LA Filmmaker Got Start at Simsbury Community Television

When Connecticut native Timothy Griggs first started volunteering at Simsbury Community Television he had no idea where his interest in filmmaking would take him.

Griggs, originally from Canton, has always had an interest in the arts and especially film. In March 2005, a chance encounter at Ski Sundown where Griggs spent a lot of time, led him to meet Karen Handville, the station manager for SCTV.

"I had been thinking about film making for a long time but I had never thought about volunteering," Griggs said.

Shortly after he began volunteering his time in the basement of Eno Memorial Hall, Griggs was hired to work at SCTV performing post production work and editing for the station. Griggs worked at the station for the next 3 years while he studied at Trinity College in Hartford.

"That's where I fell in love with the art of filmmaking," Griggs said.

Griggs also began volunteering at Cinestudio at Trinity where he further developed his skills in producing video.

While studying, Griggs had the idea to invite Trinity alum Stephen Gyllenhaal, a well-known director, to the school.

"He loved the idea and he came back and led workshops and screened some of his films," Griggs said.

While Gyllenhaal was at the school, Griggs decided to take the encounter one step further and inquired about an internship.

Soon after graduating, Griggs was in Seattle waiting to work on Gyllenhaal's 2012 film Grassroots. After the film was delayed, Griggs followed Gyllenhaal to Los Angeles where he worked on the set of the CBS crime drama Numb3rs. Griggs worked on Numb3rs from Sept. 2009 until March 2010.

In 2010 he returned to Seattle for another year to complete Grassroots and then it was back to Los Angeles where Gyllenhaal put him to work on marketing the film using social media.

"It was amazing. It led me here and led me to meet a group of friends," Griggs said. Griggs and his new circle of friends would soon form the production company Classy Deer, LLC in July 2011.

In 2012 Griggs' journey into the film world would once again connect him with his Farmington Valley roots when he reconnected with Jen Silverman, a Simsbury native. The two homeschoolers were best friends growing up and spent a lot of time working on creative projects.

"She went off to college and I was working at SCTV," Griggs said. "Ultimately I lost contact with her."

When the two reconnected it didn't take long before the creativity began flowing. Silverman, who had become a successful playwright, and Griggs teamed up to make a short film titled Ink, one of Silverman's screenplays.

Griggs and company recently led a successful campaign to raise funds for Ink by using the website kickstarter.com where they raised $5,495.

"It's a great way of crowd-funding a project," Griggs said. "We reached out to as many people as possible."

One of those people was Karen Handville at SCTV.

"Karen posted it on the SCTV website right away," Griggs said. "The amount of support I have gotten from Simsbury for the film has been so tremendous."

Griggs expects to begin filming Ink next month and plans to show the film at various film festivals starting in late summer.