How to Thrive with a Shoestring Budget and Wild Ambitions | Fireside Q&Q w Erika Christie
Welcome to the very first episode of Creator/Shift Fireside Q&Q (Questions & Queries)! Our host Erika Christie dives deep into the power of constraints in the creative process, spanning topics from filmmaking with practical effects to cross-genre screenwriting. Discover how limited resources can ignite innovation, and hear Erika's firsthand experiences filming in extreme conditions, including working with marines on jet skis and managing waterproof cameras in turbulent weather.
Gain insights into Erika's unique approach to blending horror, comedy, and science fiction, and how she navigates technical challenges in outdoor filming. With a background in theater, graphic design, music, comic books, and audio production, Erika offers a wealth of knowledge for aspiring artists and creators.
Key Highlights:
Using constraints like limited color palettes to enhance creativity.
Cross-genre writing, particularly horror-comedy-science fiction.
Preference for practical effects over CGI in filmmaking.
Filming adventures: Jet skis, waterproof cameras, and extreme weather.
Comic book writing guided by online classes and YouTube tutorials.
Practical applications of her graphic design and photography skills.
Creative inspirations: Tim Burton and Peter Lindgren.
Platform-specific content strategies for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
Exploring new technologies like ChatGPT for creative tasks.
The importance of constructive criticism and team collaboration on set.
Join us for this engaging discussion that promises to inspire your creative journey. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon to stay updated with our bi-weekly Q&A sessions!
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A FEW HIGHLIGHTS
Constraints in Creativity
How constraints fuel creativity
Example: Limited colors in painting
Common constraints: money, people, time
Creativity through unique writing styles
Cross-genre: horror-comedy-science fiction
Practical Filmmaking Experiences
Preference for practical effects over CGI
Filming in challenging conditions
Marines on jet skis
Waterproof cameras
Extreme weather conditions
Various terrains and elements, particularly water
Technical challenges in outdoor filming
Equipment management
Environmental hindrances
Professional Background and Skills
Video and film work
Theater
Degree in theater
Active in Atlanta’s comedy scene
Graphic design
Pitch decks, one-sheeters, social media content for various organizations
Comic book writing
Self-taught via YouTube and classes
Music
Playing music and making music videos
Working with musicians
Audio production
Podcasts
Some voiceover work
Photography
Professional photography for large events
Creative Inspirations
Tim Burton
Works like "Frankenweenie" and "Vincent"
Peter Lindgren
Visually stunning work
Behind-the-scenes content on YouTube and Instagram
Learning and Professional Development
Structured online classes and interviews
Comic-Con type events
YouTube as primary learning resource
Differences in writing styles among media
Comic book vs. audio, stage play, and screenplay writing
Skills for comic book writing
Dialogue, stage directions, clear instructions for artists
Design and photography background aiding in comic panel creation
Recent Skills and AI Technology Exploration
ChatGPT exploration for summarizing and bullet-point tasks
Concerns about AI replacing creative jobs
Practical uses for AI in basic tasks
Differentiating ChatGPT as generative software, not true AI
Handling Criticism
Positive approach to feedback
Differentiating sources of criticism
Knowledgeable people vs. casual opinions
Adapting feedback contextually
Creative Input and Collaboration
Valuing team suggestions and collaboration on set
Quick testing of ideas for effectiveness
Balancing openness to ideas with productive workflow
Audience Expectations and Content Strategy
Audiences seek entertainment on social media
Expectations vary by content type rather than platform
Different types of videos evoke different audience expectations
Balancing Creativity and Platform Constraints
Viewing constraints as opportunities
Improving final product by overcoming challenges
Conclusion
Erika concludes the session thanking the audience
Mention of future sessions to address more questions
This outline captures the primary topics and sub-topics covered in the text for the podcast episode "Fireside Q&A with Filmmaker Erika Christie."
