"I love a good challenge," Caitlin McCarthy writes via e-mail, a sentiment that perhaps explains why the teacher by day, screenwriter and veteran novelist by night, continually traverses both genre and format with her writing. "Whether you're writing a novel or screenplay, you have to be mindful of character development, action and emotional storylines, pacing, etc., but the way you outline and ultimately express yourself on paper is different," McCarthy says.

Taking out some time to reflect on Orphans, cinematographer Ku-Ling Siegel here talks about realism, working with limitations and the importance of resourcefulness.

As for dictating to the audience what they're meant to see and synthesize about her feature debut Orphans, Ry Russo-Young remains in large part hands-off. "I kind of prefer to let the audience bring their thoughts to it," she writes after our initial phone interview.

First and foremost Brandon McCormick is a storyteller, and it’s only incidental that he’s a filmmaker, film being the best artistic format for him to share his stories. “You think about history, our culture; you think about everything we assimilate, our relationships, everything revolved around story—the stories we’re creating, the stories we’re telling each other,” he says.