Vivian Kerr<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, who writes, directs, and acts in her own\u2026feature. And she just really inspired me.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Watching Kerr wear all three hats made Thompson interrogate her own path.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019d been finding myself craving expanding into other arenas,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d been writing for quite some time\u2026\u201d<\/p>\nThe real jolt, though, came a year later on a hilltop in Italy.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHow have I not made my own film?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Thompson had taken herself to a writing retreat in Tuscany with a pilot script under her arm.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt was a year later,\u201d she says. \u201cI was on a writing retreat in Tuscany that I\u2019d gotten into with a pilot that I\u2019d written, and everyone else, all eight people\u2026all the other people had made their own short films.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The realization hit hard.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI was like, \u2018Wait, what? I\u2019ve been in this business for, like, longer than most of them, and, worked on more sets than most of them. How have I not made my own film?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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The answer became SIENNA & THE SIT.<\/p>\n
\u201cI finally sat down and wrote SIENNA & THE SIT,\u201d she says, \u201cand within two months, in early January \u201924\u2026it was like a year, a little over a year after HELLFIRE, that I wrote and directed that\u2026we shot it.\u201d<\/p>\n
What began as an experiment quickly turned serious.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cFor me, it was also motivated by wanting to do more comedy,\u201d she explains. \u201cBecause people don\u2019t see me as a comedian, and I\u2019m not really the funny guy in the film. I\u2019m the straight man, which I\u2019m fine with.\u201d The finished short runs about 16 minutes. Thompson is in every frame.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThat film, for me, started out as a writing exercise,\u201d she says, \u201cand my next film as a director, I want to lean more into the visual language.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thompson is candid about where she focused her energy on this first outing.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI was more focused on figuring out how to direct in general,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was a comedy that\u2019s sort of in one location or less, and I played more with visuals in the second half or last third of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n
She doesn\u2019t pretend to have suddenly become a visual stylist overnight. Instead, she treated SIENNA & THE SIT as a laboratory for story and performance.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t need to be a DP,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not going to aspire to be a cinematographer, but it\u2019s fun to, like, understand what those things are and get a better way of\u2026speaking about them too.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Even so, she knew enough to surround herself with strong collaborators.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cYou\u2019ll see when you watch it that I had an excellent DP,\u201d she notes, \u201cand I feel really grateful for it, and just super high production value, because I know the value of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Her background as an actor and producer meant that pre-production and the shoot itself felt familiar. It was everything that came after that that tested her.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe thing I just really didn\u2019t know at all\u201d was editing and sound, which made her biggest learning curve post-production.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, making my short was\u2026understanding editing [and] sound,\u201d she says. \u201cI had produced before. So I understood pre-production and obviously physical production\u2026[but] the thing I just really didn\u2019t know at all was the edit phase and then the sound phase.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Thompson threw herself into it, discovering how small changes can alter the entire emotional rhythm of a scene\u2014especially in comedy. Her poor editor bore the brunt of that discovery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my editor was ready to kill me by the end,\u201d she admits with a laugh, \u201cwhen I was like, I need to open up the entire edit [and] pay almost as much for the entire thing for one three-second beat, because it wasn\u2019t landing.\u00a0 And I was like, \u2018This is worth it.\u2019 And I still stand by having done that.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0On the sound side, she suddenly found herself thinking in layers: dialogue, ambient, effects, music, silence.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s fascinating to learn those parts of the journey,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I loved going through that experience.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The lesson, hard won as it was: nothing about the back end of a film is trivial\u2014especially not when you\u2019re the one signing off on every frame.<\/p>\n
If post taught her patience, the shoot itself taught her how to let go of control.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end,\u201d she says of the film, \u201cthere\u2019s a fire sequence outside. And my premise is somewhat absurd. And I was headed into the weekend, and it was going to rain all weekend, and I was like, \u2018Oh, fuck, I have a fire sequence.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0She also had a story problem: she wanted her protagonist to end up hosing everyone down, but couldn\u2019t find a believable way to stage it.\u00a0\u00a0A friend cracked it for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy girlfriend was like, \u2018Well, you have an absurd premise with a person asking an absurd thing of her friends, like, why wouldn\u2019t she just drag them out to the rain?\u2019 And then I was like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s so great.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Suddenly, the forecast became an asset.