#CreatorShift #ErikaChristie #Filmmaking #Creativity #PracticalEffects #ComicBookWriting #TimBurton #PeterLindgren #YouTube #TikTok #Instagram #ChatGPT #Collaboration
FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW
Erika Christie:
Greetings and good vibes, everybody. This is Erika Christie, and I am the host of creator Shift. I have been doing a fair amount of interviews of really amazing artists on this show, but I have been getting a lot of questions coming in about both myself and some of the projects that I've worked on before. And so I am going to start doing a bit of a maybe, let's say Fireside chat Q and a type of thing. I think for now, I'm going to do it every other week as more questions come in, just to give a little bit more of a background on my personal experience. Obviously, I kind of pepper that in a little bit as I'm asking people's questions, but if I bring a guest on and I'm asking them questions, I want to get as much of them in the interview as possible. So I don't do it a lot myself, so I thought maybe it would be fun. So we'll give this a try for a couple sessions and see how it goes, see if everybody likes my answers.
Erika Christie:
Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but here we are. All right, so, yep, here we go. Let's just. Let's just jump right in and let's see what the first question is. Hopefully, they're not too scary. All right, what's number one? Which mediums do you most like working in? Wow. I work in a lot. I work in a lot of different mediums.
Erika Christie:
And a big part of the creator Shift podcast is talking to artists who also work in, you could say multimedia, you could say multi platforms. It's all essentially the same thing as far as the vernacular goes as to what we're doing. I work a lot in video and film. I do it professionally, do it every single day for my day job. I do a lot of outside projects as well. I also have a theater degree, although I haven't done theater theater for a number of years since I've been in Atlanta for a few years now, I've been doing a lot in the comedy scene, so a lot of filming, directing, producing, editing of comedy projects, which are obviously all done live in a theater. So I'm still a little bit doing my. Doing my theater stuff, although I would like to get back into a little bit more of, like, actual, like, theater theater play work.
Erika Christie:
Cause I like that so much. On top of that, I do a lot of graphic design, especially things like, you know, pitch decks, one sheeters for people who are, like, speakers, and then all of my social media content. And I also do social media content for, like, four or five different businesses and organizations. So a lot of social content that could be thumbnails for YouTube, that can be quotes, that can be audiograms, that can just be taking photos and doing, you know, interesting things with them. And then, as I said, lots of pitch decks, art, bibles, that sort of thing. I work a little bit in the comic book realm as well. I spent a good number of years kind of learning how to transfer all of my screenwriting skills into the comic book world because writing for comic books is more different than writing for any of the other mediums. Like, it's really, really shocking.
Erika Christie:
And. Hold on, my microphone is about to start moving. Hold still. Sorry. I'll try not to use my hands or my microphone will start following me as I'm moving around. I also played music for many, many years. I haven't done it professionally in quite some time, but I do a lot with music. So I like working with musicians.
Erika Christie:
I like filming them. I like making music videos. I like working with them live, setting up audio, doing all that sort of stuff. Try to think, is there a medium? I'm forgetting podcasts. I work a lot in audio. I've done a little bit with audiobooks. I would like to get more into it. I'm sort of one of those people that always gets commented on, oh, you have an interesting voice.
Erika Christie:
Do you do voiceover type stuff? I've done it a little bit. I wouldn't mind getting more into it. I do enjoy doing it. I actually enjoy doing voiceover stuff more than I like being on camera, but I have to be on camera, so I'll get more used to it. Don't worry. Wow. Is that. Is that all the mediums? I feel like I'm missing some things.
Erika Christie:
Photography, I do a lot. I work a lot as a professional photographer, especially for big events, which I really like doing. Yeah, I think that's it. And, oh, the question is, which do I like more? So I sort of missed the point of the question. I like them all. My answer would be, I like writing and directing the most. So anytime I can do those two, two things, and those two things are really valid in pretty much all of those different mediums that I mentioned. So if I can direct and write, I'm happiest doing that.
Erika Christie:
I like working on teams. I like managing teams. Anything that's multidisciplinary makes me really happy. If I get to work on a project where I get to work on with graphic designers and musicians and filmmakers and the writers, and like, any time I can do all of that I like that the most. So writing and directing are the two things that I like the most. Okay, let's see what the next question is. I sort of, kind of answered that one. Maybe I'll get better at answering questions.
Erika Christie:
What's a. What, what's a film or piece of content you wish you had created? That's. That's a lot. There's, there's. There's so many that I could put into this. I work a lot in science fiction and fantasy, so anytime I see anything in that realm, I'm excited, enamored, and slightly jealous that I didn't get to work on it. I would say as a child, it was, you know, things like Tim Burton, I would say. I think I was probably 15 or 16 when I first saw Vincent, which I, which I think I would say had a big, big impact on me.
