As the lights turn off, our family is bathed in the darkness. The screen in front of us illuminates the entire room with its brightness, and we are immersed in the story. The characters lived and breathed so much life, from heartbreak to independence, to a happily-ever-after ending. Little pieces of their souls were used, lost, and found again in the span of their stories; My breathing mirrored theirs until the curtains closed on their stories, and I fell back into my differing existence. This was every Friday night or Saturday morning in my earlier years; a film with the family would encapsulate my entire world as I got lost in the characters and their stories. I am a first-generation Nigerian-American, and I am a woman: I am cast as the best friend, the antagonist to a usual white protagonist, or a background character - nonexistent. This motivates me to continue my passion in the world of visual arts. Someone who looks like me rarely takes center stage. I find myself angry that the very industry I live and breathe does not seem to want me. I choose to wield my anger not as a deterrent but as my motivation to create a space in cinema and television for others like me. My experiences fuel my desire to double major in Film and Business. I want to write, produce, and direct stories of a diverse range of individuals who are typically underrepresented. I want people to be able to see people like themselves, unrestricted by stereotypes or the lenses of a non-marginalized group trying to represent them. I want to help broaden the range of those who can be the main character and perhaps even become one myself - in the world’s reality, not just my own. This is part of my identity, I want to be a voice for the unrepresented. This scholarship will help me get one step closer to paying the thousands of dollars my school costs. And closer to making that dream come true. One concept for an animated cartoon TV show I would love to develop - is the story of Jodie Rêveuse. Growing up, she heard stories from her Haitian and Nigerian grandmother about the 'awo orisa', individuals blessed by God with abilities passed through their bloodlines. After her grandmother passes away, Jodie realizes that these bedtime stories are not just stories, as she inherits her family's dreamwalking ability. Jodie becomes able to enter the dreams of those she thinks about before she falls asleep or any person near and asleep without the ability. She inherits the family's ability to walk through other people's dreams [hereafter referred to as dreamwalk] and has not dreamed since, but has dreamwalked through dreams of those she thinks about before, she sleeps. In a dream, she can live the dream with them, investigate things, and read the dreamer’s thoughts before they fall asleep. One night, during a dreamwalk, Jodie enters the dream of her best friend Zaire Jeong-Novoa's sister, Seven, just before she is knocked out at a party. Jodie then enters other dreams where Seven is being knocked out by an unknown person. When Seven wakes up, Jodie calls the police to report her disappearance, but she is dismissed because Seven has not been missing for twenty-four hours, and Jodie is not her legal guardian. Jodie then teams up with Zaire and other classmates to try to find the missing girl before the situation becomes even more dangerous. I would name the show, Dreamwalkers.

It was just a show. A show unlike any before it. I felt it saw me. Her character defined me and took me out of the confines I had lived in, for so long. I was present, not neglected, I had never found a show with characters that were real in their complexities that told their stories of sticking out. It’s safe to say I love Daria, and it remains forever in my catalog of great television. I fell even more in love with the show when I saw her character. Walking on screen with a pink button-up, pulled-back braids, class, and perfect posture: Jodie Landon, Lawndale High’s finest. Jodie was President of every club, head of every initiative, and straight-A student; she was the antitype of every stereotype I had seen to represent myself up, until that point. She was a character that I lived and breathed. Not because I am a perfect student or a natural leader, but because she was just trying to get through everything: society, people, life, school, and stress as best as she could. She was authentic. Jodie dealt with pressure from her overbearing parents, stressing herself, and she knew that because she was in a 'white space she was only seen for her black face'. She was the token for all her school events to show ‘diversity', and she knew it, but she took it as an opportunity to be a face to represent other little minority girls as a role model. Jodie Landon was a character I felt for a character I could relate to; one of the first characters that - were not on a television show trying to tell me how my experience should be. Not on a television show that wanted to monetize the black experience into a monolith. She was real. I am a first-generation American low-income student with immigrant parents from Africa, and I have always seen either broken English speakers or gangsters as representations of my experience, but I have never lived either. I always felt as though I lived outside of my box: one of the few people of color in my classes, not an American upbringing, and dual languages at home. I feel as though I have so many different lives to live, but I have never felt represented as any of them on screen. I want to make shows, films, and stories at my own production company that features a diverse range of characters so everyone has someone to connect with outside of the box where they are placed. This scholarship would propel me closer to closing the gap in paying for my education so I could be one step closer to running this company and creating my art. I know what it feels like to be nonexistent on screen. I want to stop others from experiencing the same isolation, for simply being themselves. I want to display characters that feel three-dimensional to every person they are trying to portray: human beings, not caricatures painted as representations. I want to make 'Jodie Landons' for other people to feel represented.

