Teens
Filmmaker Sharon Shattuck and Project Dad
Arts or sciences? For most people, it’s one or the other. However, when Sharon Shattuck was growing up in northern Michigan, she learned the value of both arts and sciences from her parents. Her mom is a pathologist, and her dad is a landscape architect and artist. When it came time to go to college, influenced by her parents as well as her science- and plant-focused upbringing, Sharon chose to study biology and forest ecology. She knows all about plants, their Latin names, properties, and characteristics. She is a true scientist and has done research projects in Central America. It was there that she decided she didn’t feel like she was contributing in the best way.
Rather than just doing research, working in remote locations by herself or as part of a small team, she wanted to share her work and share science with people in a new way, by synthesizing and making it easy to understand, and by telling stories in a captivating way. She wanted to “communicate science more than do research in the field.” She decided the best way to do this was to go to graduate school and become a filmmaker. Sharon says filmmaking made sense as a way to “explain things to people in an interesting way – not in a dorky way, hopefully.”
The first film Sharon directed, as part of her graduate school thesis, premiered at the Traverse City Film Festival in 2010. Called Parasite: A User’s Guide, the film is about using parasitic worms to help treat certain illnesses, such as asthma. Sharon’s next film, Whale Fall, premiered in 2011. It is a short animated film about the lifecycle of a whale, and specifically what happens to it after it dies. Sharon has her own production company, called Sweet Fern Productions, and often works on graphics, animations or illustrations for other film producers.
| Sharon filming in Doha, Qatar | ||
In 2012, she decided to go away from science for a bit and make a film about LGBT-headed families. “I always wanted to make a film about my family and about my dad…just because it’s my reality,” says Sharon. Sharon’s dad changed her name to Tricia and started using the female pronouns when Sharon was a teenager. After seeing a lack of understanding in the community, especially about transgender people like her dad, Sharon realized how much ignorance, or lack of knowing, is out there. “There needs to be more explanation, like not sensational explanation… something real, and I realized, well I’m a filmmaker, I can tell stories – maybe I can tell this one.”
Sharon started a kickstarter project to raise money to make the film. They met the goal and recently began filming. The film, titled Project Dad, will take Sharon around the country talking to people about their experience in LGBT-headed families. So far, Sharon’s travels have kept her pretty local, or close to where she grew up in Michigan. The film will show footage from real families, including her own, and interviews from experts to show the legal and political angle. Even though Project Dad is more of a social movie, Sharon would love to find a way to include scientists’ perspective, especially with things like explaining transgender.
Working on Project Dad has been an interesting process for Sharon. “When I was a kid, I felt very alone,” says Sharon. She enjoys talking to kids and learning about other LGBT-headed families’ experiences and if anything has changed from when she grew up. She has learned a lot about how other families work and has been able to relate in a very personal way to those stories. “Not everybody did it the way my family did,” Sharon says. There is a lot of diversity in LGBT-headed families and a “crazy spectrum of acceptance,” she says. Sharon loves meeting people, and making films allows her to meet many amazing people.
When Sharon isn’t making movies, which is rare, she enjoys traveling, especially to Central and South America, and playing old-fashioned fiddle music. She and her fiancée have two cats and ten fiddles. And of course, she still loves plants.