Erika Christie:
That whole sort of Tim Burton esque look to it really inspired me. And it was like that, that's kind of, that's definitely where I want to go. So a lot of my fantasy stuff, a lot of my Sci-Fi stuff, and just my approach to directing actors and my approach as far as camera work and lighting, anytime I can do that low key, really dramatic lighting, dramatic scenery, dramatic actors performing, like, I love that sort of thing. More recently, I guess my answer, you know, there's a filmmaker which I should have remembered his name before I started this sentence, Peter Lindgren. I follow him on Instagram and YouTube, and every time he puts something out, I'm instantly jealous because he's so fantastic. He. I've seen some of his finished products. I've seen a huge amount of his behind the scenes stuff.
Erika Christie:
And the thing that's so fascinating about him is that he does his behind the scenes stuff in the same way that he films his actual projects. Why are we even talking about this? Let's just go to his YouTube channel because I tend to follow him a lot on there, so let's just look him up like this. We're going to switch to screen share. All right, here we go. And now let's look up Peter Lindgren because he's fantastic. And if you don't already follow him, you absolutely should follow him because he's that much fun. Yep, here he is. Here's Peter Lindgren.
Erika Christie:
You can just see from his YouTube thumbnails how just visually stunning all of his stuff is. So it's really good. So here's, here's him. Here's him in the studio. Lots of fun camera stuff. Again, you can see how fun his thumbnails are. This is one of the first videos that I saw, which is a ten minute behind the scenes on how he did this poker thing. And I was completely enamored the first time I saw it.
Erika Christie:
He really is awesome. So if you don't follow Peter Lindgren, start following him because he's great. Here's him doing. So he does lots of gear reviews, he does unboxing, he does a lot of advertisement. Here's another one. This one here, the image that you see Wild turkey, another behind the scenes where he does his behind the scenes video in the same vibe of the way that his actual finished in this, in this case, I believe it was some kind of an advertisement he did for Wild Turkey. But you could just see from this little thumbnail rolling how great this looks. So, yeah, I would say present day, he's the one.
Erika Christie:
When I see his work, I'm the most excited about. Anytime I see him do something, I'm like, wow, he's amazing. I'm. I'm excited. I'm slightly jealous. I wish I did something a little bit more like that, but that's what it is. Okay, so let's see if we can get back to here. And what is the next one? How do you decide which platforms YouTube, TikTok, Instagram are best for each type of content? Um, most of what I do is, is made for one of those platforms.
Erika Christie:
So, like, it's actually created from the beginning to be exactly what it's supposed to be. Um, YouTube tends to be a little bit more long form, have a little bit more of a plot. There's a point to it because I I'm starting to do a lot of gear reviews, uh, doing some interviews, doing some unboxing, talking about different kind of software. So there's usually kind of an order to it that seems to work a little bit better on YouTube. For TikTok and Instagram, there is a. There's a little bit of an overlap, but TikTok tends to be a little bit faster, pace a little bit funnier. Instagram can be used the same way, but you're also going to see a lot more cat videos, which you certainly see on TikTok, but you see a little bit more of the fluff on Instagram. That's also because Instagram has been around for longer.
Erika Christie:
How do you decide? Yeah, I mean, it really depends on what you're doing, and if you're trying to if you're trying to. If you have got a new niche, it's something that you're breaking into. I would definitely say TikTok, because if there isn't on Instagram, it's. It'd be difficult to come up with something new that nobody else is doing on tick tock. There's still a little bit of space right now that it's been around for a few years, but there's still some space for you to get in, get some new people listening. Um, so, yeah, yeah, I mean, they're, they're, they're similar and different all at the same time, which is kind of how that is, kind of how that plays out. All right, so what is the next one? What's the last. What's the last new thing you've learned or new skill you've pursued? Lovely.
Erika Christie:
That is a question that I ask people when I interview them, and I so appreciate that being turned back at me. Okay, what is the. What is the last new thing? I would say probably the most recent thing I sort of jumped into a little bit is chat, GPT, and that whole sort of AI writing element. I'm not hugely fond of that sort of thing in the sense that I do firmly believe that it's going to take a lot of creatives jobs, which I'm not super happy about, but I have been playing around with it a little bit just to have a better idea of what it is, because there's no point in being scared of something if you literally don't know what it is. The. The biggest benefits I see of it are things like summarizing and creating bullet points. So if you're able to use it for that, you can ask it to summarize articles, ask it to summarize videos. You know, you can type something in and say, hey, put this into a sequence of, you know, eight things on a checklist, that sort of thing.
