Today we’d like to introduce you to Kaitlyn Calta.
Hi Kaitlyn, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was born in raised in Tampa, Florida, where I began writing at a very young age. I was an avid reader when I was a child. My mom used to require me to read for an hour before bed each night, and it very quickly became my favorite pastime. I gained a lot of knowledge on story structure and character building very quickly, and started writing short stories when I was only 8 years old. All were very fictionalized versions of my real-life experiences, which is how I carry myself as an artist to this day- there is a piece of me or my experiences embedded in most everything I create, both fiction and nonfiction.
When I was about 12, I decided that one day, I wanted to write a book so good that someone would want to make a movie out of it, and only a year later, did I have the epiphany, “Why can’t I just make a movie?” This quickly shifted my focus from books to films. I bought myself a cheap camera, taught myself how to use editing softwares and began putting together short videos- travel videos from my family vacations, or yearly recaps of my life in review… anything that I could document and piece together. I had a newfound passion for filmmaking throughout my teenage years.
When it came time for college, I attended Florida State University, where I majored in Creative Writing and minored in Film Studies. I spent my time in college writing personal essays, studying literature, writing for on campus magazines, watching films and creating them myself. In 2020, during the pandemic, I landed a remote internship with a New York based editing company, Uppercut Edit, where I was mentored by a young editor and taught the ins and outs of many industry standard editing softwares. During this internship, I was tasked with developing, shooting, and editing a 5 minute documentary, which I used as a work sample for my grad school applications. Because my passion made itself known to me at such a young age, I knew exactly where I was headed, and was therefore able to take the right steps that led me to finish my Bachelor’s degree in just 2 short years.
In 2021, I was accepted into the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts as an MFA candidate in Film and Television Production at just 20 years old. I was the youngest person to be accepted into the program that year, and spent the next 3 years honing my craft. In 2022, I wrote and directed a 5 minute short film entitled Under the Robe, which premiered at USC School of Cinematic Arts in May of 2022. I worked on a number of productions during my time at USC, under a range of different roles. In my 3 years at USC I worked on over 30 productions– short films, features, TV pilots, commercials, social content, music videos…. My specialization was in directing and producing, though I dipped my toe in a plethora of other roles in both production and post to broaden my horizons and understandings of the entertainment industry.
In August of 2024, I developed, and shortly thereafter, pitched a 25-minute documentary concept to a panel of tenured USC faculty. Among 20+ pitchers, I was selected by the panel to bring my concept to fruition, and spend my next (and final) semester at USC directing my short documentary, entirely funded by the university. The documentary was a personal one, titled “Humor Me,” in which my middle-aged, recently unemployed father was faced with the opportunity to shift his career path after spending the last 27 years at the same job, ever since the unexpected death of his wife. I, his filmmaker daughter, challenged him to take a stab at a career in comedy, as a means of exploring his passions and using art as a tool to process his past and his grief. My dad came to stay with me in my 800 square foot apartment in downtown Los Angeles, where we spent 3 months filming my documentary, and putting him through an intensive stand-up comedy crash course.
The film was completed on May 4th of 2024, and screened for the first time at USC School of Cinematic Arts. We promptly entered the festival circuit, during which we have been accepted into a number of Oscar Qualifying Film Festivals — including but not limited to America’s Largest Documentary Film Festival, DocNYC and St. Louis International Film Festival. Our festival run is still in process, and will conclude sometime in late 2025.
I graduated USC in May of 2024, and promptly began working for old professor and mentor, Jennifer Warren, who founded and runs the nonprofit organization, The Alliance of Women Directors. In this role, I spent much of my time assisting Jennifer in functions relating to The Alliance, as well as helping to develop her personal projects. I aided in research and development for a number of both fiction and nonfiction concepts that Jennifer is now in the process of pitching to major studios. In July of 2024, I began work as a producer for a small reality TV start up company. I spent much of my day to day crafting plot-lines and episode outlines for the company’s programming, and delivering them to field producers for seamless execution. I was very quickly promoted to Head of Post Production in December of 2024, where I managed a team of 7 editors across all of the company’s programming. I was often a liaison between production and post, and spent much of my time with a hand in both worlds. I held this position until the end of April of 2025, when I made the decision to set my sights on my personal projects, and part with the role I held for the last year of my career. My focus has now shifted to the development of my passion projects. At the moment, I am currently developing a docu-series concept and simultaneously beginning work on my debut novel.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has certainly not been an easy journey. I have, for many years, been told that I was lucky to know so early on, what my calling was. Most people go their whole lives wondering what they were meant to do, and I’ve known since I was 8. What they failed to acknowledge was the fact that art, writing, and filmmaking were the only constants in my life for most of it. Yes, I was fortunate to know my passion early on, but it was all I knew about myself for a long time.
