We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carissa Sky. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carissa below.
Carissa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The most meanigful project I have worked on is a short documentary I worked on called “Dominique”.This film was completed a little under a year ago during my time in the Paris exchange program. I was in Paris for 10 months and participated in a French language program and a film intensive program that was also entirely in French. It was through the film program that I was given the opportunity to make Dominqiue. Dominuqe is a french sculptor who has lost 80% of her vision over the last 20 years and this film tackles her relationship with creativity, perspective and how we connect with one another and the world around us. I am the director, writer and editor of this film so I spent a lot of time carving out this 10 minuet story out of the almost 6 hours of footage.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I grew up entertaining- It was something I wanted for myself. My Mom is an architect- dad an engineer and everyone in my family is pretty quiet. I was always very loud, and outgoing so they thought, might as well put her on a stage- and I loved it. I did dance and theatre for 15 years. I loved every part f it, the stories, being backstage, the community, lights, makeup, music, I always had ideas for what I thought would be the best. I was always re-choreographing and redirecting things, imagining shows in my head. I daydream a lot. In highschool, I was certain entertainment was what I wanted to do. Growing up in San Luis Obispo, we were really separated from the industry but I knew it was only 3 hours away. I found LACHSA, a public, exclusive audition-based art school and begged my parents to let me try out. I was accepted, and said goodbye to my parents, moving down to L.A.. LACHSA broke my creative world open. It was there that I made the transition from performance, to directing and filmmaking. I made my first film my junior year of high school and directed a play I wrote as my senior year project. It was great- I used that play to get into college. Sarah Lawrence College was able to provide me an education outside of film, so I studied lots of literature, philosophy and psychology. I also got a great film education and did a film-intensive program in Paris, France as a study-abroad. Now, I have done a couple music videos, started working on commercials and other projects. It’s been a lot of fun. Producing is great, but directing feels like it comes more naturally to me, it’s just hard to push through creative blocks.
There really is no impossible to me. I think that if you have the fire, and the patience, you can get where you want to go. I love telling stories about women, by women. I like to explore surrealism, dreamy films and raw stories. I have been surrounded by visual artists my whole life and it has taught me to see the beauty in what’s right in front of you. Films like Before Sunrise, Florida project, Boy, San Toi Ni Loi, inspire my world but I also love a good action movie, like the kinds I grew up on.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
I would say, not living with my parents in highschool shows my resilience. My parents were totally supportive, they both raised me to be pretty independent and I would still go home to visit some weekends and holidays. The reason I feel so proud of this now is because of my willingness to blindly follow my gut feeling to a compleatly unfamiliar place. I grew up in San Luis Obispo, which is a smaller town in California and I was always a bit of a weird kid, and in the big city of L.A. , I still was a weird kid. My dad likes to say, make as many mistakes as you can when you’re young, so then you have a big pile of them to climb up on and look around. I agree with that a lot. I made tons of mistakes, but if it wasn’t for taking that leap, I wouldn’t have found my confidence to get out from in front of the camera to behind, I would have never heard of Sarah Lawrence College, never would have met many of my good friends, basically I would be a different person entirely.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
(In my personal written work) I strive to find the beauty in what’s in front of you. I don’t like to push a theme to hard, and give the audience an opurtunity to take what they need from my works. I love metaphorical language and imagery, beautiful shots, and a kickass female lead. I want to show you why you should pay attention to the little things, have empathy and kindess for others and yourself (but I don’t sugar coat it). I also love to have fun and make rock and roll themed music videos, paintings, experimental video. My work stays grounded.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: cariskii
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carissa-sky-028b8522b/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cariskii
