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My Newsletter & Interviews:
A Life Based Loosely On Reality 

A LIFE BASED LOOSELY ON REALITY is a journey. It’s a growing archive of personal essays and audio/video interviews with humans of all kinds hosted by me, Vanessa Meyer. The goal of this publication is to be real with each other and as I have learned, that starts with me being real with myself, so in the end - it’s a lot of realness. Come on, what are you waiting for?
Let’s face reality together - loosely!

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Theresa B. x A LIFE BASED LOOSELY ON REALITY by Vanessa Meyer

Art Path vs. Career Path (and other portals)

Read on Substack

Divya C. x A LIFE BASED LOOSELY ON REALITY by Vanessa Meyer

On having more than one dream.

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PAUSING x A LIFE BASED LOOSELY ON REALITY by Vanessa Meyer

Sometimes you need to take a minute.

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Oblivion x A LIFE BASED LOOSELY ON REALITY by Vanessa Meyer

I’m writing a book.

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Everybody Gets Sad:
An Autoethnographic Research-Creation about
A Mother and A Daughter
(PhD Thesis, 2020) 

This is a practice-based project that critically and creatively explores the figuration of the mother-daughter dyad through a situated feminist research-creation approach. This is an interdisciplinary academic contribution to the fields of Film & Media Studies and Autoethnography. It is an argument for a creative research practice that comes from a place of the unknown, from a place of feeling, from personal experience that is uncomfortable, negative, and messy. I make the claim that it is through this kind of risky work that healing can happen. Healing, understood here, as the affective potential of pressing up against the tenderest parts of ourselves with the intended and intimate goal of an increased capacity to care. First and foremost, this is a capacity to care for and witness our own pain, and secondly it is a capacity to care for and witness the pain of others. For the purposes of this project, that would be understood through an intersubjective filmmaking encounter, both with my own pain as well as that of my own mother. This is an affective positioning (rooted in storytelling) that attempts to both acknowledge personal boundaries while at the same time highlighting the vulnerable bodies that are contained within and leak out of them.
Read the full thesis.

Some kind words about Vanessa and her work

  • Vanessa Meyer has heart. She sees people deeply and cares for them through her work. This comes through from her professionalism and near-psychic tact while handling talent, to her adept and searching depiction of humanity on the page. She’s an asset to the performing arts, in all the ways she engages with them.

    Tracy Hurren, Senior Editor/Drawn & Quarterly

  • Vanessa is my favorite kind of artist because she is fueled by genuine and endless curiosity - about people, her surroundings, and lore. The shapes into which she molds her research and fascinating obsessions are manifold. Will it be a film? A story? An interview? A Performance? The container and the content shape each other when it comes to her expressions of art and of self. That is why I am always surprised and satisfied. It seems as if her goal is not to break molds but to shape new ones - and that rules. 

    Theresa Buchheister, Producer/Artistic Director

  • Vanessa is extremely reliable and smart in all aspects of working on film - from narrative development to production. She helped me find the perfect editor for a film which set the stage for one of my most successful projects. She also is creative and hard-working in spades. She is able to easily grasp the most unusual projects, which is rare.

    Rachel Mason, Filmmaker/Performer

  • Vanessa was described as a "wild and talented new voice".

    Chattanooga Film Festival.

  • Working with Vanessa Meyer as my pitch mentor was brilliant. She was kind and generous with her time and provided thoughtful feedback, even under tight deadlines. Her encouragement and enthusiasm for our project made a huge difference and gave us real confidence going into the festival. I honestly don’t think our experience would have been nearly as successful without her guidance. She was supportive, friendly, and genuinely helpful from start to finish, and I feel really lucky to have had her in our corner.

    Noomi Yates, Filmmaker

  • Vanessa brings a gift of empathy and openness to any conversation, and it is a superpower. She is the first person I send a draft of a script and/or a cut of a film to. She is trustworthy, and she can see the work for what it is, dissect the good and the bad, and help carve a path forward regardless of the project’s scope. She is also an artist in every sense of the word. I hope to work with Vanessa in any way that I can, and I hope other creatives can be as lucky as I am to have met her.

    Jeff Ryan, Filmmaker/Actor