Conversations with Scott Vancil

Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Vancil

Hi Scott, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve been an actor, writer, and director in some form my whole life. I’ve been writing short stories and novels since I was able to form words on paper, a screenwriter since my freshman year of high school, a director since my sophomore year, and a professional actor for the last fifteen years. After spending a year at the UCLA Professional Program in Acting for the Camera, getting a certificate, I came back to Lawrence, Kansas to be with my then girlfriend, who I had met on a film set where I was the lead and she was 1st Assistant Director (Child, currently available on Tubi). We shot the movie in 2016, though it was finally released in 2023 and was a part of the Kansas City FilmFest International. In March of 2017, I started my Limited Liability Company, Stained Glass Eye Productions, operating in Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City. I shot my first short for the company that same month, The Machine, finally released in 2023. It was a proof of concept for a crowdfunding campaign on Seed & Spark. We didn’t make our goal, and I had to regroup. Crowdfunding is exhausting and my fire was put out for awhile. I continued to write screenplays, mostly weird surreal scripts and screenplays in iambic pentameter, in a combination of Early Modern English combined with Contemporary Slang and Expressions/Contractions. I wrote most of my screenplays in poetic verse going forward in this fusion of styles taking place in fantasy worlds and sci-fi settings but as metaphors for what would be happening in a world just like ours. My girlfriend and I moved back to Los Angeles in 2018. In 2021 I quite my safety job as a Security Officer at a film studio, as it was really damaging to my mental health. I started making Performance Art and YouTube content under the banner of my company. I had multiple movie and TV review shows; a coffee tasting show, Java Junkies; and a poetry reading/whiskey tasting show, Poetry Dram. I strung together my performance art in a non-linear feature film, Ambient Nihilism (The Man), that I released on YouTube in 2023. It was meant as an art installation, where people would view it projected on a wall as they walk around the gallery. It wasn’t really meant to sit and watch, but I made my family watch it anyway in an online premier. After awhile, because of my declining health and my disabilities I had to take a break. I spent what time I wasn’t writing to be a background actor on occasion on such shows as Grey’s Anatomy, How I Met Your Father, Bel Air, and others. Los Angeles is a hard expensive city to live in. I was on disability and unemployment at different times, living in poverty just barely making ends meet. My ex-fiancee and I split up and I ended up moving back to Lawrence, Kansas, where I still make experimental short films and Performance Art videos. I filmed my second feature film (also meant as an art installation) in 2023 on a vacation back to Lawrence in 3 days, and when I came back permanently I began editing. I’m still in post-production and have some additional shooting I’m adding. The first film didn’t have any dialogue but this one has both poetic verse and improvised dialogue. Around this time I also decided to make it my company’s mission to make films with as high a number of cast and crew as possible who are disabled, neurodivergent, mentally ill, and/or have chronic illness. It’s my goal to do a number of movies with 100 percent of that goal. So far my films have met that at 100 percent but I have made films with one or two people, including myself. I’m in preproduction for two more features, one silent and one with dialogue, that will try to meet the 100 percent goal.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Oh, boy were there struggles. I am schizoaffective (for me a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) and disabled in multiple ways. I also just got evaluated for autism recently, and I’m waiting on the results. My disabilities have made it difficult to get and keep a job in film for those harsh 15 hour days with terrible turn around and impossible to find a 9 to 5 safety job I can actually handle and keep for more than a short period of time while I get my films funded. Speaking of funding, that’s one of the main problems. I’ve worked in low to no budget films thus far, and to get my bigger films funded has been a hard road. I had a road to funding set up for my next feature and some actors and choreographers attached, but the funding fell through, so I’ve been looking for other avenues before we start another crowdfunding campaign. A huge struggle at the end of 2023 was my mania, as I spent 6000 dollars in impulse buys in a manic episode and drove myself into debt that I had just climbed out of. I ended up making a documentary out of it, The Manioid. Right now I’m more focused on my mental health and getting my meds right and focusing on painting and editing my novel The Rise and Crumble of The Gingerbread Man, a super hero horror novel I released on Amazon’s Kindle Vella episode by episode format. Kindle Vella will fold at the end of February, so I’m putting it back into novel format and will rerelease that way. Vella didn’t really take off, and this draft of the novel is much better, so maybe it’s just as well. In October 2024 I shot a no-budget short film with my parents and myself as actors. I wrote it as a monologue for me to perform and ended up expanding it into a short. I finished editing the short and submitted it to the Kansas City FilmFest International. I hear back at the end of February.
I’ve been there as an actor in projects like Child, but it would be my first time there as a director.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I specialize in Experimental Films and Art Films for my company Stained Glass Eye Productions. Thus far I have done performance art and short silent films as well as two features. The first feature Ambient Nihilism was an ambient film with no dialogue. It was performance art of myself having anxiety attacks and psychosis, eating, and shaving my head. It was experimental and had no story, but I added a story in the description if people had a harder time swallowing an experimental, non-linear film. My second feature, Ephemeral Joy, has quadrants of four stories going on the film at once. This time with dialogue. My third film is in pre-production, and it’s called The Cup (Bean-Juice Elegy). It would also have four stories on the screen at once but be more linear. It’s a silent film, and our goal with this film is to have a small cast and crew with 100 percent autistic or neurodivergent, mentally ill, disabled individuals and/or individuals with chronic illness. We hope to make sets more inclusive and not have the harsh days that the industry typically has. I know certain directors have come under fire for supposedly not having chairs on their sets, and I can say there will definitely be chairs on mine. We aim to be as inclusive as possible to the disabled community and smash the stigma of mental illness and disability. Our new short film, Maladaptive Daydreams is aiming for film festivals in the Kansas City area and across the country. After a festival run (whether success or failure) I will post it to my YouTube channel, where I hope to put more narrative and surreal films in the future, pending funding.

If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
I hope empathy and kindness to others struggling with disability will the key to our success with the goal I’ve now set for the company. My current company Stained Glass Eye Productions will focus on disability and I’m setting up a new company for other projects outside of that realm that will still include a huge number of the people I work with on the disability side. Our creativity and experimentation will take us far. I also hope to have a large number of our projects shot on film. Thus far I’ve experimented with Super 8 and 16 mm film. The Cup (Bean-Juice Elegy) will be entirely shot on different film formats with the exception of one long scene already filmed on iPhone and the ending to another which is intentionally shot in digital format. I shoot and typically process the film myself using the bucket method where you have a bucket of chemicals and just swirl the film around. It leads to damaged and uneven processing which I really like the look of. For super 8 I scan my reels at the Lawrence Public Library where they offer scanning equipment where you can do it yourself. For 16 mm I send the film in to process and scan. I used Super 8 and MiniDV formats for my short film Gingerbread Lightning that was entered in the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge (a film race featuring disabled individuals in front of and behind the camera). I hope our unique stories and mission will lead us to success in the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/ScottVancil
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottavancil?igsh=cDg1YXVoem85Zmw1&utm_source=qr
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-vancil-b3734071?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@scottvancil?si=JXOQr9XSdMVe_cNm
• Other: https://resumes.actorsaccess.com/scottavancil