It was just a show. A show unlike any before it. I felt it saw me. Her character defined me and took me out of the confines I had lived in, for so long. I was present, not neglected, I had never found a show with characters that were real in their complexities that told their stories of sticking out. It’s safe to say I love Daria, and it remains forever in my catalog of great television. I fell even more in love with the show when I saw her character. Walking on screen with a pink button-up, pulled-back braids, class, and perfect posture: Jodie Landon, Lawndale High’s finest. Jodie was President of every club, head of every initiative, and straight-A student; she was the antitype of every stereotype I had seen to represent myself up, until that point. She was a character that I lived and breathed. Not because I am a perfect student or a natural leader, but because she was just trying to get through everything: society, people, life, school, and stress as best as she could. She was authentic. Jodie dealt with pressure from her overbearing parents, stressing herself, and she knew that because she was in a 'white space she was only seen for her black face'. She was the token for all her school events to show ‘diversity', and she knew it, but she took it as an opportunity to be a face to represent other little minority girls as a role model. Jodie Landon was a character I felt for a character I could relate to; one of the first characters that were not on a television show trying to tell me how my experience should be. Not on a television show that wanted to monetize the black experience into a monolith. She was real. I am a first-generation American low-income student with immigrant parents from Africa, and I have always seen either broken English speakers or gangsters as representations of my experience, but I have never lived either. I always felt as though I lived outside of my box: one of the few people of color in my classes, not an American upbringing, and dual languages at home. I feel as though I have so many different lives to live, but I have never felt represented as any of them on screen. I dream of creating shows, films, and stories at my own production company that features a diverse range of characters so everyone has someone to connect with outside of the box where they are placed. This scholarship would propel me closer to closing the gap in paying for my education so I could be one step closer to running this company and creating my art. I know what it feels like to be nonexistent on screen. I want to stop others from experiencing the same isolation, for simply being themselves. I want to display characters that feel three-dimensional to every person they are trying to portray: human beings, not caricatures painted as representations. I want to make Jodie Landon characters for other people to feel represented by.

Whenever I think of Zendaya - I think of the first time I saw her acting on Shake It Up, a Disney Channel show. I was nothing more than 7, watching the premiere of a new show, Shake It Up. It started like so, with the main character, CeCe walking out on a train station track. Followed by her friend they were both dancing for money. Later, as the main character, CeCe talks to her Mom about something before getting ready to go off to school in walks Rocky Blue, who was one of the first main characters I saw that looked like me. I instantly was taken by surprise. I liked her character. Not just for her pigmentation but her energy and personality. She was warm and was an enigma. The nice and sweet Rocky wasn’t any stereotype that I had grown up seeing of a black woman. Rocky was played by none other than Queen - Zendaya at 13. I was struck by her character and liked her as I watched the show. She was warm, funny, and captivating, she was a character who breathed life that I could relate to by being black in a predominately white space. But also just in just being herself. I first heard Zendaya’s song, “Butterflies”, when I was still watching Shake It Up. And it came up in the Disney viewing of their songs and artists. I was waiting to watch Shake It Up, and I listened to it, and I loved it. I still have the song on so many of my playlists. I noticed her again on a Red Carpet episode being trolled by the Fashion Police show. They were radically calling out her faux dreads hairstyle saying, 'it looked like she 'smelled of Patchouli' and wasn't in their opinion 'appropriate for the Red Carpet event'. Zendaya handled their words with grace and class as she tweeted about how their words showed bigotry and racism concerning many harmful and derogatory stereotypes of the black community. A couple of years later, I heard that, Euphoria was a new show that was the most realistic of the high school experience, me and my classmates had seen. I heard that Zendaya was the main character, Rue. And I immediately wanted to watch because I had the experience of receiving her characters, well. Since she works with the scriptwriters to construct her characters healthily and naturally. When I watched Euphoria, I was at first taken aback by the fact that Rue was an addict, but I began to realize that her story was trying to get past her addiction and rise above it. Zendaya probably chose this role to be an inspiration to her fans, who had addictions to fight the good fight - to overcome their addictions. I continued to watch because I was fascinated with Rue; her development, and the fight. As I watched episode 8, I heard Zendaya's telltale voice singing, “All For Us” intricately, dynamically, and beautifully while Rue overdosed again. The song showed Zendaya's impeccable chords as her character was overcome by the drugs, making the scene even more poignant and radical. The show was heart-wrenching in its tale of addiction and Rue's struggle to rise above it, and I believe it helped fans with addictions see that addiction is a fight but that they could overcome it. I have loved Zendaya as an actress and singer since I was 7. For all she is. Her positive energy, character, and her activism. I am a Zendaya superfan.

