We Gon' Make It
Scene Study A weekly dispatch for the creative community from Scene & Heard. Issue No. 6 · Week of May 4, 2026
This week we open May’s “Find Your People” series. In Community Notes, we are sitting with a question that doesn’t get said out loud enough: how do you keep a vision alive while the rent is due, the side gig is real, and the pipeline above you is shrinking? We talk about hope as a practice and why the day job isn’t a failure. Plus a workshop we are hosting this weekend in Leimert Park and a screening of the highly anticipated “Is God Is”, this week’s industry news, five fresh grants, and a word from Michaela Coel on writing the thing that scares you. Let’s get into it.
Photo by Kavi Peshawaria
Scene Work
May’s series is “Find Your People” , a four-week pull from the closest “yes” outward. This is Week 1: The First Believer. Before the audience, before the collaborators, before the room, there is one person who believed the work was real before the work was real.
Name them. Who first said your work was good and meant it? Not your mom (unless your mom is your first believer, in which case, write Mom). The person whose yes made you keep going. Write the name down.
Tell them. Send the text, the email, the voice note. Tell them what their belief unlocked. Specifically. People rarely know what they did for you.
If you don’t have one yet, go find them. Make a list of three people whose taste you trust. Send them one piece of work this week. Ask one question: does this feel alive to you? You are not asking for permission. You are looking for the first yes. The series starts here because everything else, the collaborators, the mentors, the first ten, gets built on the back of one person who believed first. Find them. Thank them. Then keep going.
Community Notes
I Will Survive Thrive
There is a story Hollywood likes to tell about the artist who quit everything, lived on rice, and emerged ten years later with a finished script and a deal. It is a lie sold mostly by people who already had a check waiting somewhere off-camera.
The truth is closer to this: most of the work you love was made by someone who was tired. Who had a shift that morning. Who wrote on the train, in the green room between auditions, at 4 a.m. before the kids woke up. The vision did not pause for the day job. The day job fed the vision. We have been sold the idea that needing to make money is a failure of belief. That if you really meant it, you would not be answering emails for somebody else’s company. None of that is true.
The side gig is not the death of the dream. It is often the only way the dream survives a season it was never going to survive on faith alone. Hope, in this version, is not a feeling. It is a practice. It is closing the laptop on the day job and opening it again, an hour later, on the thing that is yours. It is paying yourself, in time, for work nobody is yet paying you for. Doing what you have to do now so you can do what you want to do later is not a delay tactic. That is the work. The receipts are everywhere if you look.
Octavia Butler wrote at three and four in the morning before clocking in to factory floors and warehouses, calling herself a writer in journals years before anyone else would. Toni Morrison edited at Random House by day and wrote her first novels in the early hours while raising two kids alone. Issa Rae shot Awkward Black Girl on money she patched together while nannying. Lin-Manuel Miranda was a substitute teacher when he started writing In the Heights. Tyler Perry slept in his car between productions for years, putting on plays nobody wanted to fund. Ava DuVernay ran a publicity firm well into her thirties before she ever directed a feature. Donald Glover wrote on 30 Rock at night and built Childish Gambino in his off-hours. None of them were waiting for permission to become who they already were. They were just covering their rent while they got there. Nobody hands you a medal for that season.
The day job does not photograph well. The hustle does not edit into a montage. But that is what makes the eventual highlight reel possible. The pipeline above us is shrinking. Studios are laying off hundreds. None of that changes the practice. Make the work. Pay the rent. Make the work. Pay the rent. Keep both true at the same time. That is how vision survives a hard season. You are not late. You are not behind. You are doing it the way it has almost always been done.
Upcoming at Scene & Heard
A guided photo walk and workshop with photographer Kendra Harris, presented in partnership with Fujifilm Instax.
Hosted at Lore in Leimert Park, this session invites us to move with intention, observe more deeply, and reconnect with the practice of presence through photography.
The workshop is currently sold out, but the waitlist is live and worth joining.
If hope is a practice, presence is one too. Come slow down with us.
