Today we’d like to introduce you to Sky Belluomini
Hi Sky, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I first started writing in fifth grade. We were assigned our first creative writing assignment and I wrote a story about an adopted puppy. I didn’t think much of it until a week or so later when my teacher asked me to read it aloud to the class. A kid that was bullied and always made fun of had gotten her first taste of popularity. From that point on I had many teachers that fostered my talent for writing and in high school I started screenwriting and wrote my first feature at 17. I then decided to attend college with a major in film. This was also when I started my production company Skyward Productions. Since then I have won many awards for my films and am a four time nominated screenwriter.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not. As I had mentioned I was bullied a lot and most of what I wrote was especially dark, covering topics such as rape, murder, self harm, suicide, and more. There was one point in high school where even though I had been writing like this for years, they asked me to undergo a psychological evaluation. Even though they proved I wasn’t homicidal, I was bullied relentlessly, at one point having my locker covered in sticky notes with words on them such as crazy, psychopath, and more. This made me seriously consider to stop writing however I decided to keep with it. I have also struggled with many things in my personal life. However I find these events help fuel my writing and make the things in my stories more real.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
While I make films that cover a plethora of topics, I feel like I’m most known for my LGBTQ films. I am genderfluid and a lesbian so I feel I connect with these films most. My first film, The Club, was a dramatic retelling of the events of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. In the story, a gay couple has a fight which causes one of them to go a club that becomes the center of a mass shooting. Out of all my films I feel this one resonates the most with people. I am also very proud of one of my more recent films, Coming Out. It’s a coming out story about a girl that comes out as trans and I personally relate to this story a lot. I would also like to mention my film Dance Until You Die. It’s about a dancer with anorexia and at the premiere a couple came up to me and said their daughter had just been released from the hospital following her anorexia recovery. I feel that when it comes to my films they have an element of realness that even though not a lot of people can relate to, the ones that can relate very deeply and that makes me very proud.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I feel you need to be able to take risks to succeed. To me, I feel like making my first film was definitely a huge risk. I was still in college and I had never run my own set before, but I feel like The Club made me a well known person in the Orlando indie film circuit and I couldn’t be happier about the results and where this film have taken me. My mom always says the worst thing that can happen is someone doesn’t like it.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sky.wardproductions/profilecard/?igsh=c2o2a21tNHR4aHlv
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550483638263
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@skybelluomini228?si=RvwE3xHYD-kelG3A
