After spending much of my 20s helping build AfterBuzz TV Networks, I entered my 30s wondering what the next chapter of my career would look like.

Funny enough, when I originally made my 20-year career documentary, this section was more of a reflection on what I had just started building. Now, with 40 only a couple of years away, I can look back and realize it captures the better part of my 30s.

That chapter has included working with podcast clients and brands such as goop, Elise Loehnen, Yoga Girl, the Recording Academy/Grammys and many others, while continuing to build my own body of creative work.

Along the way, I wrote two books, made two feature films, expanded my work as a producer and creator, and began developing my most ambitious project yet: the 2D animated feature film The Arbiters.

What once felt like the beginning of a new chapter has, in many ways, become the story of my 30s.

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Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
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Join me on:

• Patreon – http://patreon.com/philsvitek
• Substack – http://philsvitek.substack.com

🎬 My Films

• The Love Market – https://philsvitek.com/filmography/#lovemarket
• Finding Love in Bogotá – https://philsvitek.com/filmography/#bogotatrip
• The Arbiters – https://philsvitek.com/filmography/#thearbiters

📚 My Books

• Elan, Elan – https://philsvitek.com/bibliography/#elanelan
• Master Mental Fortitude – https://philsvitek.com/bibliography/#mastermentalfortitude
• In Search of Sunrise – https://philsvitek.com/bibliography/#insearchofsunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget – https://philsvitek.com/bibliography/#hollywooddreams

👉 Visit Patreon.com/PhilSvitek to be part of the journey.

🎬 Watch The Making of The Arbiters’ Proof of Concept here:https://youtu.be/HZX61MMqyM8

If you’re an independent filmmaker trying to finance a feature, find investors, build a pitch package, create storyboards, or simply keep your movie moving when circumstances refuse to cooperate, this behind-the-scenes documentary follows what that process looked like for The Arbiters throughout 2025. After completing our proof of concept in 2024, the question became much bigger: how do we turn that proof of concept into an actual feature film?

Almost immediately, 2025 reminded us that no filmmaking plan exists in a vacuum. The devastating Los Angeles wildfires understandably redirected attention and resources toward rebuilding, forcing us to reassess our financing strategy and look beyond Hollywood. We explored opportunities through the European Film Market, continued conversations from AFM, attended Annecy, developed an investor package and finance plan, refined our pitch materials, and began seriously exploring an independent path alongside the traditional studio route.

At the same time, we realized we couldn’t wait for financing, casting, and production partners to perfectly align. So we focused on what we could control: continuing to improve the script, storyboarding the feature, developing environments and concept art, creating beat boards, and beginning the animatic. Later in the year, another tragedy put everything into perspective when a powerful earthquake struck the central Philippines, where members of our animation team are based. Thankfully, our team was safe, but it was another reminder that there are deadlines, budgets, and ambitions—and then there are the people actually making the film.

Along the way, we returned to LA Comic Con, attended the World Animation Summit, applied for the Annecy Residency, and recorded performances for the first 30 minutes of the animatic. This documentary isn’t about one enormous breakthrough. It’s about what happens between breakthroughs: the meetings, setbacks, strategic pivots, new relationships, and small creative steps that gradually move a film forward. You can’t control everything that happens around a project. You can control what you do next.

👉 Visit Patreon.com/PhilSvitek to follow the making of The Arbiters and get exclusive storyboards, artwork, development updates, and behind-the-scenes material.

Thanks for watching, and for supporting independent, long-form animation. We’re building something bold, beautiful, and human—one step at a time.

🚀 Looking for a Creative Collaborator or Coach?
Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
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🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.
📬 Want exclusive breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content?

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• Patreon – http://patreon.com/philsvitek
• Substack – http://philsvitek.substack.com

If you need to export multiple layers from Photoshop as individual PNG files, this tutorial walks through a fast way to batch export Photoshop layers without saving each one manually. I demonstrate the workflow using storyboard panels that need to be exported from a PSD and brought into editing software to build an animatic, but the same Photoshop Export As workflow can be useful for designers, animators, storyboard artists, video editors, and anyone working with multiple layers that need to become separate image files.

