About Shea

My name is Shea Alexander Dietz. As a child of a military family, I have lived all over the world – but I do know where I’m from: Minnesota and Colorado. At age 10, I picked up my first camera with my three best friends and we started to make movies together. Our backyard creations made us all fall in love with filmmaking because we loved movies. Looking back, that’s when I really believe “my childhood” really started.

I moved away from Minnesota to Colorado at age 13 and my passion for moviemaking stuck with me. Also, because of the timing of our move, my mom decided to homeschool me for one year before returning to school with others. We found ourselves with extra time on our hands often, so we escaped to hundreds of movies together. All of this fueled my fire for film.

When I moved to Colorado, I noticed something about myself that was seeping into my life. I realized I was gay. For many years I denied it to not only others, but myself because there was something inside of me that said, “It was wrong”. It wasn’t until summer 2010 when I went to the USC School of Cinematic Arts to study production and found solace in my art around me that I was able to accept and love myself for who I am. I came home from film school at the end of the summer and decided it was time to come out for my senior year of high school.

I experienced mixed reactions at my high school and I wanted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance. My school reacted with an immediate “no” and I wanted to know why. The filmmaker inside me came out and decided to make a documentary that asks the question “why?” not just on a surface level, but asking what the function and business of rejection towards gay in our society is. Six months later, near the end of this film, I had become an activist.

This blog is the story of my love for the world around me, my hope for a better future, and my career in film that will go on as long as I am here. I have gone on to be a part of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Loyola Marymount Film Production School. My life as an artist is just beginning and I hope you will all be there to join me in my successes and defeats as our story continues another day.