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cSo the rain became this character,\u201d Thompson explains. \u201cAnd then we had to control the fact that we were shooting the final sequence before we were outside [in] the rain. So we were like, well, how do we control how wet everybody is, right?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Her producer offered a practical and poetic solution.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cMy producer was like, \u2018How about we get some umbrellas and make it be like a funeral?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Oh my God!\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The umbrellas turned what could have been a continuity nightmare into a striking tableau.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe elements, actually, the element of the rain, elevated the entire story, in my opinion,\u201d she says. \u201cIt just ended up being such a better visual for the film and elevated the story itself.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0And, in perfect indie movie fashion, nature gave them a closing flourish.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAlso, side note,\u201d she adds, \u201ca rainbow came out at wrap, which I called, like, two hours before wrap. I was like, \u2018I call the rainbow.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For Thompson, the experience was a visceral reminder of something she\u2019d already sensed working with Isaac Florentine on HELLFIRE: if you let them, unexpected conditions can deepen character and story.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIt was such a great lesson to me,\u201d she says, \u201clet go of control, let the elements work.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the wake of SIENNA & THE SIT, Thompson is clear-eyed about what comes next. Directing wasn\u2019t a one-off experiment. It\u2019s a path.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cNow I\u2019m addicted,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I want to go direct more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first half of this year, she explains, is about building a portfolio.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cMy sort of first half of this year is like, finish your\u2026six or seven projects,\u201d she says. \u201cSome of which are 90% baked and some of which are 2% baked, but get enough so that you can say, \u2018Here you go. This is what I, this is my voice, this is what I am.\u2019 And you can back it up with watching my short film as a director.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s just finished her first solo-written feature, has co-written a feature comedy, and is already starting another.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI hope somewhere in there to, you know, start teaming up with, looking for how to get these things made,\u201d she says. \u201cYou know, that\u2019s always the fun\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment, my real focus right now, outside of looking for my next acting gig, is the writing and getting a portfolio to a place where I can hopefully go get\u2026a literary agent,\u201d she says, \u201cand ideally, a lit director agent.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0She\u2019s feeding that process with labs and retreats – another writing retreat in Europe – while also plotting her next directing move.\u00a0 \u00a0“I\u2019m ready. I\u2019m ready to make my feature,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I might try another short to play around with before I jump in with that. So we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s a project that keeps surfacing in her imagination, it\u2019s a road trip two-hander\u2014a story that would let her combine her love of performance, landscape, and controlled chaos.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI wrote [one] as a road trip film,\u201d she says, \u201cand I\u2019m like, you can just come on this fun road trip, see America with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this isn\u2019t just an excuse to drive.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cPart of why I wrote the film I wrote,\u201d she explains, \u201cis to celebrate the nature of this nation, especially as it\u2019s all under threat. I like to weave in my\u2026subtle commentary on it. But the celebration of this beautiful country. Because when I think of America, the beauty\u2026what\u2019s so great about America? The land, quite frankly.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0But Scottie is not naive about the complications.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re this amalgamation of cultures,\u201d she says, \u201cand we\u2019re going through this moment where we\u2019re witnessing the challenge of amalgamation\u2026we don\u2019t really have, like, a cultural history that\u2019s rooted in anything other than not great things, I\u2019d say.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0A road trip film, for her, is a way to hold both the beauty and the tension\u2014on screen and in production.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m excited to discover things on the road,\u201d she says. \u201cTo say, \u2018Oh, this\u2026calls to us, that gives us a whole new flavor.\u2019 I\u2019m not tied to the locales as much as I am, like, the story itself. And so what room is there to play within it?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s the same lesson she learned in the rain: plan, but leave room for magic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope\u2026to find the two lead actors\u2026who are willing to play,\u201d she says. \u201cBuild in an extra two days on the road where you\u2019re like, \u2018Well, if we get behind schedule by a day or two, that\u2019s cool, because we\u2019re going to actually, like, use that as an inspiration point as opposed to a point of concern.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For an actor who has spent years embodying other people\u2019s visions\u2014from network procedurals to action thrillers like HELLFIRE\u2014SIENNA & THE SIT marks the moment SCOTTIE THOMPSON began shaping the frame herself.<\/p>\n
And if her mix of rigor, curiosity, and willingness to dance with the unexpected is any indication, this is only the first step in a much longer directorial journey.<\/p>\n
by debbie elias, exclusive interview 02\/27\/2026<\/p>\n
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SIENNA & THE SIT is currently on the film festival circuit.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
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