3 Easy Steps

Director Statement

3 EASY STEPS started out as a love letter to myself to get help for my ADHD. My writing partner, Nicole Murray, and I were inspired by a vision of a window into a colorful world set against a dark forest and a “self-help” article called “How to Kill the Old You and Be Reborn”. With those as our starting point, this script, and then production, and then post, became a vessel for us to work through whatever we were dealing with. For me, the message was loud and clear: accept yourself and seek help, or lose yourself.

This film is meant to not only bring us along on Jane’s journey, but get us into her senses. The cinematography by Olesia Saveleva and sound design by Isabel Roney help us feel Jane’s overwhelm, distraction, and sensory disorders. The genre shifting is meant to reflect the emotional dysregulation that is a huge part of my experience of ADHD. The chaos is quirky and fun, until suddenly it’s not at all. The film evolved even more during the post-production process. Our editor, Lauren Skelton, and composer, Jina Hyojin An, both have ADHD as well and were able to bring their own lived experiences to this project to make the film both more specific and universal.

One important element of this film is that ADHD is never the “bad” thing. While my ADHD is the part of me that feels overwhelmed and stressed or causes me to explode at a minor and random inconvenience, it is also the part of me that is curious, playfully imaginative, and passionately adventurous. I want to approach that part of me with grace and kindness, giving it the care it deserves.

This was a fiercely independent production. A total of nine women and non-binary folks went to the forest, then a cafe, then a cyc stage complete with a colorful build to make this in a labor of love. Our producer was our lead, and I was her alternate version, my first time as a director/actor combo. We continued to prioritize hiring creators of marginalized genders during the post-production process, meaning by the end our entire crew and cast (minus background) was a women, trans, and/or non-binary person.

While this film comes from my experience with ADHD, I believe it reflects the universal experience of the importance of accepting oneself and the shame that stops us from doing so. I’m not interested in making (or seeing) a film where a director tries to tell you something. I’m much more interested in going through something, trying to figure it out through this beautiful medium of film, and taking the audience along for the ride. I hope when people watch this they feel seen, and maybe the struggle to accept themselves or seek help gets that tiny bit easier. I know it did for me making this film…because yes, I am now in therapy. The love letter worked.