Join us for a special screening of Is God Is, followed by a live Q&A.
Date: Tuesday, May 12
Time: 7:30 PM (screening), immediately followed by Q&A
Location: Culver Theater
9500 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232
Show Business
What’s moving in the industry this week.
Starz Orders Black Rodeo Drama Series Set in Southeast Texas , Showrunner Kirk A. Moore (Demascus, American Crime) lands an eight-episode series order for an untitled family drama set in the world of Black rodeo in Southeast Texas. Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad, Interview with the Vampire) executive produces. The official logline: “Infused with hip hop swagger and country soul, the series unfolds in Southeast Texas, where rodeo isn’t just what you do, it’s who you are.” It is Starz’s second wholly owned series since spinning off from Lionsgate in 2025. A Black-led, regionally specific story getting a real swing on a real platform is still news worth marking. Variety, April 2026
American Black Film Festival Unveils 2026 Lineup for 30th Anniversary , ABFF returns to Miami Beach May 27 to 31 under the theme “Homecoming,” with sixteen world premieres across more than ten countries. Highlights include Marsai Martin and Courtney B. Vance’s Girl Dad, produced by Jamie Foxx; Montmarte starring Jesse Williams and Ito Aghayere; and That’s Her, featuring Coco Jones, Kountry Wayne, and Loretta Devine. ABFF has been a launching pad for Coogler, Issa Rae, Will Packer, and Raoul Peck. Watch the names. The next decade of Black film is in this lineup. Variety, April 2026
Sony Pictures Entertainment to Lay Off Hundreds in Reorganization Across TV, Film and Corporate , CEO Ravi Ahuja announced a “targeted and strategic” restructuring cutting hundreds of jobs across the studio’s film, TV, and corporate divisions, with a stated pivot toward franchise extension, anime, video-game adaptations, and platform-native content. The cuts add to the more than 53,000 entertainment jobs eliminated since 2023. The middle of the industry keeps thinning. Build accordingly. Variety, April 2026
Grant Opportunities
Open or opening this cycle. Deadlines confirmed as of May 4, 2026.
Sundance Institute 2027 Development Track, The application gateway for Sundance’s screenwriting and directing labs, including the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and Commissioning Grant. Open to projects in early development across narrative feature and episodic. Free to apply. Deadline: May 12, 2026.
SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship, $35,000 cash grant plus a residency at FilmHouse for screenwriters at the screenplay phase developing narrative features that explore scientific or technological themes or characters. Two awards made annually. Final deadline: May 22, 2026.
Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, Up to $100,000 for development, production, or post-production of feature-length documentaries on contemporary topics. Open to filmmakers worldwide. Free to apply. Open call: May 18 to June 15, 2026.
ITVS Open Call, Up to $400,000 in co-production funding for single, nonfiction documentaries between 10 and 90 minutes that are in active production or post-production. Distribution on PBS. Deadline: June 29, 2026.
Mountainfilm Commitment Grant and Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship, Awards from $1,000 to $5,000 for documentary filmmakers in production or post-production telling non-fiction stories of adventure, activism, social justice, culture, environment, and indomitable spirit. Application window: July 1 to 16, 2026.
Director’s Notes
“Write the tale that scares you. That makes you feel uncertain. That isn’t comfortable. I dare you. … Do not be afraid to disappear. From it, from us, for a while and see what comes to you in the silence.” , Michaela Coel
Coel wrote her first one-woman play, Chewing Gum Dreams, while studying at Guildhall, the only Black woman in her class, watching every show on TV and not seeing herself in any of them. That play became the Channel 4 series Chewing Gum, which became I May Destroy You on HBO, which made her the first Black woman to win an Emmy for writing a limited series. She did not wait for the room. She built one. Then she made it quiet enough to hear what was actually hers.
Scene & Heard is a creative platform producing live film events, readings, and community programming in Los Angeles. Founded by Michael Oloyede in collaboration with Suzen Baraka (Program Director) & Jowaan Sullivan (Creative Director). Come through.
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