I’ll show you how I prepare the Photoshop file before exporting, clean up unnecessary layers and folders, merge anything that needs to remain together, select multiple layers at once, and use Photoshop’s Export As feature to export everything in one batch.

We also look at how to change the image format, dimensions, scale, width and height, RGB settings, and export destination across all of the selected layers at once.

Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.

✅ Work with me

🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

• Patreon
• Substack

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

What does it take to figure out who you really are when race, gender, culture, family, relationships, and society are all telling you who you’re supposed to be? In this book club discussion, we explore Fairest: A Memoir by Meredith Talusan and its examination of transgender identity, immigration from the Philippines to the United States, growing up with albinism, attending Harvard, gender transition, queer identity, body image, privilege, belonging, and ultimately self-acceptance.

Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek discuss how Meredith’s childhood in the Philippines shaped her identity, why moving to America created both freedom and new forms of pressure, and how Harvard simultaneously became a place of liberation and exclusion. We also explore the memoir’s complicated relationships, the difference between changing yourself for another person and changing because it reflects who you truly are, and the photograph that helped Meredith see herself differently.

Rather than treating Fairest simply as a story about gender transition, we look at the larger question underneath it: how much of our identity belongs to us, and how much is shaped by our desire to be accepted?

• Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga (September 2026)
• Midnight Train – Matt Haig (October 2026)
• Maus: A Survivor's Tale – Art Spiegelman (November 2026)
• Prudence Marsh Is Not a Nobody Anymore – Emily Krempholtz (December 2026)
• Circe by Madeline Miller OR Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter (January 2026)

Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.

✅ Work with me

🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

• Patreon
• Substack

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

What’s the difference between fault and responsibility? And how do you take responsibility for your life when something that happened wasn’t your fault? In this episode, I explore personal responsibility, resilience, accountability, attitude, and how to move forward after setbacks you didn’t cause. Using examples ranging from a frustrating DMV experience to much more serious life circumstances, I explain why accepting responsibility doesn’t mean blaming yourself for what happened. It means recognizing what remains within your control: how you process the experience, the choices you make next, and the attitude you carry forward. If you’re struggling with bad luck, unfair circumstances, setbacks, resentment, or feeling powerless because of something outside your control, this episode is about reclaiming your agency without denying the reality of what happened.

🚀 Looking for a Creative Collaborator or Coach?
Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
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🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

📬 Want exclusive breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content?
Join me on:

• Patreon
• Substack

🎬 My Films

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

📚 My Books

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

If you’re overthinking your life, struggling with change, or constantly feeling like you need to have everything figured out, this episode explores three simple rules that can help you live a happier and more peaceful life. Inspired by Dan Millman’s The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, I break down the ideas of paradox, humor, and change: stop trying to explain every mystery, learn to laugh—especially at yourself—and accept that nothing stays the same. I also explore how these principles apply to artists and creatives, from becoming more observant instead of forcing meaning onto your work to letting go of nostalgia and becoming a lifelong learner. Happiness isn’t about finally understanding or controlling life. It’s about becoming more present, adaptable, curious, and capable of finding joy while life continues to change around you.

🚀 Looking for a Creative Collaborator or Coach?
Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
✅ Work with me

🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

📬 Want exclusive breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content?
Join me on:

• Patreon
• Substack

🎬 My Films

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

📚 My Books

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

If you’re a writer, filmmaker, musician, artist, or creative trying to make original work without becoming derivative—or so experimental that audiences can’t connect with it—this episode explores why radical ideas often work best inside familiar containers. Inspired by David Epstein’s Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better and his conversation with Elise Loehnen on Pulling the Thread, I break down what Shakespeare, The Matrix, and Martin Luther King Jr. can teach creatives about originality, influence, constraints, and audience psychology. Rather than trying to invent something completely from scratch, great artists often transform familiar stories, genres, structures, and influences into something distinctly their own. The goal isn’t maximum novelty; it’s finding the right balance between what an audience already understands and what they’ve never experienced before.