When you’re born, you are given 50% of your identity from your father and 50% of your identity from your mother. And of course, as you grow, you learn things about yourself, and shift your values, and chase whatever lights you on fire, but your core remains the same – 50% mom, 50% dad. My mom died when I was 3 weeks old, and I spent most of my life wondering and questioning that 50% of myself that I never had the pleasure of knowing. A picture was painted through stories and photos, but I struggled immensely with identity, because I felt like I had grown up without a piece of who I was.
A lot of my childhood was exploration of my identity. I went through so many phases that didn’t stick, and tasked myself with the project of learning all there was to know about my mom, so that my own identity would become clearer to me. But it didn’t get me any closer to knowing myself. If anything, it left me hollow, knowing I was deprived of a life with the mother that was taken from me. As a result, I let everything ride on my art, because it was the only thing I knew to be true about myself- if nothing else, I was an artist and always would be.
It’s been a long road to undoing that way of thinking. I let my self-worth and my sense of belonging and my happiness ride on my art and the response it received, and struggled to understand who I was outside of my art. I think many artists struggle with this feeling, and I think it’s a constant journey to deconstructing this notion that we are only what we create. Beyond my art, I am also a sister, and a daughter, and an aunt, and a crocheter, and a reader, and a movie watcher, and a friend, and a woman. I am not only my art. But my art is certainly me.
I now use this search for identity and my grapplings with young grief as tools in my art and pull on these experiences for inspiration constantly. I am grateful to have experienced this struggle, because I feel that these emotions make me a stronger, more emotionally in-tune artist and collaborator.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am a writer, director, and producer, specializing in long-form, creative and narrative programming. Though I have a soft spot for fiction content, I have also really honed my skills in the last few years as a documentary director, and strive as an artist to tell raw stories pertaining to the human experience. My nonfiction work is most often shared through the lens of an artist with a fiction background– I love to bend genre and blend fiction elements with non-fiction storytelling, in a hybrid format to engage a wider audience. As a documentary director, I think it is important that your participants feel they can trust you with their stories. I believe I have a knack for connecting with people on a level that makes them comfortable enough to leave their stories in my hands. I am of the belief that the only way to make relatable and raw content is by accessing a certain level of vulnerability. Few will be affected by the work you are doing if you do not create a safe enough space for your viewer (and your collaborators) to be vulnerable alongside you. I pride myself on my ability to access vulnerability and pull my art from that place. I believe this is what makes me a stand-out documentary director- this unguardedness is what helps me to create my relationships with my subjects and find emotional connections to the stories we are telling, even if they are not directly my own.
I am most known for my directing work on my documentary short, “Humor Me,” which world premiered at DocNYC this past November. The response to and success of the film has been overwhelming, and a true guiding light for me. The making of this film lit the brightest flame inside me, and the positive response has validated that the work we did touched the lives of many. I feel grateful for the experience, and only hope to continue creating films, television shows, books, and other content that touch the lives of those who engage with them.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
I am really, very dedicated to my craft, and make efforts daily, to figure out what the right steps are to reaching my goals. My dedication and organization have carried me far in this lifetime, and I pride myself on those qualities. I feel fortunate to have known my calling so early on, because it’s given me the certainty I needed to set my eye on the prize, and take strategic and consistent steps to get there. I’m not sure I’d say there is one quality or characteristic that is most important to my success. Every day is an opportunity to grow and learn, and the path to success in the entertainment industry is certainly not a linear one. That said, I’ve also come to realize in the last few years, the importance of trusting your timing. Once, I was told that dreams are like flowers. If you hold the seed of your dream so tightly in your palm as to avoid losing sight of it, it’ll never grow. It’ll never be exposed to the sunlight or the air or the rain it needs to blossom. With dreams, I think sometimes we grip onto them too desperately, and suffocate them. But only when we let go and find new ways to nurture them, is when they start to take shape. I think mastering this trust in myself, my dreams, and my timing, has played a key role in my success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kaitlyncalta.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaitlyn.calta/profilecard/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlyn-calta-01bb4a1a0/
- Other: https://vimeo.com/user195986015