Erika Christie:
I think it's really helpful for that. It's going to be quite some time before it can write good content, at least in my opinion. Like, it's doing that now, but it's. It feels soulless. Like, you can tell that it's just an algorithm. I'm not going to get onto a soapbox. I also don't like the fact that it's referred to as AI. It's not AI, it's generative software.
Erika Christie:
It's not thinking, it's not intelligent. It's just copying other things and spewing information back out. But that's, again, soapbox. I don't need to get onto right now. Yeah, I would say that's. That's the most recent thing I've kind of been dabbling in and out of maybe the last two months or so to see if one. Just so I can understand it a little bit better and to see if there's a useful way of having it do some of the grunt work. Like I said, bullet pointing something.
Erika Christie:
Yeah, I think. I think that's the biggest, the biggest use I can see for it right now. How do you handle criticism from others? I'm pretty good at that. I've spent enough years putting out content that when someone makes a comment, especially if it's a negative comment, I don't see that as a, oh, no, they hate me. They hate my work. If it's a client, I'm not going to say the client is always right because I don't believe that. But if it's a client and they're paying you, if they say, oh, I would like this blue and not green, I'll say, I'll say, I can do that. It might clash a little bit with the blue on the other side, but I, you know, I can certainly make it blue.
Erika Christie:
So. So, yeah, in that case, if it's a client, you just have to work with them, and if they like it and they're happy with it, then just go with it for something a little bit more personal, like some of my writing. Again, I've done this for enough years, especially it, especially in grad school, taking a lot of play screenwriting classes in grad school, you put something out, you really put your heart into it, and someone, you know, craps all over and you kind of have to be like, so I'm at a point where if I know that the person has the knowledge to make the comment that they're making, I will take that in and go, oh, they really know a lot about structure or character or dialogue, and they're saying, this part is confusing. I'm going to take that on board and say, yep, I understand what you're saying, but it's a person that doesn't have a lot of experience. And they're just saying, oh, well, I don't like this, and why did that happen? I'll just smile the nod and say, yeah, thank you so much. I'll still take in what they said, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to make any changes with it. You just can't, you know, it's a whole, you know, kill your darlings type thing. You can't get so emotionally wrapped up in your work to the point that you can't handle criticism, because I firmly believe everybody can have creative ideas.
Erika Christie:
If I'm on a film set and the lighting person goes, oh, hey, I think there's a really funny joke that can be added here. I will absolutely listen to what they have to say. I just. Because I'm directing something or producing something, I do not like being a dictator. I like hearing everybody's opinions. I like making sure, you know, everything is moving smoothly. And if somebody has a better idea than me, I want to hear it. It's not a shut your mouth, I'm in charge.
Erika Christie:
No, I absolutely want to hear the better ideas. And if it's someone has an idea and it's a crap idea, one of two things, while others say that's interesting, is that I don't quite think it'll work, maybe for this reason. Or I'll say, I don't know if that'll work. You know what? It'll take 15 seconds to test that out of actors. You want to do it, and it's like, let's just do it, and we'll do it in 15 seconds. Later we'll go, oh, that didn't quite work. Thanks for the idea, everybody. Anybody else have an idea? And then we'll move on.
Erika Christie:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you let criticism derail you, you're never going to get anything accomplished. Yeah, I think that's probably how I would look at that. What are the key differences in audience expectations across various storytelling platforms? Audience expectations. Interesting. I think generally speaking, I mean, audiences, especially on social media, want to be entertained. Like, if you're not entertaining that that's really all that it is.
Erika Christie:
I don't know if it's necessarily platforms that I would say are different. I would say it was probably more the type of video. Like, if you're doing an unboxing video or a gear review video, audiences are expecting one sort of thing. If you're putting out a video of people doing a silly dance, audiences are expecting a different kind of thing. So I don't know if. I don't know. Yeah, I would say it's, to me, it would be more the content rather than the platform itself, because if you're listening to an audiobook, you're expecting something different than if you're watching a video, you know, on Instagram, on your phone. Yeah, I think it's the content itself less than the platform, although obviously the platforms have their own differences.
