Sion-Raize

Oh, he’s in @deadline today. 🦚 Honored and highly hyped to take part in this filmmaking fellowship thanks to @levelground.co and @navamau . Life is an event and I’m taking my time on the red carpet! 💛 So many badass filmmakers with exceptional projects and purviews are a part of this and I’m nestling in amongst them. What imposter syndrome? I am. WE ARE. After the overwhelming success of “RAM (Like the Verb),” I am developing another short film set in the @prettydudesweb universe. 💜 A birthday-set story of friendship and self-image, “Accessories Only” will be a mixed media short film combining live action with hybrid animation. Just like “RAM” and “I Know Him So Well,” I am learning new styles and tools to tell this story with heartfelt honesty and horny humor. Nava is quoted in the article as saying, “This fellowship is an exploration and an experiment to see what happens when we plant seeds outside the studio system and beyond the mainstream.” 💚 What a blessing to find avenues that allow me to be as unhinged and creative as I can be while surrounded by other authentic voices in an equitable environment. Let’s. Fatherfucking. Go. 🙌🏾

You know it’s a shindig when I got them tiddymeats out. 😋 Blessed beyond belief to receive this prestigious award in such esteemed company. To share the honor of Outstanding Animation (Short) with Dreamworks’s “Wednesdays with Gramps” and the moment and microphone with producer @_shayyrenee was very Barbra and Katherine in ‘69. Very Patti and Lisa in ‘91. It was a privilege to stand with her in celebration of these particular films. 🤩 I kept it short and saucy onstage, but thank you so much to @micheauxfilmfest for the acknowledgement and honor. This was my baby, but in no way did I do it by myself, so I extol those animating Goblins Fraser and Luke (they’re untaggable, but studiogoblin), music producer @gbascomusic , and my friend @ajrafael who granted me the freedom to steer this ship straight into my dreams. 🥰 A special thank you to both @gerrymaravilla and @moviefeens , the former for talking common sense back into me when I encountered my first wall, and the latter for talking artistic nonsense back into me when I started building needless walls of my own. This one’s for the fairies who always wanted their own tales. 🧚🏾‍♂️

GRAD NITE, my new horror feature screenplay, is now up on the @theblcklst . 🔪 I love to take my favorite subgenres—the sex comedy, the superhero saga, the juvenile fantasy, and now the horror slasher—and populate the narratives with characters I recognize and know. GRAD NITE is filled with Black, Latinx, mixed, Asian, Pacific Islander, queer&trans, disabled, funny, moody, horny, judgmental, impassioned teenagers that are rarely centralized in these films. Striving to live in an environment determined to kill you is an experience many people who are othered and systemically marginalized are familiar with. I heightened that journey, sharpened its edges, gave it some sheen, and allowed the darkness of the genre to provide its own kind of black light illumination. 🪓 To prepare, I watched and rewatched some of my faves (Screams 1, 2 & 4; Cherry Falls; the 2009 Friday the 13th; Halloween 1 & H20; The Helen Shivers Story), previously unseen classics/cult favorites (the OG Black Christmas; April Fools Day; Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker; Sleepaway Camp; Blood and Black Lace; Alice, Sweet Alice), some uniquely modern takes on the genre (Happy Death Day; Sick; Totally Killer; Init!ation; Freaky), and films that focused on characters with realities similar to mine (Hellbent; the Fear Street trilogy; Killer Unicorn; Knife+Heart; Departing Seniors) to really see if I had something fresh worth saying, and an adept way of saying it. (I also rewatched that horrifying episode of Misfits with the killer rabbit.) I watched and rewatched 135 slashers since beginning this project in January. 🔨 I love this script and these characters—Aza, Bee Gees, Gracyn, Janisse, Kai, Latif, MycKynzeigh, New Kid, Quince, Ramario, Soluna, Troy, Valencia, Wildman, Zurielle, Coach Dimmesdale, Fire Chief Hightower, Mr. Randol, Ms. Triple-U, and my deadly doom machine The Dragon. 🐉 (Plus a badass @Doechii appearance.) Hic sunt dracones. 🔪 “While enjoying an overnight celebration at a regional theme park, a group of high school seniors are targeted by a vicious, unforgiving killer.” For some of them, “the night of their lives” will be the *last* night of their lives.

