Meet Kayla Windsor

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kayla Windsor.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I’ve been filming for almost 10 years now. I picked up my first DSLR camera when I was 13 years old. In high school, I would always go to music festivals and I saw all of these film crews on stage taking photos of artists and I thought, “that’s what I want to do.” So, I went to college for film production, graduated with my Bachelor’s degree, and unfortunately didn’t get any training at all while I was there for the career in the film industry that I was trying to learn. I moved back home with my mom, having broken up with my boyfriend and not having anywhere else to go. I had no training on where to get my first film job. I was still filming music festivals which was so little money and I ended up getting a manager’s position at a pet store instead.

A few months after I got a job at a pet store, my dad got news that he was sick with terminal cancer and I quit my job at the pet store to move into my brother’s house to help take care of my dad. Before he passed away, I had entered into an Independent Film Phoenix filmmaker competition and he was so excited I had entered and wanted to be a part of it so much. He died 3 weeks before my film was due and making the film was the only thing I could do to not be completely depressed and sick from losing my dad. My team worked all 3 weeks to finish the project, a lot of my actors didn’t know anything about my personal life, so they didn’t really even know how much the project meant to me. Everyone did an amazing job and we ended up winning first place in 3 categories in the competition. I knew my dad had something to do with the win and he’s been there for me through every hardship I’ve had since. A few months later, I had my film screen in film festivals across the world but I was still stuck not getting on set. I literally googled, “Arizona production” and the Arizona Production Associations number came up. I called immediately and told them I had gone to school, didn’t know what I was doing, and asked for any advice.

They told me that they were having a job fair that was kind of like speed dating where you would have seven minutes to talk to these production companies and then a bell would ring and you’d move to the next table. There was one production company that had a line the entire time so I told myself, “oh, they won’t hire me because look at all of those other people interviewing. I won’t be picked over everyone else.” At the end of the event, there wasn’t anyone at the table so I walked up and sat down and told them the same thing where I didn’t have any experience but this is what I want to do and they hired me on the spot to intern a six-week long tv show for the Discovery Channel and it’s been word of mouth ever since. I have been working on commercials and movies for almost three years now because I Googled Arizona Production and called the first number I found to ask for help. I love my job, I love the really hard, long days because no matter what it’s what I love to do.

Please tell us about your art.
I have been working professionally in the film industry here in Phoenix as a Camera Operator for almost a decade. I’ve shot a lot of music festivals, short films, local commercials, and travel videos. A lot of my time has been spent working for other people’s projects but I’m finally learning how to produce my own ideas. I really want to make one of my feature film scripts. I’ve been gathering a team and I can’t wait to pitch the idea to more people. I’ve learned over the years that I’ve had an extremely vibrant life compared to a lot of people that I meet and I’m told all the time that I need to share more by people that get to know me more than on social media.

I’ve been scared to tell my stories because whenever I would post something on social media, I would get so much backlash, people making fun of me or trying to tear me down. I think the world needs more authenticity and if telling the stories that inspire me makes anyone feel any kind of emotion, it means that I’ve done my job. In my time in the film industry so far, I’ve seen a lack of females on set so I’ve been building an all-female crew, free from male ego, that can show that girls can do the same or better than the all-male crews that I’m on by myself all the time. I’m hoping that me building a female crew will inspire others to include more females on their crews as well.

What do you think about conditions for artists today? Has life become easier or harder for artists in recent years? What can cities like ours do to encourage and help art and artists thrive?
I think that life has become easier for artists now than in recent years. It’s always easy to say it’s harder now because we have what’s going on in the world but we have a huge platform to get our voices heard, where people actually listen and then go and try to make art too. Social media has truly changed everything about how we live. It has brought humans closer together than we’ve ever been, blending all of these cultures into one mass of humanity instead of these binding thoughts that we’re unsafe if we travel to other countries or experience new things with different people than what we’ve known our whole lives.

I think that cities like Phoenix can help art and artists thrive by fighting for tax incentives inviting huge “Hollywood” films to Arizona. This allows so many jobs for freelance artists to have people come to Arizona with larger budgets and really showing the diverse landscape and artistry we have here in AZ. Having been born and raised here, I just can’t wait until we are able to share our beautiful state again.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
A lot of my work goes straight to television and I never get to see the final product most of the time. It’s always really cools to see commercials I’ve worked on television. I always jump up and scream and scare everyone I’m with and it’s always so funny but it’s so cool to see your work on screen. I have two short films in the film festival circuit right now so we can’t actually post them anywhere online until they’re out of festivals but the next showing is at the Jerome Film Festival at the end of September.

When you work on movies, you always send the footage to an editing house somewhere probably in another state so you never really get to see your work until the movie comes out online. So many people ask me all the time to see my work and I always jokingly say, “yeah, I’d like to see it too!” I have footage from three years ago I haven’t seen yet because we’re still waiting for them to finish editing it. It all takes so much time, but it’s part of the process of making movies. I always post as much as I can to Instagram though. Follow @emaginariumm if you’d like to see BTS (behind the scenes) of some incredible projects I’m lucky enough to work on.

Contact Info:

• Email: kaylaawindsor@gmail.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/emaginariumm

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