Erika Christie:
Yeah, I think that's my answer. Something like that. How do you balance creative freedom with platform constraints in your storytelling? Interesting. I'm one of those weird people that I like to look at constraints as something that can help you. You hear people talking about making movies or tv shows or putting a band together, and you hear, like, all the things that they had to do to over all the things that they had to overcome to get where they were. And most of the time, all those things they had to overcome actually ended up making the end product better. Yes, at the time, they wished they had double the budget. Yes.
Erika Christie:
They wish they had eight people on the crew instead of two people on the crew. Yes. They wish they had better costumes, they had better props, better this, better that. But so often the constraints that were put on them made them think more creatively, and that, in the end, gave them a really good product. There was, I had a conversation once where I was talking to a painter, and I very clumsily sort of asked this question, and I said, do you ever sort of, like, intentionally constrain yourself? Like, you know, do you ever tell yourself, well, I'm going to make a painting, but I'm only going to use the colors, you know, green, blue, and yellow? And I asked it really clumsily, and the person didn't quite follow what I was saying, and it kind of flashed me back to being a little kid. I remember the first time in an art class I heard the term monochromatic, and I didn't know what that was at the time, but finding out that monochromatic meant every chroma chrome color doing, in this case, it was a painting, but doing a piece of artwork in just one color, what that meant was that you could choose the color that you were going to do your painting in, and then the only other colors you could use, you could add white or you could add black to it to get different shades of that one color, but you could not use any other colors. And I remember how much fun I had on that painting. Being explained what it was, I thought was annoying.
Erika Christie:
But once I found out, like, once the teacher explained, you can only use this one color, it really made you sit down and think what your painting was going to be and how you were going to be able to get as much creativity as you could into this painting, knowing you could only use that one color and then darker and lighter shades to kind of help shape it. So as, as frustrating as constraints are, again, most constraints are going to be money. It's going to be people, it's going to be time. As frustrating as that is often, if you can overcome them in a really creative way, your end product is going to end up being even better than what you thought it was going to be. Yeah, I think that's. That's probably. That's probably how I'm going to answer that. How, how do you develop and maintain a unique voice as a writer? I think most of what I do is pretty weird to begin with.
Erika Christie:
And I am one of those irritating people who will correct people's grammar if they use it incorrectly. And I will say that unique and weird are two completely different things. But in my case, being weird, as far as my writing goes, ends up making my writing unique. So I'm not saying that that weird and unique are the same thing, but yeah, just the weird things that go through my head anyways already kind of make everything weird. As I've said, I'm huge into fantasy in science fiction. I like dark, I like strange. I like also crossing genres. I'm writing a big, I've got a big multimedia, multi platform thing going on right now.
Erika Christie:
And I describe it as a horror comedy science fiction. And I absolutely love that particular, that particular conglomeration of those three genres where there are moments where it's very funny, there's moments where it gets a bit into hard Sci-Fi and there's a big difference between hard and soft Sci-Fi which I'll answer at a different time. So moments where it gets into, like, serious hard Sci-Fi and then you'll have moments of just absolute horror. I mean, you know, dismemberment and blood and gore and just horrible things happening. And then it'll jump back into Sci-Fi and then it'll suddenly be comedy again. I genuinely love jumping back and forth between all those things. So, yeah, it just, everything I come up with is already so weird that I think I've got the unique. I've got the unique thing down.
Erika Christie:
It's really, really strange. The amount of times in my life I've had somebody read one of my screenplays and I normally don't do a top page, the top page, which will have, like, genre and like, the log line and like, all that background information, I normally don't give those out. I'll just hand someone either a short script or a long strip and be like, hey, do you mind just reading this and give me some ideas? The amount of times, and I would say it's probably the approaching a dozen at this point. The amount of times that people, the very, very, very first words out of their mouth when they, like, respond back to me, is, this is supposed to be animated, right? And my answer is always, actually, no, it's live action. It's just weird. So. And I don't. And I don't particularly like doing things with a lot of cg.
