Experiences are the foundations of opening doors for people to have new opportunities and new conversations with themselves.
Or, at least it is to film writer and director Sarah Kambe Holland who is hoping to achieve with her thesis project, Egghead and Twinkie.
The University of Central Florida feature film production student is taking some of her own experiences and parts of her own life onto the big screen to help spark conversations about coming out and what it is to be a good friend.
Holland has been in film for a while now: competing in college film festivals, writing and directing and doing some acting herself, so to no ones surprise she has a knack for being in front of the camera.
These skills came in handy on August 20, when Holland posted a TikTok video about her film. About four days later, she posted a thank you video for her at the time 130 thousand followers.
Holland has gathered quite the following, and now is launching a campaign to do crowdfunding, using the same popular social media platform.
She shared in a November post that if 18,000 people watched her TikTok, and pledged $1 to her film, she would surpass her goal. As of Nov. 11 she shared on TikTok that scenario occurred.
And this film means a lot to Holland. Out of six short films, Holland’s emotional and personal connection to Egghead and Twinkie is what was a driving force on the production of this film.
“Who’s stories get to be told? Sometimes minority stories are assumed to be too niche for mainstream audiences,” said Holland.
This microbudget film is more then just a college film short contest, which is how the ideas was started.
“If anything, people connect with it more because I think that they realized that it was something that I had a personal stake in,” said Holland.
The style of this film and marketing towards audiences is inspired from films such as Little Miss Sunshine and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Holland says she came up with the idea for this film almost four years ago following her own experiences of coming out.
“When we watch TV and film it [coming out] is almost always seen as a negative experience and something to be afraid of. So, I was intrigued, as a Queer creator, to take that process and try to present it in the comedy genre, as something more humorous,” said Holland.
Though Holland hopes the film comes out in 2022, she has faced adversity with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For us, we were planning to shoot the film in July, and now I was supposed to have the entire thing in the can and in the process of starting to edit,” said Holland, “As of now we are planning to shoot the film half in December and half in May.”
Though there have been setbacks, Holland has taken precautions to ensure that she can be safe as well as her crew being safe. And she hopes to continue building a following around it, and get this film out to anyone who wants to see it.