By RYANN BEASCHLER, Buckeye Flame
Thomas Sawyer is Cleveland-raised and Columbus-based nonbinary filmmaker. Last fall, they were selected as one of four winners of the Dolby Institute x Ghetto Film School Filmmaker Finish the Script Challenge.
Sawyer and other participants turned in a short film script to enter the competition. Their prompt for the script was a single page written by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Carlos López Estrada (Raya and the Last Dragon), who also served as one of the program’s mentors.
The winners received Dolby Vision and Atmos technology, mentorship and $25,000 to realize their short film.
Sawyer’s film, called Sirens, follows main character Whitney’s struggle with anxiety over their self-identity.
Much of the film’s inspiration came from Sawyer’s own experiences.
“I’ve made documentaries before, but this is the first time that I took a crack at narrative filmmaking,” they said. “So I relied heavily on my experience of dealing with anxiety and depression, living as a person who identifies as nonbinary.”
Whitney struggles with being a siren, creatures from Greek mythology that lured sailors to their deaths at sea with their songs.
Sawyer uses mythological sirens as allegory.
“Sirens in Greek mythology are these creatures that have a negative connotation,” they said. “People look down on them. And I felt like in my experience, there have been people in my life who have looked down on me for who I am, or I perceive them looking down at me.”
Portraying Panic Attacks
Whitney’s struggle with their identity is portrayed by Sawyer’s use of disorienting sound and image. Access to Dolby Atmos, a surround-sound technology, provided a way to transport the viewer into the circling pulls of identity, self-acceptance and acceptance by others.
Sawyer said that in real life, these pulls manifested as panic attacks.
The film flashes between the scenic Ohio woodscapes — part of a siren world with a stubborn siren leader — and Whitney’s reality spending time at the lake.
“This is a visual representation of what my experience has been with having panic attacks,” Sawyer said. “[Dolby Atmos] was a really powerful tool to put people in the space of that. So whether or not you’ve experienced it, you can experience it at that moment.”
A siren calls to Whitney as they try to express their identity. The siren’s call becomes a yell, demanding they accept their identity as a siren. They work through finding a way to express that they want to be called Whitney.
“I’m tired of this,” the siren yells in the film. “You have a chance to be something special. But what do you do? You run away. You’re always afraid, you live in fear. You question and you cower and you hide behind everything and everyone.”
Whitney struggles to communicate their identity.
“I tried so hard to be like everyone else,” they say. “But I’m not like everyone. Every day I try just to be normal. It’s like … It hurts. Like it really hurts, no matter what I do, I’m still me. No matter what I do, it’s wrong.”
Whitney struggles to build the courage to accept themselves and embrace their differences.
Learning to Communicate
Sawyer, too, had trouble finding a way of communicating and expressing themself. They buried their identity, fearful of expressing who they truly were.
Photography and videography became a tool for their expression, helping them “develop verbal skills to be able to communicate in life,” Sawyer said. “Finding out how to relate. Finding out how to be in community with people.”
Whitney, too, finds a way to communicate their feelings. In the final moments of the film, they express that they’d like to be called Whitney.
“There’s great power in this thing that you are,” said Sawyer. “When you learn to accept who you are, and you find the courage to be yourself. For me, it was very painful living with all that self-denial, and shutting myself down and denying those pieces of myself.”
Sawyer’s film ends with a close-up frame of Whitney smiling, engulfed by bright skylight, leaving viewers with hope.
Bringing Together Two Truths
Filming the entire short at Hinckley Lake in northern Ohio was not just a budget-friendly decision. The location was important to portraying a duality of light and darkness.
“I had such negative experiences, dark experiences growing up [in Ohio], but I also had beautiful moments of truth and honesty and love with different people,” said Sawyer. “I love the challenge of bringing together those two realities, those two truths — essentially, there is darkness and there is lightness.
“I wanted to make this thing in Ohio as a way to say beautiful things can be made anywhere and there’s beauty in all things, even amidst the darkness and negativity.”
López Estrada’s one-page prompt detailed an older person running into a room, putting on a headset, transforming into their younger self, looking at a picture of their older self and saying “Thank you.”
“I read that page, and my first instinct was ‘Okay, what on earth would make a person in their teenage years be thankful for having the experience of being in the body of a person who is later in life,’” said Sawyer.
Sawyer thought about their own strides. “I went through a lot of experiences in life where I thought that I wasn’t enough. I thought that I shouldn’t be here anymore. And I wanted to make sure that I’m using my art to help people feel less alone and less isolated, and to give them a sense of hope.” 🔥
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The Buckeye Flame is an online platform dedicated to amplifying the voices of LGBTQ+ Ohioans to support community and civic empowerment through the creation of engaging content that chronicles their triumphs, struggles, and lived experiences.
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Previously Published on thebuckeyeflame
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Photo credit: The cover art for Sawyer’s short film Sirens. (Photo Credit: FilmFreeway.com)
