ever just feel “whelmed.” The answer for us is to always lean on the folks who are there for you, and be honest about your bandwidth. Too often artists feel like they must say yes to every single opportunity, and that the second they say no, they will be stripped of any future….this simply isn’t true. The thing that will protect and feed your future, is being honest with the size of your plate, and saying “no” when the timing is not right. If you have to say yes, lean on your community! If you are surrounding yourself with folks who are encouraging mutual growth, asking for help is never a bad thing.
Long story short: “no” is not a dirty word, and neither is “help me!”
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @getyourcatonproductions
- Youtube: @getyourcatonproductions
- Other: Vimeo: vimeo.com/getyourcaton Email Us: getyourcaton@gmail.com
Image Credits
Demetrius Washington Moonshine Canyon Jessica Dynelle