As the lights turn off we are bathed in the darkness before the screen in front of us illuminates the entire room as we wholly engage in the story. The characters lived so much life, from heartbreak to independence, to the happily-ever-after ending. Little pieces of their souls were used, lost, and found again in the short span of their stories; I lived as they did. My breathing mirrored theirs until the curtain closed on their stories, and I fell back. It was me again. This was every Friday night in my years; a film with the family would encapsulate my entire world as I got lost in the characters and their odysseys. When we were not watching films within the confines of our home, we spent Saturday mornings at the AMC theater, and the experiences were just as transcendental. After years of repetition, my eyes began to close at the moment the cinema doors were pulled open movements synchronized. There was a welcome air that was accompanied by the ever-present smell of oversalted popcorn straight from the machine. Even with my eyes closed, I could see the mural - the mural proudly displayed on the front wall of the entrance, the mural of so many films that I have collected in my mind over the years. When I am not trying to inhale as much cinema as possible, I am occupied by living my reality. From the time I discovered that playing a character in a film was a job, I knew I wanted it. I knew I wanted to blend my realities with those in films. I like to think everything in my reality happens like a film. And this reality was a film that I wrote, directed, produced, and starred in - a film of my creation. There is a well-thought-out, though erratic, story progression, full of semi-polished characters who are neither problematic nor perfect and an open-ended closing scene with countless possibilities on the horizon. From the moment I open my eyes in the morning, the cameras start rolling, from the sun trying to peep through my thick curtains to yesterday’s clothes still laying on my floor. It becomes a film that I am almost always cast as the unwitting lead, every day new adventures full of extraordinary opportunities for failures, losses, and everything in between. Every day plays out like a new voyage, waiting to unfold. Though when I compare the chronicles of my films to those I have followed my whole life, I am, the lead in my reality, but in the world’s reality I am seldom cast as one. This scholarship will help me get closer to my dreams of changing that. I am a first-generation Nigerian-American, and I am a woman: I am cast as the BFF, the antagonist to a white protagonist, or background character. Someone who looks like me rarely takes center stage. I find myself angry that the very industry I live/breathe does not seem to want me. My passion is the fuel for my desire to double major in Film and Business. I want to write, produce, and direct stories of a diverse range of individuals, that are typically underrepresented. I want people to be able to see people like themselves, unrestricted by stereotypes or the lenses of a non-marginalized group trying to represent them. I want to help broaden the range of those who can be the main character and perhaps even become one myself - in the world’s reality, not just my own. I plan to be a filmmaker and this scholarship will help that happen.

It was just a show. A show unlike any before it I felt it saw me. Her character defined me and took me out of the confines I had lived in so long. I was present, not neglected, I had never found a show with characters that were real in their complexities that told their stories of sticking out. It’s safe to say I’ve loved Daria before I had even watched an episode, and it remains forever in my vindication of great television. I fell even more in love with the show when I saw her character. Walking on the screen with a pink button-up, pulled back braids, class, and perfect posture was Jodie Landon, Lawndale High’s finest. Jodie was President of every club, head of every initiative, and straight-A student; she was the antitype of every stereotype I had seen to represent myself up until that point. She was a character that I lived and breathed. Not because I am a perfect student or a natural leader but because she was authentic. Jodie dealt with pressure from her parents, stressing herself, and she knew that because she was in a white space she was only seen for her black face. She was the token for all her school events to show ‘diversity', and she knew it, but she took it as an opportunity to be a face to represent other little girls as a role model. Jodie Landon was a character I felt for a character I could relate to; one of the first characters that were not on a television show trying to tell me how my black experience should be. Not on a television show that wanted to monetize the black experience into a monolith. I am a first-generation American low-income student with immigrant parents from Africa, and I have always seen either broken English speakers or gangsters as the representations of my experience, but I have never lived either. I always felt as though I live outside of my box: one of the few people of color in my classes, not a fully American upbringing, and dueling languages at home. I feel as though I have so many different lives to live, but I have never felt represented as any of them on screen. I want to make shows, films, and stories at my own production company that features a diverse range of characters so everyone has someone to connect with outside of the box where they are placed. This scholarship would propel me closer to closing the gap in paying for my education so I could be one step closer to running this company and creating my own art. I know what it feels like I want to stop others from experiencing the same isolation for simply being themselves. I want to display characters that feel three-dimensional to every person they are trying to portray: human-beings, not caricatures painted as representation. I want to make Jodie Landons for other people to feel represented.

"Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do" If their hair could sing a tune it would resonate like that of a beautiful melody sung by angels. They were angelhaired by every magazine spread, ad, and music video, every hair care brand tended to their whims. While I could barely find a shampoo that wasn't for fine and shiny blond hair that would just leave my mess of coils in tangles. Hair so wonderful the sun seemed to shine off it a little bit brighter; glistening on the blond pin-straight hair of nearly all my classmates even indoors. Those cursed florescent lights that blinked with uncertainty in and out stood strong and glowed directly above their heads adding to the light that already seen attracted to their very existence. Walking through that door into the threshold of 2nd grade, a simple look stated a quintessential fact; I stood out like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Those four equally spaced horridly dull midnight black pigtails, that lacked the shine of the sun, were a blackhole on my head eating up any and all light that even dared shine above me. Those pigtails that my Mom insisted looked fine stood out on my head in a sea of blonde and brown they made me different in a tangible way that I had previously been ignoring. I stood out for a long time, the token girl in a homogeneous fountain but it had just usually gone unnoticed with braids: I could do all the same styles as the other girls, each time begging for smaller ones to look like they grew directly from my scalp like everyone else's hair but they were never small enough. If a person squinted their eyes to the point of barely seeing then maybe my black would blend with everyone else's white and we would look the same. Be the same. The fact was I did not know I stood out until that very moment before I could fool myself and everyone else into thinking I was like everyone else like I was a white. I could pretend I did not get the second looks at birthday parties, I could pretend that a lack of invites didn't hurt, I could pretend that my hair didn't defy the laws of gravity, I could pretend I could swim without a cap, I could pretend that my mahogany skin was like theirs, I could pretend I could be the next Angelina Jolie without looking anything like her, I could pretend to love every Taylor Swift song I heard, I could pretend my food didn’t smell different, look different, and culture was different, I could pretend my language wasn’t a foreign language that only a minority of people knew, I could pretend until that very day when I could not. Maybe it was the wait it took for me to get through the doorway but eyes inside and out of the classroom were on the girl who stood out. But the tell-tale look in their eyes all voiced the same thing in all their minds. From then on I knew I could not pretend anymore. Being an outlier, an outsider, and a misfit has shaped my dreams because I will not wait to be invited to the table the minority voice for all minorities and all women but I will make my own table for a variety of people that have also felt like they live on the outside so we can finally feel accepted. I researched the lack of diversity in Hollywood my sophomore year and I found my purpose. I used the lack of representation and diversity in Hollywood as my motivator for change and not my deterrent: I know what it is like to be left out and I want to create spaces, stories, and films for those we feel that way to finally feel seen. I am okay with being one of the first because I am okay with being on the outside and setting up my own chair. I want more than anything to be a filmmaker so I can to stop pretending to be like everyone else and just be me. That is what that one day in 2nd grade taught me that I stand out and I am proud to.

Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac sounds transcendental to my ears, from its opening notes to its concluding ones. Whenever I listen, I feel validated by the bewitching way that Stevie Nicks sings the lyrics, compelling me to sing-along. “ She rules her life like a bird in flight.” To me, the song is an ode to Rhiannon: the license she has over life, a goddess among women. Rhiannon rules her life unafraid to be heard. Listening to Rhiannon makes me remise of moments I believed I could become anything, ruling my destiny, and makes me think I sincerely can again.

"Representation in the fictional world signifies social existence; absence means symbolic annihilation." (Gerbner & Gross) “I want to be a filmmaker.” Those were the first words that tumbled out of my mouth before a conversation even started. As the door closes on another theater with another movie, on another Saturday, on another trip. But this trip felt different. This trip was the trip where I found my purpose found the answer to that tell-tale question. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answers I had been giving all my life had been shrugs of indecision and awkward smiles of uncertainty followed by stiff laughs, but finally, my indecisiveness on the topic had waned, and I knew. I knew more clearly than I knew of my name, my age, and anything in my life; I was destined to be a filmmaker. I had to be. Since those words left my mind, my very thinking has turned into a continuously rolling film. I took in every memory to store for later and write about, to ponder on. I have written dozens upon dozens of scripts and stories: some successful others fade into oblivion on the page and in my mind. I need to film and write like others need to dance, need to laugh, need to breathe. It is apart of the very fabric of my being. I, a woman of color looking to be a filmmaker, am symbolically annihilated. Although women make up 51% of the population and minorities makeup 40% of America, our representation in the film industry is nowhere near these numbers. Searching for something to research my sophomore year, I was drawn to the same place I always am, films. I watch films when I am upset, cornered, content, optimistic, and every emotion in-between. In the catalog of films I have seen and the ones I know of I rarely see a character that looks, talks, walks, or is like me. A character that which I could genuinely relate to or denote my social existence. I want to develop stories with characters that are as real as their stories. Characters that people can relate to from their faults to their strengths and the only way I know how to tell those stories is through film. I want to study film in college because I need to signify my existence and the existence of others largely ignored by the media.