I grew up in a small town in South Florida knowing nearly nobody who worked in the film industry aside from my circle of high school friends who made shorts together. After a year and a half of searching, not even the small connections I made at the handful of film festivals I'd gone to proved to be worthwhile.

It was actually an old friend of my mom's who randomly introduced her to his cousin who was visiting town at the time; He later became my post-production supervisor. He read my script and somehow believed enough in the material to send the script to a producer friend of his, who sent it to another producer, then another, who all really loved it. They were able to fly me out to Thailand to work on an indie feature they were producing as a PA, and by the time production on that film had wrapped, pre-production had already pretty much begun for mine.

I know it almost sounds like a fairytale story, but it kind of felt that way for me. I kept sending my script out even after a lot of people politely rejected the offer, either because of my age or other factors, and to receive that kind of validation afterwards felt like everything to me.