Artist Statement

I haven’t always wanted to make movies my whole life. But when I was a kid, movies were my escape from reality. Movies made me happy and sad and made my emotions fly in different directions that I didn’t know they could go. When I realized that this is what I wanted to do, I knew that I wanted to make people happy. I wanted to make people feel their emotions to the fullest. Mostly, though, I wanted to make people laugh.

Comedy narratives have always been my favorite movies to watch, and as a writer I am strongest writing comedy over any other genre. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know that this was the career path I wanted to take my whole life, so there’s no movie that I can remember seeing as a kid that made me know that making movies was what I was going to do. But as an adult now with a passion for filmmaking, there was one movie that I saw last year that inspired me to find my style. That movie is The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson. This was actually the first Wes Anderson film I had ever seen. I have since seen Bottle Rocket and clips of his other movies, and he has definitely found his style and knows who he is as an artist. Watching his works makes me so passionate about finding myself in the same way.

I definitely don’t think that I have a full grasp of who I am as a filmmaker, and I think that’s okay. I’ve only been studying film and producing material for a few years now, so I am positive I haven’t found my style yet, but it takes time. It takes many tries and failures to figure it out. I do know, though, that I am the type of person who learns from her failures and learns from experience, and not just from reading books and taking tests. I am excited to see where my work goes in the future and how my style develops over the years - to see how my style embodies me as an artist.

Sydnee Nelson Reel from UA, Telecommunication and Film on Vimeo.