Erika Christie:
I like practical stuff. I like weird costumes, weird backgrounds, weird lighting. So it. And it caught me off guard. Probably the first, I'm going to say the first four or five times where the very, very first comment back was, this is animated, right? In me thinking, how did I write this in such a way that this person just automatically assumes that what I wrote is supposed to be animated? It's that weird. Is that strange? It's that unique, it's that out there that they just assume that it has to be animated because you couldn't possibly do this live action. So, yeah, I would say my brain kind of goes in the unique direction anyway, so I don't have to work at that too much. That.
Erika Christie:
That's just. That's just because my brain is broken anyways, so, yeah, I don't have to work at that one too much is pretty much my answer. How do you, what? How do you. How do you deal with filming outside in the elements? Okay. I should probably just read the questions and not try to anticipate where it's going, because I had no idea where that was going. How do you deal with filming outside in the elements? I could probably answer this question about 15 times. Like, this could come up every single one of these q and a sessions, and I'm going to say something different every time. So I've done enough crazy stuff outside in the elements that have no idea how I've gotten through some of them I'll jump to.
Erika Christie:
I spent quite a number of years working with marines. Marines, as in, like, us military, marines veterans. And we were doing stuff on jet skis and jet skis, meaning, which also includes boats. We also had follow vehicles. It just. It was a big, huge project. And getting to. Getting to really do a deep dive into, you know, all of my gopros that had to be waterproof.
Erika Christie:
I had to figure out where to put them. You know, go. Going in and out of marinas, going up and down boat ramps, placing cameras in the right place, figuring out where the jet skis are going, figure out if there's places to get ahead of the jet skis so that you can film them approaching, then film them going by. But the water, just the. The element of the water itself was a absolutely mind blowing thing to try to get used to. And that's not even. That's not even to mention the fact that we were on the east coast. We did all of our work between, let's say, like, long island, all the way down to Miami.
Erika Christie:
So up and down the whole east coast, we did trips in the dead of winter. Like it would be substantially below zero and we would be outside on our jet skis, so covered up that you could just barely see us because we were so trying to keep the water off of us as much as possible. And again, me still having to deal with the cameras, where to put them, how to keep them charged, how to keep them warm, where to angle them. So. So working with water, it in that capacity, if you lose. If the jet ski is going, you know, 60 miles an hour on the water somewhere and you lose. Lose a camera, how do you. How do you retrieve it? Is there a way to get a flotation device on it? Like, just all these questions? So water itself is insane.
Erika Christie:
The very first time we had the whole team out is there was a team of like six or seven of us and whoever was free for that filming would show up. I think the first time we had everybody out there, they were goofing around and dropped one of my microphones into the water. One of them was giving the other one a piggy bank. They, they were, they were walking up the boat ramp. There was maybe 10ft of water before you were on to land. They were being goofy. One of them had taken his lapel mic off and was holding it, jumped on the other one's back. He took two steps and dropped the microphone right into the water.
Erika Christie:
Fortunately, it was a cheap microphone, not an expensive microphone, but working with water, especially over large masses of water, is absolutely exhausting. I have no idea how we got through. All right, we've been going for almost 30 minutes, so let's do. Let's do one more right now. And what is the next one? How did you learn comic book writing? YouTube. That would be my best answer. Watched a lot of videos on YouTube. I also took quite a few classes because I really like.
Erika Christie:
I really like learning in that sort of structured, you know, here's how you go through it. So a lot of. I did a lot of online classes, watched a lot of interviews. People talking about how to do it have gone to a lot of different, like, comic con type events in different cities throughout the US. Just hearing people talk about their process and just chatting with people. But, yeah, in short, I would say YouTube is probably the place where I've learned the most. And I actually think I mentioned earlier, comic book writing, I think, is more different than all of the other types of writing. I think.
Erika Christie:
I think writing for audio and writing stage plays and writing, you know, screenplays, I think all of those things are more similar to each other than any of them are to writing comic books. Comic books really are very, very big difference as far as style goes. But you absolutely can transfer your skills. And that's the biggest thing that I was trying to learn, was how to transfer all of my skills for a comic book. It was dialogue, it was staged directions, and it was being able to give good directions to the artists and that I actually used my design and my photography background the most, being able to give good directions, the artists, so that they could take the panels and really make the most interesting and fascinating panels out of what it was that I was writing. So, yeah, that's it for this first session. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of you.
Erika Christie:
I hope you've had a wonderful time. I've enjoyed answering these questions. There's so many more to get to, and I will be back within the next week or two with more of them. So thank you all so much.