Pulling the Thread Episode with David Epstein:
Listen to the episode

🚀 Looking for a Creative Collaborator or Coach?
Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
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🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

📬 Want exclusive breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content?
Join me on:

• Patreon
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🎬 My Films

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

📚 My Books

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

What is talent, and why do some talented people succeed while others never reach their potential? In this episode, I challenge the idea that talent is simply a natural gift or skill set and argue that real talent is a process built through action, consistency, practice, and hard work. Drawing from my years working with hundreds of aspiring hosts at AfterBuzz TV, I’ve watched incredibly gifted people build successful creative careers—and equally gifted people allow their abilities to disappear because they rarely used them. If you’re an artist, filmmaker, podcaster, writer, entrepreneur, or creative person struggling with motivation, discipline, consistency, finding your purpose, or turning your natural abilities into a career, this episode explores why skill alone isn’t enough, why your gifts deteriorate when you don’t use them, and how combining what you love with what you’re naturally good at can lead you toward a career you may not have known existed.

🚀 Looking for a Creative Collaborator or Coach?
Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
✅ Work with me

🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

📬 Want exclusive breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content?
Join me on:

• Patreon
• Substack

🎬 My Films

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

📚 My Books

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

If you’re a filmmaker, director, animator, or storyboard artist trying to create a better shot list, communicate with storyboard artists, or turn a screenplay into visual storytelling, this episode dives deeper into my storyboarding and shot-listing process for an animated feature. I answer practical questions about how detailed a shot list should be, when to cut to a new shot, how editing influences my directing choices, how I use floor plans to maintain blocking and the 180-degree rule, and how I approach action scenes differently from dialogue scenes. I also break down how much creative freedom I give storyboard artists, why upfront preparation reduces revisions, how I organize hundreds of visual references, when storyboards move into the animatic, and how the process changes once you can watch the entire movie in sequence. Whether you’re storyboarding animation or planning a live-action film, this is a practical look at building a visual language with your collaborators without micromanaging them.

One principle drives much of the workflow: rather than cutting simply because you can, start with the first shot the scene needs and hold it until the story gives you a reason to move somewhere more interesting.

Shot List Template:
Watch the shot list template on YouTube

Part 1: Turning a Script Into Storyboard Shots | My Workflow
Watch Part 1 on YouTube

🚀 Looking for a Creative Collaborator or Coach?
Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
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🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

📬 Want exclusive breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content?
Join me on:

• Patreon
• Substack

🎬 My Films

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

📚 My Books

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget

If you’re a filmmaker, director, animator, or storyboard artist trying to figure out how to storyboard a script and clearly communicate your shot ideas, this episode breaks down my complete storyboarding workflow for an animated feature. I walk through how I analyze each scene before thinking about shots, find visual references using ShotDeck, create floor plans for blocking and camera placement, build a detailed shot list, and record video walkthroughs so my remote storyboard artists understand exactly what I’m envisioning. With nearly 900 shots planned for my animated feature, I’ve developed a system designed to remove ambiguity while still giving artists room to interpret and contribute creatively. I also explain how our weekly storyboard reviews helped us develop a shared visual language and make the process faster over time. Whether you’re storyboarding animation, a short film, a feature, or a complicated live-action sequence, this workflow can help you communicate more clearly with your artists and turn the script in your head into images everyone can understand.

Shot List Template:
Watch the shot list template on YouTube

Q&A (aka Part 2):
Watch Part 2 on YouTube

🚀 Looking for a Creative Collaborator or Coach?
Whether you need help launching a podcast, shaping your story, editing a video, or navigating the artist’s life—I’m here to help.
✅ Work with me

🔔 Subscribe for movie reviews, creative coaching, and mindset tools for storytellers.

📬 Want exclusive breakdowns and behind-the-scenes content?
Join me on:

• Patreon
• Substack

🎬 My Films

• The Love Market
• Finding Love in Bogotá
• The Arbiters

📚 My Books

• Elan, Elan
• Master Mental Fortitude
• In Search of Sunrise
• Hollywood Dreams on a Shoestring Budget