Conversations with Grace Sims

Today we’d like to introduce you to Grace Sims.

Hi Grace, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Theres a lot that brought me here – the spark notes version is I was born in NYC and we moved around every 2-4 years growing up. I also had epilepsy for most of my adolescence and the medication made me really drowsy. Because of that I had a hard time connecting with people- which spurred a lot of my desire to work with other artists and tell stories cinematically today.

I went to a performing arts high school in NYC for acting – and then – I joined a missions organization after high school- having grown up in the church it was a natural path to take. I traveled with them through Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Egypt, South Africa. I then moved to North Carolina and joined a Christian arts community there. I learned a lot during my time there. It wasn’t all bad, but looking back I realize there was a lot of religious control happening. It certainly wasn’t an entirely bad experience at either organization, but there was damage done – those stories are all for another time.

I think anyone who leaves organized religion has a lot to deconstruct with their innate shame and feeling like you did something wrong by walking in the door. It’s how religious control thrives. But I’ve learned to be okay with people misunderstanding me, or putting a narrative on me that isn’t true. The ones who I get to build life with are the ones who will seek to understand- I always am seeking to grow in any stage of my life.

I moved to Los Angeles about four years ago after living in NYC for some time. I feel like I have finally come back to myself in a lot of ways and Los Angeles feels more like home to me than anywhere I’ve lived.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I was definitely bullied as a kid – from having red hair to even just being the perpetual new kid. Having epilepsy didn’t help either.

The most rewarding form of expressing my art is also one of the hardest industries to break into. But kites can’t fly without tension on the string.

We’re about to wrap post-production on a short film I wrote and directed and co-produced. It’s about a woman who has to navigate terminating a pregnancy while she’s flooded with memories of her religious upbringing. It took me a year of actively fundraising to get the funds to make the film.

We initially were set to film from January 8-11th of this year. Our day one of shooting I was running on 4 hours of sleep from watching the fire updates on Watch Duty. We filmed day one – way up near the Mojave desert and out of service. Once we wrapped I was driving my car full of some of the crew from that day and once we were back in service my phone went insane with messages from friends, roommates, crew, cast. It was a lot to navigate. My producer and I decided to go dark for the next day of slated production hoping the fires would die down, for everyones sake not just the film.

We got home and I had just gotten out of the shower when I got a flood of texts from friends who knew where I lived, telling me a house two blocks away was burning down. So, we evacuated to Anaheim with some of the actors who had flown in, my roommates and my Director of Photography who was staying with me. The next day after seeing the fires were only getting worse, we postponed the rest of the shoot. The actors flew back to the east coast, and I had to find a way to raise an additional 12k or this film and dream of mine wasn’t going to happen.

But we did it. The film was made- and the rescheduled shoot had its own insane challenges.

I dreamt a film crew was inside my bedroom for a month after we wrapped. I think people who don’t work in film can’t fully understand just how charged (albeit magical, but charged nonetheless) a film set is, and while it’s incredibly rewarding when you pull it off, you do need a bit of recovery time to recalibrate.

I also want to acknowledge that raising $12k is nothing in comparison to losing your home. I had family of friends deeply impacted by the fires and as a city Los Angeles is in many ways still recovering. But what I have found is that we all as a community really were able to come together and be there for each other. I’m really proud of the members in my community. I also have a much deeper admiration and love for firefighters, that time felt like the city was at war and they were the ones to save us all. I could go on.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a writer and director – sometimes photographer.

I’m proud of a lot of my work – but especially my scripts, and especially when I make those scripts into films. I love working with actors and creating an inner world with them. Having gone to a performing arts high school in NYC for acting, I understand what it takes to ‘get there’ emotionally, and the actors process. I deeply value and respect actors who take pride in their craft.

I also love working with musicians to create beautiful music videos and images, for similar reasons. Musicians are powerful and make themselves vulnerable in similar, albeit very different ways than actors – but the emotional process of performing is something I admire and love to work with in music videos and photography.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I’ve learned to not hold on to what I think things should look like.

I think the arts are in a strange place with AI on the rise. This tool that we created we can use to save ourselves time, and yet there are some in our industry who try to make certain roles obsolete. I would much rather collaborate with a human who is good at making a film poster than a robot. Working with other people is can be the most rewarding thing – we each bring our strengths and ideas to the table and create something together, using past experience to draw from.

I deeply hope that we can tame the AI tools to our advantage. I hope the industry leaders can realize that what makes art truly powerful is the fact that artistry is alchemy, and when you don’t have a lived experience there is nothing to alchemize or pull from to create that art (i.e. a robot).

Humanity is what makes any arts industry powerful – we can’t lose that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gracesims.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meadowlarrk
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35851946/

Image Credits
Josh A. Katz, Lee Dubin, Alexander Kawasaki, Taylor Hopkins, Justin Foley