I put @willitfitness in these @raskolapparel pants and pointed my Sony in his general direction. 📷 I swear this dude just majicks the camera or something. (He also gives the best pep talks when you’re feeling down about your situation or yourself.)

Who’s your fairy Divamother?🎤💅🏽 Take a guess. Then take the quiz on our latest Substack post by Sion-Raze (@csrcalloway ). “I once said on one of the social medias that as a young gay man, I chose my own Fairy Divamother. I needed someone larger than life and aspirational to bring recurrent magic into my life. A female singer, with hair up to there and down to here, and outfits equally outrageous as they are fashionable. I found her when I was four years old, and she has served me well.” - Sion-Raze 🔗 in bio as always divas 😉

My sister is such an inspiration to me. To see her raise two of my favorite humans into such wonderful people makes me proud as the baby bro. The first picture is one I took of her right after I got my first camera. I’m mostly sure the pictures of me with the niblings were also taken with that same camera. The last video with the little homie Taj is what I agreed to about half an hour before service, so I had to read the lyrics. Hope my sister continues to be a happy mother. 💜💛💚

Not me over here trying to figure out if laurels should go on a screenplay 😭 (I need to make a teaser poster, honestly.) After winning hardware for Best Screenplay at the Horror Underground Film & Screenplay Festival in January, my GRAD NITE slasher screenplay received a semi-finalist placement in the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards Diversity Initiative and has been accepted into the International Horror Hotel Film Festival! I knew it was good. Now y’all about to know. 🎓

Iconography and celebrity. Aspiration and reverence. Black men and Black boys and audiences of Black women. Sion-Raize here, and in today’s Collectivizing Culture entry, I dissected the culture of Black princes and why we deserve so much better.

Squeezed in a quick lensing session with @willitfitness last time he came to town. I put him in a @strappmetal flannel to pair with his denim and let the settings (camera, sun) do the rest. Feels kinda urban cowboy to me… Farmer in the stylish dell, maybe. Hoeing, but make it fashion, or whatever Tyra said. #fyp

🏆 We were honored with three awards at the @chinatownfilmfestival for “I Know Him So Well,” including a beautiful handmade trophy for the Independent Spirit Award. 🐉 This is one of my favorite festivals for all of the care and consideration provided in their selection process. 🧜🏾‍♂️ I’m grateful for the reception and accompanying honors awarded this project. 🔱 “He needs his fantasy and freedom.”

👨🏾‍💻 In our most recent Collectivizing Culture entry, I ask a few hard questions that don’t have definitive answers. How do you balance the good in art with some of its more harmful aspects? 🤔 This goes deeper than “separating the art from the artist,” especially when the art is collaborative. Substack link in our bio!

It started as a way to keep my brain occupied during the COVID lockdown. 🦠 It turned into one of my best received projects to date, racking up worldwide accolades and screenings. 🍿 I wrote a bit before about how I rotoscoped “RAM (Like the Verb),” and I recently refreshed that document for my Substack. “RAM” is taking its final lap around the festival circuit, carrying the “Pretty Dudes” torch after successfully stoking my own filmmaking flame. (I began animation on “RAM” years before I conceived “I Know Him So Well” in any fashion.) 🐏 A small bit of trivia: there was actually a “Seinfeld” joke that kicked off the film, which is odd for me primarily because I’ve only seen three episodes of the show including the one referenced. 📺 More than a joke, it was bookended with a sincere echo as the final line, but I struggled animating the initial sequence and had to cut both references, changing my opener and ending. I think the film is ultimately much stronger without either moment. 💪🏾