Doing the Bare Minimum 🥱
Alex Robinson joins our 25C lineup
blog.thirty // We’ve been cooking this week.
I guess you don’t have much of a choice (to cook, or not to cook—that is the question) when the freezing February rain keeps you indoors most days. A ringing endorsement of Chicago, I know.
Nevertheless, among many firsts over the last several months, this is the first week we’ve had the whole team together in the studio, as Moy flew in from Seattle—and has promptly experienced a firsthand crash course on a Windy City winter.
I won’t speak for Shua and Moy’s individual experiences, but I do always feel that the creative spontaneity of an in-person studio environment really helps take things to the next level. This week, we’ve completed the first mini-doc for our upcoming season; placed the first story in the zine spread; and are finalizing our shortform video format.* While we all wear many hats, our individual specialties reside in video (Shua), design (Moy), and writing (me). Therefore, it’s been fun passing around hard drives and Premiere timelines to make sure we’re all delivering our unique input across projects.
And we’re also hosting Gathering No. Three later this evening! We have a couple spots left (there’s eleven of us currently), so if you’d like to come show your work and get feedback from other creatives—or even just check out what others are making—you can RSVP here.
Alright, on to Shua’s conversation with one of the coolest original filmmakers on YouTube (and, soon enough, beyond): Alex Robinson.
— NGL
P.S. Last blog, we talked with Daren Michael about leaving NYC, moving to Grand Rapids, and creating his first TV show with a major studio. You can read more here.
Alex Robinson is a filmmaker and creator based in New York City. She’s lived many lives on the Internet—including co-creating an NYC-centric sketch comedy series called Bare Minimum. Last month, Alex successfully completed a Kickstarter campaign to fund her first short film, Meatball.
The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Shua Buhangin: Hey Alex! Curious to know—what were some of your biggest wins of 2024?
Alex Robinson: 2024 definitely brought a lot of positive change for me and negative chang—no, no, no. Hold on, let me start over.
2024 definitely brought a lot of positive change for me, but a lot of changes at that. I kind of faced new challenges that I’ve never encountered before that I had to learn to navigate. One of those was experiencing one of the biggest creative ruts that I had ever gone through.
Which, you know, I've gone through some before. But none of that caliber, where I was genuinely considering giving up filmmaking—which is crazy. That thought had never crossed my mind before. Yet there's so many creators, and so many creative ones at that. This is such a rich community of people, which is what makes it so amazing.
With that comes imposter syndrome sometimes. And I still experience it today, but I think I'm getting better at navigating it.
But you said wins, right? Like, positive things.
SB: Yeah, but I mean, wins come in such interesting ways. Sometimes, hitting a baseline gives you a bigger perspective of where you're actually at—giving you a better perspective of yourself.
I feel like that was true in your case. Because I think the movie you're making is kind of based on your own experience, too.
AR: Yeah. It's not my personal story, but it's kind of…I consider it more like the nightmare version of my coming out story. Like, the worst-case scenario that could have happened.
Hopefully, I can do things with it that I've never done, like entering the film festival circuit. It’s all new stuff to me. I'm not going on YouTube with it right out the gate—I'm gonna do it the old-fashioned way. I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna put it to some festivals, see what happens, see if we can place so I can put some fun logos around the film's thumbnail.
SB: That's so cool. You know, I feel like that's a big win in and of itself. You’re in a position where you're now going after the big dream of being a film director and making your own movie.
I feel like that is one of the biggest goals that a lot of us always have in the back of our mind. I’d love to see you document the process of making it.
AR: Definitely—that's on its way. I think I'm feeling more educational content on my YouTube channel for the next couple months, but soon to come.
SB: Nice. Speaking of that project being a big focus this year, what are some things—personally or creatively—that you're excited to bring into 2025?
AR: I mean, really, what's top of mind for me is my short film. That's all I can think about.
But I think also exploring filmmaking in a way I never have before is super exciting for me because I've only ever done YouTube, and I've done stuff that's completely based on my personal life and my personal journey. It's exciting to kind of flip the switch on and write something based on my life, but not based in truth.
If my end goal is, you know, being a film director and writer and actor, this is the necessary next step for me. So what I’m looking forward to most is just getting those new experiences that scare me, but that I know are going to make me a better creative at the end of it.
SB: That was a dope ending.
AR: Yeah, that was a good one. Write that one down (laughs).
SB: Do you feel like the work that you put into Bare Minimum helped you write the short film in a more narrative format?
AR: Yeah, I mean this is on a different scale than Bare Minimum since Bare Minimum was made with no money at all—which still amazes me to this day. This requires a lot of funding. It's going to be a thirty-person crew, I believe, which is crazy for me. Bare Minimum, at its most, had ten-to-twelve people on set on a given day. A lot of those people were just our friends doing favors for us, which was incredible.
Meatball isn't really favor-based. This is actually me paying people for their time, which is terrifying because I want people to feel like they're investing their time and getting paid for a project that they actually believe in. But I'm very lucky that I was able to do Bare Minimum before this because I think it gave me the reps that I needed to move forward with Meatball.
SB: I’m really excited to see what you make with the film.
AR: Thank you so much—I appreciate it. Yeah, it's gonna be a fun year.
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* Mark your calendars—our next print edition of Creator Mag drops March 29.
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