Imaginative teen finds a calling in filmmaking

In the wee window that accounts for her “younger days,” Mae Sebastian was an avid reader with an imagination that strained the limits of her mind’s eye.

She ventured into “The Great Gatsby” and found herself floating in the symbolism-heavy orbit of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s East and West Egg. She read “The Odyssey” and sailed the middle path between the Scylla of Homer’s richly imagined epic adventure and the Charybdis of a looming bedtime.

“I could imagine the whole scenes as they were happening, and I couldn’t put the books down,” said Sebastian, 16. “I think that’s where my interest in visual storytelling came in.”

Sebastian is still a reader — she enjoys Moira Young’s “Dust Lands” series — but these days the La Pietra-Hawaii School for Girls junior is more focused on crafting her own stories in a medium that allows her to share just what she envisions in her imagination.

Nearly two years ago Sebastian’s mother encouraged her to check out the Hawaii Women in Filmmaking’s Reel Camps for Girls. She ended up attending two of the camps and interning at two others.

Sebastian had made videos on her own but was taken aback by the scale of operations behind even the most modest of short films.

“I was surprised by the amount of people it takes to do everything, even the smallest things,” she said. “I didn’t know about all of the different roles people play in a production and how much communication and teamwork it takes to create a film. It’s not just about you; it’s a collaboration between a whole bunch of people.”

As a writer and a director, Sebastian found both opportunities and challenges in subjecting her ideas to the collaborative process. Over the course of eight short films, she has seen how a germ of an idea can evolve in unforeseen ways, how a script for, say, a wry comedy can develop dark overtones, how experimentation can result in a project finding its true voice and vision.

Take “Tralculus,” a three-minute film that Sebastian co-wrote and co-directed. Based on Sebastian’s own experiences learning geometry, the film depicts a student whose response to a mysteriously titled examination is a flight of indulgent imagination.

Sebastian envisioned the story as something of a comedy with a bit of dark staging. What eventually emerged was decidedly more unique, with actors donning white and red masks and the lead actress silently emoting through a series of fanciful short scenes.

“I try to be flexible with my vision of a project,” Sebastian says. “I don’t shoot down or tear down ideas, but at the same time I keep in mind what we can and can’t do with our resources and making sure that what is really important stays in.”

Sebastian says she is interested in exploring different film genres. Her current project is based on an idea she and a friend concocted while still in elementary school. The girls used to watch horror movies during sleepovers and developed an idea for a story based on a girl who receives a doll with a mysterious (and murderous) past.

With college still a couple of years away, Sebastian says she hopes to continue honing her writing and directing skills, and eventually solicit sponsorship for longer and more ambitious projects. Her tentative plan is to study business in college with an eye on enhancing her chances of finding a niche in the film industry.

Watch Sebastian’s film “Tralculus” at 808ne.ws/2BxqSzY.