The Crucible of Collaboration: Sam Sorich

Hello, creatives, and welcome back to the podcast! So sorry for being out for a while, but we have been busy with this 8beats project. Which we will be talking a bit about today.  We’re talking with Sam Sorich, director at Glass Darkly Films… the guy who came up with the whole project. I can’t wait for you to meet him. Ever since he and I met at seminary, his radical commitment to being different has inspired me, including his stint living in a van and his passion for a new wave of Catholic cinema.

The subject today is the crucible of collaboration, and how to get through the insecurities of art making. 

If you’ve ever worked in a participatory art like film, theatre, or music, you know the challenge of bringing an idea to life at a high level of quality, within practical limitations, and alongside other people. This is something that Sam and I and the whole team 8beats team were experiencing intensely last month. It started with a big idea, and we invited the community to collaborate. We got excited, got into teams, those teams grew to about 130 people in total, and we got to work. We put this gigantic promise out into the world, released the IndieGoGo… and then we had to rewrite a bunch of our scripts, and our IndieGoGo plateaued, and we were hit with tons of fear. Can we really do this? Will the church actually support this sort of risk? Can we trust each other to stick out the challenges and creative conflict? 

This conversation is about that journey and what we learned from it: that through trust and commitment to each other, a new creative energy is discovered that brings about better art and creates deep relationships at the same time.

Before we start, if you haven’t shared our IndieGoGo campaign for 8beats yet, please head over to the 8beats Facebook page and share our latest post. All the regional teams begin filming the stories this month, and we need your help and the help of the Catholic community to see the project through. Please collaborate with us by spreading the word, donating, and praying for the project.

Create something awesome this week, and enjoy the podcast.