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Meet Kimberly Twiggs of iTiMiNaK Productions in Vinings

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Twiggs.

Kimberly, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
As a child, I was an avid reader, spending up to ten hours a day reading novels, comics, and fan fiction. I began writing as early as age seven and I became super obsessed with taking the ideas from my head and putting them down on paper. I forced my teachers to allow me to read my stories to the class AND my poor friends had to preview the stories prior to their big debut. In essence, writing and reading have always been a fundamental part of my life as they will continue to be.

As I got older, I got involved in the arts. I took drama and participated in one-act competitions, performed in school plays, and even decided to minor in theatre in college. It wasn’t until I was finished with school and settled into my full-time job that I decided to transform my knowledge in the theatrics and my love for writing into film.

So one day, I told myself that I would create a 10-minute LGBT friendly short that was literally about ANYTHING. I wrote a quick story (probably in 5-10 minutes), auditioned a lovely woman who would become my co-star, and searched high and low for a production team. In July of 2019, we released ‘The Best Friend’ as a short and it became a monumental moment in my life.

The show gained fans and the fans wanted more. Where I intended to make this a one and done type of scenario, I moved forward with production of filming, eventually filming seven additional episodes. It was not easy to do this month by month (especially since it was a last minute decision to make this a series), but my team and I pulled it together, hustled, and turned ‘The Best Friend’ into a series!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Filming of ‘The Best Friend’ was not a smooth road. The amount of challenges I faced monthly were enough to make me want to quit production, but my team and I were determined. Here are a few of the production issues we ran into:

1. The hard drive I used for editing crashed before it could back up episode seven in the cloud. We lost EVERYTHING. I took the hard drive everywhere to see if the data could be retrieved and after about two weeks of searching and panicking, there was a company that was able to get 99% of the data off that hard drive and on to a new one. They saved the day because we were definitely planning to re-film ( possibly rewrite) episode seven.

2. Scheduling is always a huge project to take on, especially when you’re juggling it with all your other priorities. I am the writer, the editor, the project manager, and the scheduler on top of my full-time job – so trying to find that sweet day and time for everyone was HARD. I had to book various cinematographers and sound mixers to come on set to just to ensure the actor’s schedules weren’t compromised. Can you imagine trying to find a cinematographer/sound mixer when the film date is right around the corner?

3. Where my team and I had specific dates where we wanted to release episodes, those dates would pass us by and we would still be mid-production. The project itself was last minute and we never really knew what to expect timing-wise but learned that pre-planning and production were extremely important, especially for deadline driven episodes.

To sum this up, being involved in the process is different than knowing about the process. We could never guess what we may run into once on set, and preparedness became more and more important to avoid us wasting time, budget, and available film days. With pre-planning AND having a back-up plan implemented, the process grew smoother each time and my team and I were able to grow an even stronger working relationship.

Please tell us about iTiMiNaK Productions.
I am the owner of iTiMiNaK Productions and my titles are director, writer, editor, and project manager. We specialize in creating LGBT friendly content through many mediums. We currently film web series and shorts, but also plan to include new music/music videos, Spanish shorts, talks, and much more!

As a company, it makes us most proud to be able to provide relevant content that our fans relate to, resonate with, and want more of. We also take pride in having stories that represent the queer community of color in positive and liberating ways that educates those who may not understand us or how to change biases about us. Our stories create conversations around queerness and conversations are important because they provide a foundation for change, which we totally want to be a part of!

What differentiates our platform from other LGBT film companies is that our characters are all the quirky and unique teenagers we knew in high school in adult form. We also focus on enlightening and uplifting the queer community of color through education of taboo topics and preaching a message of togetherness.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to scrap this entire process and do it all over again, here is what I would do differently:

1. Apply for funding and grants – filming can be done without money but money makes it soooo much easier!
2. Pre-planning and pre-production for sure! We would take our time getting everything ready and when it’s done, we can start releasing.
3. Making sure that I have a concrete and reliable team to work with. Timeliness and commitment make filming and editing much smoother, along with having a team you know and one that knows you.

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Rashaad Williams, Phayesdimagery

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