Welcome back to Journey to the Pilot! If you have not seen my first post, please check it out and then meet me back here. As you now know, I am making a short film about the LGBTQ+ community, but I want to do something a little different. I don’t want to just tell a story about one girl that you may or may not relate to. I want to create something that everyone could relate to whether you are gay, straight, transgender, non-binary, or still working on your personal identity. To do this, I knew that I needed to incorporate other people’s stories in order to give my viewers an authentic, truthful experience. Originally, I was going to conduct a few interviews with people at school and be done with it, but I started to realize that people are more likely to be fully honest in anonymous settings. With this new found realization, I started looking for a platform where I could do this.
That search brought me to TrevorSpace. I knew about the Trevor Project but didn’t realize that it was more than just a suicide hotline for LGBTQ+ people. When I explored TrevorSpace, I found an amazing community of connected and supportive people with shared experiences. I found this to be so incredible and dove straight in. I posted a topic called Coming Out Short Film and got an amazing response. Dozens of people either responded through TrevorSpace or contacted me directly. They told me their stories and it touched me in a way that I never thought it would. I had people telling me that it was an honor to help me with this project and that they were happy that someone was undertaking a project such as mine.
This experience has motivated me to honor this incredible community in every way that I can and gave me a renewed sense of passion for this project. I want to give a special thanks to Melissa, Cathrine, Evelin, Jessica, Kai, and everyone else that sent a response or took time out of their day for one of my interviews. I love them all and want them to know that they have inspired me to keep pushing forward. I am so excited to cast and film this pilot. If you want to share your story with me, or you would like to act in my film, please email me at Sammistrong13@gmail.com. Thank you so much for following my post and supporting my journey to the pilot.
